In my teens and twenties, the whole monogamy thing escaped me altogether. It’s a shameful thing to admit, I know, but it’s true. I wasn’t a slut, and didn’t guy-hop exactly. In fact, I managed to keep boyfriends, and eventually a starter spouse, for far longer than most. Still, no matter how content I (convinced myself I) was, inevitably I’d encounter someone with whom I shared an entirely spontaneous and irresistibly intoxicating chemistry, and try as I might to honor my pledge, tacit or otherwise, of fidelity, there would come a moment of weakness and opportunity. Or moments, as the case may have been.
It was disturbing, that repetitive failure, and I agonized over what I could at the time only assume was my having been doomed to continue thusly throughout my time on this earth, always intending to stay true to the mores and philosophies I then espoused. That agony led to a chronic and persistent decay of what little self-worth I possessed, until eventually all I had left was a dim memory of my former moral fortitude. Ugly, wretched stuff.
The most perplexing thing was, even during the best times in my primary relationships, I was still prone to those serendipitous encounters. I’d be carrying on with my ordinary business, grocery shopping or working or whatever other things that teeny-twenty-somethings do with their time, and WHAMO! Some guy, some unbelievably articulate, magnetic, critical thinker of a man, some eloquent stranger would meet my eyes with his, and in that moment the crushing certainty of the coming (no pun intended) failure would flood over me with blinding clarity. I couldn’t not proceed. Certainly, it was an exciting thing, but only for the duration of the chase. Without fail, any consummation of those brief unions was... less than earth shattering. It was never the sex. For me, the pursuit buried its barbed claws into my psyche, gathered me into itself and held me fast until the business at hand had reached its inevitable conclusion.
I thought for a long time that the problem was with my choices of partners, and certainly there is some truth in that assessment. What I’ve since learned, is that having had relationships with people who were hopelessly incompatible with me was really immaterial. The problem wasn’t me. The problem wasn’t the men/boys I so poorly selected. The problem was, in fact, not a problem. It was Humanity. Evolution. The inescapable fact that, as a Human, an occupant of the uppermost tier of the Great Apes (if Darwin and his cohorts are to be believed anyway), I am a primate. You are a primate. Every single person to have ever breathed or walked upon this planet, as far back as "Lucy," and even farther still, for untold millennia, the whole of our species and all that preceded us. We are, at least in part, our physiology.
Yes, homo sapiens (allegedly) possess the capacity to chose a single, lifelong mate. It happens. Nevertheless, from a strictly statistical perspective, those cases are the exception. They are the aberrations. Not abominations, but aberrations without question.
I’ve recently had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a little bird called a Carolina Wren. This bird, tiny, dingy brown drab-feathered, visually unremarkable as feathered critters go, actually IS monogamous. The thing tops out at a whopping 3/4oz., and measures about 6" in length with a max wingspan of up to 11". The two most fascinating characteristics about these guys, in my opinion, are their masterful constructions of softly rounded funnel-shaped nests in odd places (ours nested in a stray paper grocery sack atop the shelves that sit in the outdoor alcove where my deep freeze is stored) and their lovely song http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Carolina_Wren_dtl.htmlsound. To see the things though, they blend right into the woodwork, going about their birdie business essentially unnoticed.
I wondered, after discovering the nest in my house and doing the requisite research to determine whether or not to report the winged thingy to the Bird Police, how it was that so tiny and literally birdbrained a creature benefits from a lifelong bond with another specimen of its species. What advantage does that pairing impart, other than the general safety-in-numbers thing?
Over and over again in the animal kingdom, we see that breeding with multiple partners serves to diversify, and thereby strengthen, the population of virtually all species. More partners means more combinations of DNA, and more combinations means more opportunities for the species to develop new and advantageous gene combinations, giving them a higher probability of being "naturally selected" to live longer and produce more offspring. Why, then, would a bird, this miniature living dinosaur, develop the monogamous lifestyle it practices? To what end?
I can’t begin to come up with a good reason. I mean what, do those extended bird unions yield greater understanding, each bird of the other? Does it bring them closer to each other, afford them the ability to have some sort of avian mind-meld? I don’t get it. Hell, maybe my brain’s just too damned big to determine the reason. Maybe there is no reason. I suppose I’ll ask the Big Guy after my existence in this mortal coil ceases. Who knows?
So a critter with a brain the size of a grain of rice derives some sort of protection from selecting a lifelong mate. How on earth can that possibly be applied as a logical or beneficial arrangement for so complex a species as our own? I don’t advocate some collective societal who’-baggedness, be certain of that! I just... don’t see why it is that sex is so off-limits a thing between consenting adults who are otherwise attached.
Commitment isn’t about sex. It’s about laundry. It’s the conscious and constant decision that the other person’s annoying habits and eccentricities, taken in the greater context of the entire person and the enrichment s/he brings to your life when you couple with him/her.
Commitment is seeing your mate puke, and despite your own inability to view such things without fainting, diving in and gathering her hair back from her forehead and holding a cool moist cloth to her face while she worships at the feet of the great and malevolent porcelain goddess.
It’s what transcends the crushing loneliness of a vacant bed, even when your chosen partner isn’t physically occupying the space beside you.
It’s knowing the other person’s need for coffee in the morning, and then dragging your sleepy ass out of bed before him/her and pouring a cup, adding the cream and sugar in the precise proportions that he/she would do him/herself, tasting it to be certain it’s just right, and then delivering said cup, steaming and warm with love, to your still sleeping partner.
It’s arguing vehemently over the trivial bullshit du jour, getting angry enough to want to flay him open with the evil words that lie in wait to be hurled, dagger like, from your tongue, knowing full well that he deserves such treatment for what he has said/done/implied, and instead gripping the word-weapons in the iron clench of your jaw, allowing not so much as a single one to escape, and then marching up to your offending spouse, wrapping your arms around him tightly, and pressing your head into his chest. Because he’s yours. Because you chose him. Because he is the one and only person in the whole of the universe that you want drive you crazy until you both die.
Without a doubt, sex with that person can break the sound barrier, rend the very fabric of Time and Space. But let’s be honest, shall we? The snotty noses and what’s-for-dinners and honey-did-you-pay-the-mortgages, and when-are-you-going-to-mow-the-goddamned-LAWN-for-chrissakes!?!?es tend to reduce the frequency of those starburst lightning moments.
The chasing of kids, managing of checkbooks, prepping of meals, working of jobs, cleaning of homes, repairing of leaky rooves- those things have an insidiously unavoidable way of worming in between us and our Chosen Ones, so that by the time we actually carve out an hour or two of grown-up time, we’re so exhausted that we’re fortunate to muster the energy to go just through the motions, mechanically reconnecting with our Loves in a way that is horribly insufficient but still necessary because it’s what we have.
My Love and I have identified this vicious process, discussed it at great length and many times over the past ten years. What we have determined, through practice and observation and educated guess and careful recording of results is that the daily minutiae drains us of our life force. The general business of living, especially with the children we spawn and adore and often fantasize about killing (but only momentarily), those things suck us dry.
As though attacked by some omnipresent cosmic vampire, we find ourselves desperate and aching for the psycho spiritual and physical renewal we gain from basking in the glow or our Love’s mere presence, communing in the consummate embrace, our every cell bathing in the neurochemical soup that constitutes the collection of feelings and desires most of us mistakenly label as "love."
And, as anyone familiar with monsters and horror show atrocities will tell you, the vampire’s ultimate cruelty to us is that it robs our Loves likewise, so that each of us feels paralyzed, unable to give that we wish to receive. Neither of us feels able to initiate the cycle, the giving and getting back, the vital circuit that is the flow of electrical and chemical and spiritual and psychic energy, one to the other, returning to the first magnified and then magnified again as it circles back and forth, to and from our Loves, that exponential recharging of the living battery we call the soul.
Frankly, I think the divorce rate in the West would drop dramatically if, by some miracle, we as a civilization decided that SAFE, consensual relations between two people who are married or committed to someone other than the partner in question, were free to
1. Engage as they saw the need to do so in whatever level of intimacy they collectively deemed sufficient
AND
2. Not have to lie about having done so.
The caveats are relatively few: no lying, no deceit, no procreation with anyone other than the spouse/primary mate, and probably for most a few specifics like no co-sleeping with anyone other than Number One. How hard a thing could that possibly be?
I don’t find it so difficult to imagine, save for theVictorian prudishness so common amongst Americans. We deny sex and sexuality in our daily activities, we condemn the needs and wants of the phsysical shell that houses the divine within us as "sins of the flesh," when that flesh is undeniably and inextricably part of the very divinity it contains. And then we drool like rabid dogs as we are willingly and repeatedly bombarded with an unending barrage of photos, videos, and various other media presentations of all things sex, sexy, and sexual. The absurdity of it is maddening.
I believe people cheat almost exclusively for reasons y unrelated to the sex itself or the physical gratification it provides. I think for some, cheating is a way to maintain the separate-and-apartness that they lack, a way to feel like they are in command of their own lives when they might else wise feel overly controlled by a jealous or insecure partner. For others, it’s the excitement factor, the exhilarating fear of indulging in Forbidden Fruit, knowing that if the trespass is discovered, things will be VERY bad, but that the sweetness to be had is superior to any other, if only by virtue of its taboo status. That fear, and more importantly, successfully perpetrating the deception, are highly gratifying activities unto themselves for some. I sometimes hate that this is the case, but it is what it is. No sense in denying it.
Ultimately, however we feel the need to reduce these motivations to whichever base components we think comprise them, people venture outside of their primary relationships in order to be recharged. We’re all just a bunch of organic batteries, and the battery doesn’t care whence comes its source of renewal.
I’m count myself wonderfully fortunate as these things go. When Husband V 2.0 made his appearance in my life, each of had sustained severe damage at the hands of our previous spouses. Both of us had been defied, betrayed, and made to feel worthless and unlovable as a result. Granted, neither he nor I are without fault or responsibility for our own misdeeds, but the betrayal was huge, and we emerged from our respective "starter marriages" as defiled and incomplete people. Somehow, we each found our own way to healing, and after that, to each other.
He is not a jealous fellow, which is even after ten years a bit unnerving at times. Another man can look, address, and even touch me in an overtly flirtatious manner, and my husband looks upon the exchange as he would a handshake. If, on the other hand, anyone dares to insult/threaten/intimidate/disrespect me, the Y chromosome in my Dearest takes control, promptly establishing, in no uncertain terms, that such disregard for his wife will not be tolerated. It’s the strangest combination of traits, but only because it is so rare a thing amongst men in this country, and I’d bet in others too.
Jealousy is a fairly useless sentiment I think. Protectiveness is not only useful, but necessary, a tangible demonstration of a loved one’s placing you in a position of great value and esteem.
We’ve had the discussion, he and I, on countless occasions, about how each of us might feel if the other were to engage in any sort of sexual interaction with another. Our own ground rules are that each of us has veto power of potential interactees (ha ha- I made up a new word), that any, um, interactions are to be conducted with full disclosure to all involved parties (no Fatal Attractions, in other words), and that if at any time either of us feels slighted, the other is to immediately address whichever needs are going unmet.
What’s really interesting is, save for one occasion each of "stepping out" prior to exchanging vows, and despite the, uh, carte blanche privileges each of us possess to explore at will, we’ve not done so. Certainly there have been people to whom we’ve been drawn, and certainly we’d have perhaps made the most of any opportunity to know those people, but at some point, the draw seems to fade, and I realize how unlikely it is that the culmination of my efforts will end in any sort of gratification that even remotely measures up to what I get at home.
Likewise intriguing, each and every time that either of us has had an interest, we’ve disclosed it to the other, and have returned from the external partnership, unrequited or otherwise, recharged, our sexual energies overflowing, the very act of anticipating that most vulnerable of human interactions with another person having served to refuel the soul/battery. That new found store of energy places us in the enviable position of finally having the ability to initiate the aforementioned cycle, and I’ll spare you the gory details by saying only this: the results are Titanic (in the ancient Greco-Roman sense of the word, not the ship).
As it happens, my interest has been very much piqued recently. I don’t know for sure that he "gets" the sincerity in the flirting I do with him, but I suspect that he does. He’s bright in a way that is painfully rare, and we seem to share an eerie number of likes and dislikes. It will be interesting to see where it goes, if it indeed goes anywhere. Obviously, if pursuit of anything beyond the flirt would be damaging in even the smallest way to him or his family, all bets are off. Still, I emerge from the cocoons of the conversations I have with him feeling lighter than air, recharged and renewed, ready to take on... whatever. That is, in itself, entirely acceptable. Anything more than that is gravy.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
DEFCON 5 Nuclear Fuckin' Meltdown, Monkey Style
My three-year-old son has been home with me, rather than in a day care program of any sort, for the past three months. The time with him has been great in many ways, but it has also been mind-numbing in many others, and to call it “frustrating” is a gross understatement. Extreme. That’s what it has been. Frankly, those folks who ski naked or base jump off skyscrapers or hood surf… they know exactly jack shit about Extreme. Extreme is 24/7 existence with a three-year-old at home, a genius 7-yr-old in school, a dog, and a corporate pilot for a husband.
Yeah, hubby travels extensively and for prolonged periods, but it’s not like we get to accompany him. His job often entails its own mind-numbing tedium, like days on end spent in a hotel room in a strange city without any human contact beyond the occasional greeting from Maria, the everpresent Marriott hotel maid. He misses us madly, and I know this. He doesn’t golf or gamble or drink, so he doesn’t have much to do in all those strange cities, and I know he gets incredibly lonely. I have no shortage of sympathy for his situation. But, there are times when I would give anything, a limb a kidney an ovary ANYTHING to have just two days of that tedium. To trade with him. Not just for the rest, but also for the empathy that only comes with walking in the other person’s moccasins. For him, not me.
I get it. I totally get it. I understand his plight, because I make it my business to do so. I understand what he lives because I probe, poke, and pick into his brain at every opportunity. It’s my nature. I have to. What can I say, I love the guy, would die for him if it ever came to it, and I want to understand things from his perspective as much as it’s possible for one to do that about another. I wish I could say with total and complete faith and certainty that he did likewise. Not so. Ok, maybe so at least SOME of the time. Just not nearly as often as I’d like. Or maybe I’m paranoid, ungrateful, spoiled, lame, and don’t see how good I have it. Whatever.
Anyway, enough back story. Let’s get to the meat of my day. We’ll start at the beginning, unhip as that might be in modern prose.
As it does every day, the alarm brayed its unwelcome greeting at 7AM, and I hit the snooze button a time or ten. Finally, when the precise moment had come after which it would be physically and temporally impossible to get my older son ready and off to school without being tardy, I rolled out of bed and woke him up in the drill-sergeant fashion that works best for all of us. He responded with a sleepy protest, then climbed begrudgingly down the ladder from his top bunk, scratching his butt and muttering his disapproval all the while. With firm but brief verbal prompts, he dressed himself, brushed his teeth (for the entire two minutes even!), fed the dog, peed, combed his hair, and splashed his face with cool water to help get the sleep out of his eyes. In that order. Breakfast happens at school this week, so in just twenty minutes, my little soldier was ready to walk out the door. Quite an accomplishment that, even if I do say so myself!
Unlike my ordinary day, my husband was home this morning, having even slept in his very own bed, and had agreed last night to transport the little guy to school on his way in to the office, where he (my husband) was slated to do some training exercises and paperwork at the company’s private hangar before returning for a SECOND night in his own bed. I took it for granted that, since it was an actual possibility for once, I’d not be resented if I returned to my bed, where my t-shirt and saggy underwear clad 3-yr-old still slept soundly, despite his usual habit of awakening at the moment his brother starts brushing his teeth and then doing everything he can dream up to interfere in Ian’s preparation for the school day. It was like a sign from above: little one still asleep, bed still warm, and hubby home, able and willing and even committed to take the elder to school. Hellooooooo, sleep!
Alas, as hubby emerged from the bathroom, I felt his disapproving glance burn into my reclining form, right through the blankets. I looked up, asked if he needed something, reminded him that his coffee (which I’d set up for brewing the previous night and then mixed just the way he likes it in his cup, which I handed him while he was still in bed, just like he does for me with as much regularity as his schedule allows) was on the nightstand, and steered him in the direction of the laundry basket containing his clean underwear. He sighed a little, clearly a bit put off, but I let it go and instead sank into the softness of the bed in hopes of a return to Dreamland.
I heard the engine of his truck fire up, and must have dozed very shortly thereafter, because my next memory is of him tapping me on the shoulder, saying, “Honey, it’s 9AM, don’t you think you should get up?” I was a bit surprised, because I thought I’d understood him to say he was going to go straight to work after depositing our son at school, but apparently he hadn’t dressed for the occasion until after his return home. I told him in a sleep-fogged voice that it wasn’t my intention to get up until I absolutely had to, but at that precise moment, the littler monkey awoke and bounced out of bed and into the bathroom. I fussed groggily at my husband then, saying “He’d still be asleep if you hadn’t turned on every light in the house.” His response came quickly, the tone unmistakably irate, “I’m getting ready to go to work. I think I have the right to turn on the light in my own bedroom.” Ugh.
He finished grooming himself and was headed out the door when I asked him to give me a kiss. He did so, but only after telling me he didn’t think I’d cared to have one, since I was still in bed. Huh? Anyway, off he went.
By this time, the wee one was singing along with Dora in front of the T.V. that his pop had fired up for him, a mere twenty feet from my bed in the adjacent room. Dora and my boy are great pals, and he isn’t one to get up to no good when she’s on, so I felt safe in attempting to resume my doze, which is exactly what I did. A quarter of an hour later, I stirred and asked him if he wanted some cheerios or fruit. He declined. --- I need to mention here, that when my boys are hungry, they say so. When they’re not, they say so. We have intentionally not forced them to eat more or more often than they feel the need to eat, because both my husband and I have battled lifelong overeating issues. It has worked incredibly well for us, and our children have always had robust builds without so much as an ounce of extraneous padding. They’re both big for their ages, tall and muscular. That’s my proof that this wasn’t a neglect situation. If you need more than that, well I can’t help you. --- So, the monkey wasn’t inclined to eat, and I was definitely inclined to sleep a bit more, and Dora was still on, so sleep I did. A bit later, I was awakened when the little guy decided he was indeed ready to eat. Again, I suggested a Clementine, one of his favorite things in the world. He accepted. And then all hell broke loose.
“Mommy, I don’t want the Clementines in the fridge. I want the ones that I put into that jar on the top of the shelves.” Says he.
“Honey, the Clementines would have spoiled if they were left in that jar, so I put them in the fridge. They’re the same clementines.”
“Mom, NO! I want the ones in the JAR!”
“Sweets, let’s see what we can manage.” I slipped on my robe, ran a brush through my well-bedded locks, and headed for the kitchen, monkey in close pursuit.
The Clementine was actually fairly uneventful, and I offered him tortillas with beans (my brunch) as well, which he also declined. No hill.
I went to the couch, swigged some coffee that I’d had to reheat in the microwave in order to make it drinkable- that’s the logical consequence of oversleeping, right? Well worth it!- and finished off my food. Monkey showed up with a half-eaten Clementine a few minutes later, and grinned sweetly as he offered to share it with me. Of course, I accepted the sections he shoved into my mouth, who wouldn’t? We cuddled a bit, and then he went back to his monkey business in the play room. My dad called then, and while we were on the phone, the wee one made another appearance, this time demanding cheese cubes, an unopened bag of which was in plain monkey-view in the fridge. I told him he could have some, but he wanted me to come get them for him, which I did.
“No, Mommy, I don’t want that kind!”
“Huh? It’s the only kind we have. What’s wrong with these?”
“I want the one with the COW on the front.”
I stared hopefully at the front of the bag of cheese, but all that I saw was a faint pastoral view of some western landscape. Hmmmm….
“Oh, sweetie, this does have a cow. It’s just really small because it’s off in the distance. See? It’s a cattle ranch in the picture, where the cows graze on the grass. This little dot right here? It’s a cow. I think. It might also be a well, but my vote is definitely on a cow.” A sense of humor is an absolute requirement in mothering, did I mention that?
“Mom, I want a BIG cow, like the one on the other package.”
“Oh. Well, this one doesn’t have a cow that big. But I’ll draw one for you if you wish. How ‘bout it?” At this point, I proceeded as though all were right with the world, despite my sneaking suspicion that we were on the verge of a major toddler meltdown. I poured some cheese cubes onto the paper plate he had brought to me and then smiled down at him. “Here ya go, love. Cheese cubes. You start in on these and I’ll get right on that cow.”
“No, Mom, I want SEVEN cheese cubes.”
“Yeah, ok. You have seven. And another six. Let’s count them.”
We did. I scooted the offending six to the farthest side of the plate and told him he could ignore them unless he decided he was hungry for more than seven.
He eyed me doubtfully, but took the plate to the table and sat down. I retrieved a black sharpie from the drawer, but just as I was ready to put ink to plastic, he stopped me.
“NOOOOOO! I don’t WANT a black cow! It has to be a BROWN cow.” Oh shit. I breathed deeply, and then, with control and purpose in my voice, said almost too quietly for him to hear--- he has to be quiet to hear me when I do this, see, so it’s all part of my Mommy repertoire--- “Honeybunch. I hear that you want a brown cow. I’m happy to make a cow on here for you. But I have only a black marker, so it’s a black cow or now cow. Your call.”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH NO COW! I don’t LIKE black cows! I want a BROWN ONE, like on Barnyard!”
My blood pressure unaffected, and my facial expression likewise despite rather intense irritation, I said sweetly and quietly, “Ok then. I’m going to go check my email in my bedroom. Here’s some juice for you.”
He looked at the cup and then wailed, “I want BLUE juice! NOT PINK!!!” Huh??? I don’t buy blue food. Ever! Ah well, I’m chalking it up at that point to low blood sugar and too much Dora. No hill.
“Ok, sweets. No juice then. But here’s the thing. This cup is mine. I’m happy to share it with you if you get thirsty. I’ll just leave it on the table here for you. I’ll come back for some in a minute.” And I departed to my room.
A few minutes passed before he was in my room, screaming about how many cheese cubes he wanted. Seems that he wanted five now, and no other number would suffice, regardless of my most creative attempts at distraction. I asked him where the ones I’d given him were, and he said, “That was too many! If I eat all those, I’ll get a tummy ache. I had to dump them.” Give me strength. Now I was a bit miffed, but didn’t let so much as the slightest hint of that enter my voice.
“Come on, let’s go see.”
The kitchen floor was strewn with eleven cheese cubes. The other two lay on the table.
“Sweetheart, I gave you more than five. You are a very smart boy, and you know that you don’t ever have to eat more than you want. Why didn’t you just eat them and leave the ones you didn’t want?”
Um, FYI, never ask a three-year-old why s/he did anything. It’s what Vinzini from The Princess Bride would call, “A classic blunder.” DOH!
This is where the crazed toddler with bottomed out blood sugar snuck in and took over my darling son’s body while I wasn’t looking. I got kicked, the garbage can was shoved onto the floor, and much screaming and recriminations about tummyaches and me being a NAUGHTY MOMMY ensued. I breathed. I waited. And waited. When we reached what I figured was probably the eye of the storm, I explained that I’d be happy to get more food for him, but that he had to first pick up the cheese and right the trash can, and also apologize for kicking me. I reminded him that it’s fine to kick or hit, as long as the recipient of the strike is an inanimate and soft item. He swore that he “just couldn’t wait” to hit, and I suggested that he would have to figure out a way to either wait or just not do it at all. The eye wall hit then.
Eventually, after being targeted and missed with another kick, I declared that I’d be in my room, where I would lock the door, and that as soon as he was able to be calm enough to speak to me without screaming or hurting, I’d emerge and work with him. He kicked my door for several minutes, cried hysterically, said my name several times, insisted that he didn’t like me and that he felt mad and sad and mad and MAD, and cried some more. I called my husband at work, looking for some suggestions on how to get the kid fed without giving the appearance of caving. My hubby, much to my chagrin, declared my action in having locked the child out of my room “unsafe.” Um, no. I explained to him that at no time was I unable to see my child’s feet, and at no time did I do anything other than give the appearance of having left his vicinity. Daddy was fresh out of ideas and had to go back to work, so off the phone went we.
I left the room, called a friend who has kids, and vented to her whilst sitting on my front stoop, as Hurricane Monkey picked up strength the moment I was again in his sight. He screeched inside, and again I listened intently to him while breathing deeply and repeating to myself that homicide was illegal, unnecessary, and that the whole thing was sure to pass soon. It did. The monkey went to the back door and ran around to the front stoop, grabbed me tight, and hugged me like there was no tomorrow. I reminded him that I was not gone, and that I would never leave him alone, but that sometimes Mommies need time out too. He asked to be picked up, and I hitched him onto my right hip before walking into the kitchen. I spied atop the refrigerator a giganto box of microwave popcorn, like a shining star from heaven, and asked him if he’d like some. And just like that, the storm had passed.
I let him push the popcorn button on the microwave, and while we waited the 1:45 minutes for the word ENJOY to scroll across the digital display of my microwave, I mixed each of us an Emergen-C, just for good measure. He gladly accepted his “vitamin drink,” and gulped it down happily. He then sat at the table, all manners and sweetness, and ate the popcorn I poured onto his paper plate, drank all of the pink juice, and slurped down the five cheese cubes I placed aside the popcorn. Happy times.
Once he was adequately tanked up, we cuddled under a blanket (his idea) on the couch for a few minutes before retiring to my room for a nap. Hubby called and said he’d fetch the elder one from school. Groovy. But then he informed me that the elder boy had asked to have coffee and donuts after school, and so the plan was that he’d pick up the kid and the TWO of them would hit the coffee joint. Um… yeah. I asked if we were going to ALL go, and not getting the hint, he said, “No, just me and Ian.” ACK! Ok, so I napped with the little guy.
Hubby got home two hours later and handed me a bag o’ fresh donuts. He also brought the gallon of milk that I’d requested via text message to his cell phone. I was on the phone at the time he got there with a mutual friend with whom I’d not spoken for some time, so I kissed hubby on the forehead and went to the living room to continue and finish my conversation. When I was finished, I found hubby, asleep in our bed beside the still-snoozing little monkey. I woke the little ‘un as gently as I could, and then nudged him toward the door to his play room, reminding him that his brother was FINALLY home to play with. He wasn’t happy about it. Chapter Two of the Nuclear Freakin’ Meltdown began, far less intense and I suppose really more an aftershock to the Defcon Five Nuclear Meltdown I’d faced alone earlier today, but a force to be reckoned with all the same. Again, I shuttled him out of my room and locked the door, because again he swatted at me.
I then looked expectantly at my darling. When he didn’t open his eyes, even with all the racket my littlest was by that time generating, I nudged him. “Um, honey? A little help? I’ve been at this all day, and I’m wiped. Please?” Nothing. “Um, Shawn? Seriously, I’m not up for more of this right now. You said this afternoon that having him out there like this was ‘not safe,’ but you’re ignoring it. What up?” (I was on the toilet at that point.) He looked at me angrily and said, “I don’t know what to say about it.”
Ok. I love the guy. Last time I checked at least. And he’s a shit sometimes, and so am I. And I know homicide is illegal. “Um, ok. I’m going to go out for a bit.” That’s all I could manage without screaming and mutilating him or me or everyone. I ran a brush through my hair again, brushed my teeth, put on shoes and a pair of non-yoga pants, and informed him that I’d be using his pickup rather than the SUV, so that he would have car seats should he elect to take the boys anywhere while I was gone. I snatched up my laptop from its place beside our bed, stuffed it and the power supply into my satchel, scooped up keys and purse, and left.
Once I got here, “here,” being the local Books By The Billion/Horbuck’s Coffee combo, I sent him a text message telling him where I was and that I’d be awhile. And now I’m listening to my walkman, missing him like mad, mad as hell at him, wishing he’d call and check on me or something, knowing full well that since I’m still this pissed I have no business going home just yet. It’s now 8:51PM, exactly 3 hours and 21 minutes since I left our home. I called him about a half hour after the text message, because he made no reply. He said that he’d indeed received it, but that he didn’t think I needed a reply. GAWD.
Another FYI folks: An angry/hurt/pissy mom/wife ALWAYS needs a reply. A sweet one. An “I love you honey.” An acknowledgement, kind and considerate, even if you don’t feel entirely sincere in those qualities at the moment. We fucking work our asses off, ok? We don’t get a day off. We don’t get a break. The Labor Department would shut the entire lot of us down if ever we fell under their jurisdiction, and I suppose that would lead to some sort of weird Matrix-style kiddie farming or something, because the fact is, parenting is damned near impossibly hard sometimes, and it’s far far more difficult when you’re alone, or even alone a lot. We need vacations. We need breaks. We need to be understood. We need our husbands, the loving, doting, fantastic fathers of our amazing and maddening children, to take the fuck OVER on occasion, to see how things are for us, to recognize that, even if the laundry is piled on the couch and there are cheezey-dos on the bathroom floor, it’s fine because we have STILL put in far more effort, blood, sweat, and tears in a single day than they do, regardless of the difficulty level or suicide rate of their particular vocation. We need to be held, loved, thanked, massaged, coddled. We need to be mothered. We need someone else to come in, take over, and relieve us of our unimaginable burdens, just briefly, just long enough to let us breathe, step back, assess the situation from a different viewpoint, and decide for ourselves, as we will always always always do, that it’s what and where we want to be before we dive headlong right back into the melee that is motherhood.
Yeah, hubby travels extensively and for prolonged periods, but it’s not like we get to accompany him. His job often entails its own mind-numbing tedium, like days on end spent in a hotel room in a strange city without any human contact beyond the occasional greeting from Maria, the everpresent Marriott hotel maid. He misses us madly, and I know this. He doesn’t golf or gamble or drink, so he doesn’t have much to do in all those strange cities, and I know he gets incredibly lonely. I have no shortage of sympathy for his situation. But, there are times when I would give anything, a limb a kidney an ovary ANYTHING to have just two days of that tedium. To trade with him. Not just for the rest, but also for the empathy that only comes with walking in the other person’s moccasins. For him, not me.
I get it. I totally get it. I understand his plight, because I make it my business to do so. I understand what he lives because I probe, poke, and pick into his brain at every opportunity. It’s my nature. I have to. What can I say, I love the guy, would die for him if it ever came to it, and I want to understand things from his perspective as much as it’s possible for one to do that about another. I wish I could say with total and complete faith and certainty that he did likewise. Not so. Ok, maybe so at least SOME of the time. Just not nearly as often as I’d like. Or maybe I’m paranoid, ungrateful, spoiled, lame, and don’t see how good I have it. Whatever.
Anyway, enough back story. Let’s get to the meat of my day. We’ll start at the beginning, unhip as that might be in modern prose.
As it does every day, the alarm brayed its unwelcome greeting at 7AM, and I hit the snooze button a time or ten. Finally, when the precise moment had come after which it would be physically and temporally impossible to get my older son ready and off to school without being tardy, I rolled out of bed and woke him up in the drill-sergeant fashion that works best for all of us. He responded with a sleepy protest, then climbed begrudgingly down the ladder from his top bunk, scratching his butt and muttering his disapproval all the while. With firm but brief verbal prompts, he dressed himself, brushed his teeth (for the entire two minutes even!), fed the dog, peed, combed his hair, and splashed his face with cool water to help get the sleep out of his eyes. In that order. Breakfast happens at school this week, so in just twenty minutes, my little soldier was ready to walk out the door. Quite an accomplishment that, even if I do say so myself!
Unlike my ordinary day, my husband was home this morning, having even slept in his very own bed, and had agreed last night to transport the little guy to school on his way in to the office, where he (my husband) was slated to do some training exercises and paperwork at the company’s private hangar before returning for a SECOND night in his own bed. I took it for granted that, since it was an actual possibility for once, I’d not be resented if I returned to my bed, where my t-shirt and saggy underwear clad 3-yr-old still slept soundly, despite his usual habit of awakening at the moment his brother starts brushing his teeth and then doing everything he can dream up to interfere in Ian’s preparation for the school day. It was like a sign from above: little one still asleep, bed still warm, and hubby home, able and willing and even committed to take the elder to school. Hellooooooo, sleep!
Alas, as hubby emerged from the bathroom, I felt his disapproving glance burn into my reclining form, right through the blankets. I looked up, asked if he needed something, reminded him that his coffee (which I’d set up for brewing the previous night and then mixed just the way he likes it in his cup, which I handed him while he was still in bed, just like he does for me with as much regularity as his schedule allows) was on the nightstand, and steered him in the direction of the laundry basket containing his clean underwear. He sighed a little, clearly a bit put off, but I let it go and instead sank into the softness of the bed in hopes of a return to Dreamland.
I heard the engine of his truck fire up, and must have dozed very shortly thereafter, because my next memory is of him tapping me on the shoulder, saying, “Honey, it’s 9AM, don’t you think you should get up?” I was a bit surprised, because I thought I’d understood him to say he was going to go straight to work after depositing our son at school, but apparently he hadn’t dressed for the occasion until after his return home. I told him in a sleep-fogged voice that it wasn’t my intention to get up until I absolutely had to, but at that precise moment, the littler monkey awoke and bounced out of bed and into the bathroom. I fussed groggily at my husband then, saying “He’d still be asleep if you hadn’t turned on every light in the house.” His response came quickly, the tone unmistakably irate, “I’m getting ready to go to work. I think I have the right to turn on the light in my own bedroom.” Ugh.
He finished grooming himself and was headed out the door when I asked him to give me a kiss. He did so, but only after telling me he didn’t think I’d cared to have one, since I was still in bed. Huh? Anyway, off he went.
By this time, the wee one was singing along with Dora in front of the T.V. that his pop had fired up for him, a mere twenty feet from my bed in the adjacent room. Dora and my boy are great pals, and he isn’t one to get up to no good when she’s on, so I felt safe in attempting to resume my doze, which is exactly what I did. A quarter of an hour later, I stirred and asked him if he wanted some cheerios or fruit. He declined. --- I need to mention here, that when my boys are hungry, they say so. When they’re not, they say so. We have intentionally not forced them to eat more or more often than they feel the need to eat, because both my husband and I have battled lifelong overeating issues. It has worked incredibly well for us, and our children have always had robust builds without so much as an ounce of extraneous padding. They’re both big for their ages, tall and muscular. That’s my proof that this wasn’t a neglect situation. If you need more than that, well I can’t help you. --- So, the monkey wasn’t inclined to eat, and I was definitely inclined to sleep a bit more, and Dora was still on, so sleep I did. A bit later, I was awakened when the little guy decided he was indeed ready to eat. Again, I suggested a Clementine, one of his favorite things in the world. He accepted. And then all hell broke loose.
“Mommy, I don’t want the Clementines in the fridge. I want the ones that I put into that jar on the top of the shelves.” Says he.
“Honey, the Clementines would have spoiled if they were left in that jar, so I put them in the fridge. They’re the same clementines.”
“Mom, NO! I want the ones in the JAR!”
“Sweets, let’s see what we can manage.” I slipped on my robe, ran a brush through my well-bedded locks, and headed for the kitchen, monkey in close pursuit.
The Clementine was actually fairly uneventful, and I offered him tortillas with beans (my brunch) as well, which he also declined. No hill.
I went to the couch, swigged some coffee that I’d had to reheat in the microwave in order to make it drinkable- that’s the logical consequence of oversleeping, right? Well worth it!- and finished off my food. Monkey showed up with a half-eaten Clementine a few minutes later, and grinned sweetly as he offered to share it with me. Of course, I accepted the sections he shoved into my mouth, who wouldn’t? We cuddled a bit, and then he went back to his monkey business in the play room. My dad called then, and while we were on the phone, the wee one made another appearance, this time demanding cheese cubes, an unopened bag of which was in plain monkey-view in the fridge. I told him he could have some, but he wanted me to come get them for him, which I did.
“No, Mommy, I don’t want that kind!”
“Huh? It’s the only kind we have. What’s wrong with these?”
“I want the one with the COW on the front.”
I stared hopefully at the front of the bag of cheese, but all that I saw was a faint pastoral view of some western landscape. Hmmmm….
“Oh, sweetie, this does have a cow. It’s just really small because it’s off in the distance. See? It’s a cattle ranch in the picture, where the cows graze on the grass. This little dot right here? It’s a cow. I think. It might also be a well, but my vote is definitely on a cow.” A sense of humor is an absolute requirement in mothering, did I mention that?
“Mom, I want a BIG cow, like the one on the other package.”
“Oh. Well, this one doesn’t have a cow that big. But I’ll draw one for you if you wish. How ‘bout it?” At this point, I proceeded as though all were right with the world, despite my sneaking suspicion that we were on the verge of a major toddler meltdown. I poured some cheese cubes onto the paper plate he had brought to me and then smiled down at him. “Here ya go, love. Cheese cubes. You start in on these and I’ll get right on that cow.”
“No, Mom, I want SEVEN cheese cubes.”
“Yeah, ok. You have seven. And another six. Let’s count them.”
We did. I scooted the offending six to the farthest side of the plate and told him he could ignore them unless he decided he was hungry for more than seven.
He eyed me doubtfully, but took the plate to the table and sat down. I retrieved a black sharpie from the drawer, but just as I was ready to put ink to plastic, he stopped me.
“NOOOOOO! I don’t WANT a black cow! It has to be a BROWN cow.” Oh shit. I breathed deeply, and then, with control and purpose in my voice, said almost too quietly for him to hear--- he has to be quiet to hear me when I do this, see, so it’s all part of my Mommy repertoire--- “Honeybunch. I hear that you want a brown cow. I’m happy to make a cow on here for you. But I have only a black marker, so it’s a black cow or now cow. Your call.”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH NO COW! I don’t LIKE black cows! I want a BROWN ONE, like on Barnyard!”
My blood pressure unaffected, and my facial expression likewise despite rather intense irritation, I said sweetly and quietly, “Ok then. I’m going to go check my email in my bedroom. Here’s some juice for you.”
He looked at the cup and then wailed, “I want BLUE juice! NOT PINK!!!” Huh??? I don’t buy blue food. Ever! Ah well, I’m chalking it up at that point to low blood sugar and too much Dora. No hill.
“Ok, sweets. No juice then. But here’s the thing. This cup is mine. I’m happy to share it with you if you get thirsty. I’ll just leave it on the table here for you. I’ll come back for some in a minute.” And I departed to my room.
A few minutes passed before he was in my room, screaming about how many cheese cubes he wanted. Seems that he wanted five now, and no other number would suffice, regardless of my most creative attempts at distraction. I asked him where the ones I’d given him were, and he said, “That was too many! If I eat all those, I’ll get a tummy ache. I had to dump them.” Give me strength. Now I was a bit miffed, but didn’t let so much as the slightest hint of that enter my voice.
“Come on, let’s go see.”
The kitchen floor was strewn with eleven cheese cubes. The other two lay on the table.
“Sweetheart, I gave you more than five. You are a very smart boy, and you know that you don’t ever have to eat more than you want. Why didn’t you just eat them and leave the ones you didn’t want?”
Um, FYI, never ask a three-year-old why s/he did anything. It’s what Vinzini from The Princess Bride would call, “A classic blunder.” DOH!
This is where the crazed toddler with bottomed out blood sugar snuck in and took over my darling son’s body while I wasn’t looking. I got kicked, the garbage can was shoved onto the floor, and much screaming and recriminations about tummyaches and me being a NAUGHTY MOMMY ensued. I breathed. I waited. And waited. When we reached what I figured was probably the eye of the storm, I explained that I’d be happy to get more food for him, but that he had to first pick up the cheese and right the trash can, and also apologize for kicking me. I reminded him that it’s fine to kick or hit, as long as the recipient of the strike is an inanimate and soft item. He swore that he “just couldn’t wait” to hit, and I suggested that he would have to figure out a way to either wait or just not do it at all. The eye wall hit then.
Eventually, after being targeted and missed with another kick, I declared that I’d be in my room, where I would lock the door, and that as soon as he was able to be calm enough to speak to me without screaming or hurting, I’d emerge and work with him. He kicked my door for several minutes, cried hysterically, said my name several times, insisted that he didn’t like me and that he felt mad and sad and mad and MAD, and cried some more. I called my husband at work, looking for some suggestions on how to get the kid fed without giving the appearance of caving. My hubby, much to my chagrin, declared my action in having locked the child out of my room “unsafe.” Um, no. I explained to him that at no time was I unable to see my child’s feet, and at no time did I do anything other than give the appearance of having left his vicinity. Daddy was fresh out of ideas and had to go back to work, so off the phone went we.
I left the room, called a friend who has kids, and vented to her whilst sitting on my front stoop, as Hurricane Monkey picked up strength the moment I was again in his sight. He screeched inside, and again I listened intently to him while breathing deeply and repeating to myself that homicide was illegal, unnecessary, and that the whole thing was sure to pass soon. It did. The monkey went to the back door and ran around to the front stoop, grabbed me tight, and hugged me like there was no tomorrow. I reminded him that I was not gone, and that I would never leave him alone, but that sometimes Mommies need time out too. He asked to be picked up, and I hitched him onto my right hip before walking into the kitchen. I spied atop the refrigerator a giganto box of microwave popcorn, like a shining star from heaven, and asked him if he’d like some. And just like that, the storm had passed.
I let him push the popcorn button on the microwave, and while we waited the 1:45 minutes for the word ENJOY to scroll across the digital display of my microwave, I mixed each of us an Emergen-C, just for good measure. He gladly accepted his “vitamin drink,” and gulped it down happily. He then sat at the table, all manners and sweetness, and ate the popcorn I poured onto his paper plate, drank all of the pink juice, and slurped down the five cheese cubes I placed aside the popcorn. Happy times.
Once he was adequately tanked up, we cuddled under a blanket (his idea) on the couch for a few minutes before retiring to my room for a nap. Hubby called and said he’d fetch the elder one from school. Groovy. But then he informed me that the elder boy had asked to have coffee and donuts after school, and so the plan was that he’d pick up the kid and the TWO of them would hit the coffee joint. Um… yeah. I asked if we were going to ALL go, and not getting the hint, he said, “No, just me and Ian.” ACK! Ok, so I napped with the little guy.
Hubby got home two hours later and handed me a bag o’ fresh donuts. He also brought the gallon of milk that I’d requested via text message to his cell phone. I was on the phone at the time he got there with a mutual friend with whom I’d not spoken for some time, so I kissed hubby on the forehead and went to the living room to continue and finish my conversation. When I was finished, I found hubby, asleep in our bed beside the still-snoozing little monkey. I woke the little ‘un as gently as I could, and then nudged him toward the door to his play room, reminding him that his brother was FINALLY home to play with. He wasn’t happy about it. Chapter Two of the Nuclear Freakin’ Meltdown began, far less intense and I suppose really more an aftershock to the Defcon Five Nuclear Meltdown I’d faced alone earlier today, but a force to be reckoned with all the same. Again, I shuttled him out of my room and locked the door, because again he swatted at me.
I then looked expectantly at my darling. When he didn’t open his eyes, even with all the racket my littlest was by that time generating, I nudged him. “Um, honey? A little help? I’ve been at this all day, and I’m wiped. Please?” Nothing. “Um, Shawn? Seriously, I’m not up for more of this right now. You said this afternoon that having him out there like this was ‘not safe,’ but you’re ignoring it. What up?” (I was on the toilet at that point.) He looked at me angrily and said, “I don’t know what to say about it.”
Ok. I love the guy. Last time I checked at least. And he’s a shit sometimes, and so am I. And I know homicide is illegal. “Um, ok. I’m going to go out for a bit.” That’s all I could manage without screaming and mutilating him or me or everyone. I ran a brush through my hair again, brushed my teeth, put on shoes and a pair of non-yoga pants, and informed him that I’d be using his pickup rather than the SUV, so that he would have car seats should he elect to take the boys anywhere while I was gone. I snatched up my laptop from its place beside our bed, stuffed it and the power supply into my satchel, scooped up keys and purse, and left.
Once I got here, “here,” being the local Books By The Billion/Horbuck’s Coffee combo, I sent him a text message telling him where I was and that I’d be awhile. And now I’m listening to my walkman, missing him like mad, mad as hell at him, wishing he’d call and check on me or something, knowing full well that since I’m still this pissed I have no business going home just yet. It’s now 8:51PM, exactly 3 hours and 21 minutes since I left our home. I called him about a half hour after the text message, because he made no reply. He said that he’d indeed received it, but that he didn’t think I needed a reply. GAWD.
Another FYI folks: An angry/hurt/pissy mom/wife ALWAYS needs a reply. A sweet one. An “I love you honey.” An acknowledgement, kind and considerate, even if you don’t feel entirely sincere in those qualities at the moment. We fucking work our asses off, ok? We don’t get a day off. We don’t get a break. The Labor Department would shut the entire lot of us down if ever we fell under their jurisdiction, and I suppose that would lead to some sort of weird Matrix-style kiddie farming or something, because the fact is, parenting is damned near impossibly hard sometimes, and it’s far far more difficult when you’re alone, or even alone a lot. We need vacations. We need breaks. We need to be understood. We need our husbands, the loving, doting, fantastic fathers of our amazing and maddening children, to take the fuck OVER on occasion, to see how things are for us, to recognize that, even if the laundry is piled on the couch and there are cheezey-dos on the bathroom floor, it’s fine because we have STILL put in far more effort, blood, sweat, and tears in a single day than they do, regardless of the difficulty level or suicide rate of their particular vocation. We need to be held, loved, thanked, massaged, coddled. We need to be mothered. We need someone else to come in, take over, and relieve us of our unimaginable burdens, just briefly, just long enough to let us breathe, step back, assess the situation from a different viewpoint, and decide for ourselves, as we will always always always do, that it’s what and where we want to be before we dive headlong right back into the melee that is motherhood.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Grief and Grievance
Happy freakin' new year.
On the twenty-fourth of January, one of my 7-year old son's classmates, a precious, kind, darling little girl we've known for the entire 4 years he's been in school, was killed in a car accident on her ride to school. She had loosened her seatbelt for a moment, in order to retrieve a dropped book for her little sister, when a 21 year old fuckwad with no insurance, no license, no license plate, no registration, and no fucking seatbelt decided that, gnarly rainy weather be damned, no passing zone aside, he was in far too much of a hurry to wait, and so passed four cars before slamming head-on into my friend's van. Mom was severely injured and spent three weeks in trauma ICU. Little sister survived, but sustained a crushed leg, and spent a week in ICU, then another in a regular room before being sent home. Mom is still in the hospital, where she will likely remain for at least another month. My son's friend is dead. The fuckwad is in a coma. If there is justice in the universe, the fuckwad's coma is one that has his conscious mind trapped in some nightmare hell from which he can't escape.
My son has proven yet again how well adjusted and generally sane he is. He conducts periodic "belt checks," every time we ride in the car now, and each of us complies with enthusiasm. Every day, every moment, is precious, and he has learned that at an incredibly tender age. Life goes on anyway, another essential fact of our existence with which he's now intimately acquainted.
Got a call tonight from my sister, with whom I've begun, after thirty years, an entirely new and entirely sisterly relationship. Seems our male half-sibling is in a nasty pinch, and thought I might have some bit of information to help him out of it. I relayed what I have through my sister. For the second time in all my life, I really truly hope I'm wrong about him. But, then, I suppose the fact that I WANT to be wrong is all the evidence I need to know that I'm not. Ugly, that.
Heard also today from an extremely close friend out of state. He's one of my seven. Oh, and I had My Seven waaaaaay before the damned cell phone company ripped off my idea, but who's counting (me). His brother died a few years ago this weekend, and he mourns the loss again. His story is far too personal to get into here, but suffice to say I can only imagine that what he witnessed with his brother's death is far beyond anything I can imagine. Also, I am happy for him, in a sad kind of way. He had a very good brother, with whom he bonded and whom he loved, and who loved him. I envy him the happy memories, and I am consoled by the knowledge that he has them.
I think I've finally reached the acceptance phase of grieving the loss of my own brother. He's not technically dead, but he will be one day, most likely by his own hand. This pains me in ways I don't like to ponder much, but it is something removed from me too. I am not now, nor have I ever been, responsible for his poor choices. I hope for him that he'll manage to change, to metamorpose into some semblance of actual health some day, but I know with stomach-churning certainty that this is nearly impossible. I have managed to let go of the need to ascribe malicious intent to him, even though it's probably unnecessary to do so. Ultimately, whether intentional or not, the damage he has wreaked in my life and the lives of so many of the people who have tried to love him is the same. A stomped toe hurts as much if it's stomped accidentally as if it's stomped intentionally. Simple as that.
Still, I dream from time to time that he's been miraculously transformed, cured of all that ails his body and soul, into a compassionate, kind, human being. That we talk to each other, and actually exchange ideas, rather than engaging in the emotional gangrene that was our only way to relate to each other, back before the day nearly five years ago when all communication between us came to an abrupt halt. I dream that he telephones me, talks to me about regret and remorse, and having finally seen the error of his malignant ways.
He exudes life in those dreams, and health and sanity and happiness, and I am content, just for the brevity of dreamtime, better than not at all, with the knowledge that he might actually have a chance of living. Happily. And then I awake, and no phone calls have been received, and I know they never will be. Or that if they are, they'll be yet another ruse, the next step in the manipulative and self-serving isolation that is, has always been, and will continue to be his existence until the moment he draws his last breath. The moment that, based on his present physical and mental states, is likely just around the corner. And then my question becomes, how in the world can I attend a funeral for my only brother, five-years cold in the mental tomb I excavated for him myself?
On the twenty-fourth of January, one of my 7-year old son's classmates, a precious, kind, darling little girl we've known for the entire 4 years he's been in school, was killed in a car accident on her ride to school. She had loosened her seatbelt for a moment, in order to retrieve a dropped book for her little sister, when a 21 year old fuckwad with no insurance, no license, no license plate, no registration, and no fucking seatbelt decided that, gnarly rainy weather be damned, no passing zone aside, he was in far too much of a hurry to wait, and so passed four cars before slamming head-on into my friend's van. Mom was severely injured and spent three weeks in trauma ICU. Little sister survived, but sustained a crushed leg, and spent a week in ICU, then another in a regular room before being sent home. Mom is still in the hospital, where she will likely remain for at least another month. My son's friend is dead. The fuckwad is in a coma. If there is justice in the universe, the fuckwad's coma is one that has his conscious mind trapped in some nightmare hell from which he can't escape.
My son has proven yet again how well adjusted and generally sane he is. He conducts periodic "belt checks," every time we ride in the car now, and each of us complies with enthusiasm. Every day, every moment, is precious, and he has learned that at an incredibly tender age. Life goes on anyway, another essential fact of our existence with which he's now intimately acquainted.
Got a call tonight from my sister, with whom I've begun, after thirty years, an entirely new and entirely sisterly relationship. Seems our male half-sibling is in a nasty pinch, and thought I might have some bit of information to help him out of it. I relayed what I have through my sister. For the second time in all my life, I really truly hope I'm wrong about him. But, then, I suppose the fact that I WANT to be wrong is all the evidence I need to know that I'm not. Ugly, that.
Heard also today from an extremely close friend out of state. He's one of my seven. Oh, and I had My Seven waaaaaay before the damned cell phone company ripped off my idea, but who's counting (me). His brother died a few years ago this weekend, and he mourns the loss again. His story is far too personal to get into here, but suffice to say I can only imagine that what he witnessed with his brother's death is far beyond anything I can imagine. Also, I am happy for him, in a sad kind of way. He had a very good brother, with whom he bonded and whom he loved, and who loved him. I envy him the happy memories, and I am consoled by the knowledge that he has them.
I think I've finally reached the acceptance phase of grieving the loss of my own brother. He's not technically dead, but he will be one day, most likely by his own hand. This pains me in ways I don't like to ponder much, but it is something removed from me too. I am not now, nor have I ever been, responsible for his poor choices. I hope for him that he'll manage to change, to metamorpose into some semblance of actual health some day, but I know with stomach-churning certainty that this is nearly impossible. I have managed to let go of the need to ascribe malicious intent to him, even though it's probably unnecessary to do so. Ultimately, whether intentional or not, the damage he has wreaked in my life and the lives of so many of the people who have tried to love him is the same. A stomped toe hurts as much if it's stomped accidentally as if it's stomped intentionally. Simple as that.
Still, I dream from time to time that he's been miraculously transformed, cured of all that ails his body and soul, into a compassionate, kind, human being. That we talk to each other, and actually exchange ideas, rather than engaging in the emotional gangrene that was our only way to relate to each other, back before the day nearly five years ago when all communication between us came to an abrupt halt. I dream that he telephones me, talks to me about regret and remorse, and having finally seen the error of his malignant ways.
He exudes life in those dreams, and health and sanity and happiness, and I am content, just for the brevity of dreamtime, better than not at all, with the knowledge that he might actually have a chance of living. Happily. And then I awake, and no phone calls have been received, and I know they never will be. Or that if they are, they'll be yet another ruse, the next step in the manipulative and self-serving isolation that is, has always been, and will continue to be his existence until the moment he draws his last breath. The moment that, based on his present physical and mental states, is likely just around the corner. And then my question becomes, how in the world can I attend a funeral for my only brother, five-years cold in the mental tomb I excavated for him myself?
Sunday, December 30, 2007
For its own sake...
I've been kicking myself for a week or so, knowing that I've not written ANYTHING for what I thought was about a month, but turns out to be a full six weeks. I thought and thought, trying to figure out why it was that I'd not come back here, what the precipitating event could have been. I did NOT realize, until I finally logged in a few minutes ago that the last entry I made was on the day I received the chromosome results. So, I guess I know why now. It's pretty obvious why my head imposed a gag-order on itself, eh? Duh.
Anyway, so I've amassed tons of moments, good, bad, and other, in that six weeks. I have a new niece, prettier than any daydream ever dreamt, and I'm dying to hold her tiny body in my arms and hug my little sister so tight she has to struggle for a little bit just to breathe. I suppose that will wait until MLK day, or whenever I can get the time and funds and arrangements together for a plane ticket.
I've also done something I swore I wouldn't, or at least I fear I have: grown rusty, out of practice, worse off in the fashioning of my "craft," than I was even under the stress of an undue miscarriage-- all for simple lack of practice. Duh again.
So, here I am, officially making an entry, no matter how pointless and devoid of substance. Exercising the non-muscle that resides inside my skull. Because that's the only way to keep the creative blood pumping, with the action of writing. Even if the only reason for doing it is so I can do it more.
Good night.
Anyway, so I've amassed tons of moments, good, bad, and other, in that six weeks. I have a new niece, prettier than any daydream ever dreamt, and I'm dying to hold her tiny body in my arms and hug my little sister so tight she has to struggle for a little bit just to breathe. I suppose that will wait until MLK day, or whenever I can get the time and funds and arrangements together for a plane ticket.
I've also done something I swore I wouldn't, or at least I fear I have: grown rusty, out of practice, worse off in the fashioning of my "craft," than I was even under the stress of an undue miscarriage-- all for simple lack of practice. Duh again.
So, here I am, officially making an entry, no matter how pointless and devoid of substance. Exercising the non-muscle that resides inside my skull. Because that's the only way to keep the creative blood pumping, with the action of writing. Even if the only reason for doing it is so I can do it more.
Good night.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Last Night I Dreamt in Pink
Yesterday afternoon, following THREE DAYS of being told that my results from the chromosome analysis had arrived but couldn't be given to me until the doctor(who was "busy delivering babies," I swear that's what the nurse told me, as she tried to explain why it was taking so long for him to look at the damned file!) reviewed them, I FINALLY got a call from the office. Since I learned the additional information about LPD and the consequences of not treating it in a pregnant woman, after all the damage had been done of course, and during the post-D&C fog that envoloped me while I tried to grieve, I have felt a certainty that the results would be: 46 normal chromosomes, with the XX pair defining our embryo's gender.
Odd as it may seem, I knew this, knew it in a way I sometimes do, knew it in that part of me that is never wrong, even though there's no explanation that defines how I know. Carl Jung would understand, and I'm sure mystics and voodoo priestesses and the like the world over would think they understand, but really only Dr. Jung's understanding would be accurate and true. As much as I like being right, as much as it serves as fuel to the constant flames of advocacy and justice that burn inside me, this is one of a few times when I seriously, absolutely, positively wanted to be wrong. Crazy even, overly imaginative, paranoid, maybe on account of the hormone storms that accompany pregnancy and its subsequent loss.
See, if there had been a defect of any sort, then I think I could have let the whole thing go. Sure, I'd have composed one of my trademark tersely-worded letters to the doctor, explaining precisely why, even though my embryo couldn't have survived, he STILL should have listened to my history and made notes about it in my chart (which he didn't, as evidenced by the total lack of the letters LPD anywhere in the entire copy of the file I have in my possession). I'd have waged verbal war in that letter, pounding into his thick skull that, despite what has worked for him for the 30+ years he's practiced obstetrics, many women do NOT, in fact, like to be poo-pooed and patted on the head and told to just go home, relax, eat a few bon-bons, and not worry about their pregnancies. Some women want, no need to play an active part in their care, are equipped to do so, and are therefore highly insulted when they are summarily dismissed.
Unfortunately, I wasn't wrong. Our embryo. That's how I've made myself think of her until now. The idea of assigning personhood to her, much less a gender-specific pronoun, was too painful, and made the loss seem so very much greater a thing. She wasn't quite big enough yet to be called a fetus, when the endometrium that should have sustained her but couldn't because the doctor was too self-important to listen and check my progesterone levels and then TREAT them so that My Daughter might have a fighting chance at life finally failed.
Her heartbeat had been strong and clear before that, twice, and we saw on the screen the miraculous growth she had achieved in just the few short days between one episode of bleeding and the next. She went from a tiny, blurry blob on that screen, a seemingly empty gestational sac, to a living being, still totally dependent on my body to sustain her, but nevertheless a new and unique creature, a miraculous result of the combining of strands of DNA from mother and father, a divine innovation that had never before existed. And never will again.
"HELLO!" that heartbeat said, "I'm here! Don't be afraid, I'm healthy and well, and I'll grow and thrive and them come out and greet you soon." Our daughter. Our girl. Our baby, had she been born, would have finally been able to wear the cutesy little girl clothes that her maternal grandmother handmade for our daughter's cousin Erin, the first of the girl grandchildren, the clothes I've been saving for her, knowing in my heart she'd one day arrive, and knowing how perfect they would be on her. She'd have had this honor after her other cousin, Sicily, not yet born, but kicking away and on her way to meet the world any day now, outgrew them, right about the time Our Girl made her own appearance in the world. But then, after more blood, so much that there simply wasn't an adequate source of life giving nutrients left for her to hold onto, that heartbeat ceased. Our girl died.
My husband, our children's father (all three of our children), is in California, so I had to give him the news over the phone. I had been out on the road when the call came, and pulled over the moment I saw the number. The nurse, Tracy, only this Tracy maybe not so wonderful as I once thought OB nurses with that name must all be, called, irritation in her voice at having had to correspond with me SO frequently over the past few weeks, and said this:
"Hi Ms. Cakes, it's Tracy at Dr. Breakyourheart's office. He looked over the results, and said they don't show any chromosomal abnormalities or anything, so you don't need to keep worrying about any kind of genetic problem. He said that means there must have been some kind of problem with an organ or something, like probably the heart didn't develop properly. So, you can stop worrying."
"So chromosomally, everything was normal then?" I said.
"Yes." She replied.
"And what about the gender? Is it indicated on the report?" My heart pounding in my ears, stomach lurching, and me trying to calm things just long enough to keep from vomiting until I could complete the call and throw open my car door.
"It was a girl."
I drew on my last little bit of strength then, from way down deep in a place I know exists, but can't figure out exactly where, and said to her, "Ok. Can you please mail me a copy of that report? I signed off on that already when I signed the release to get the rest of my chart at my follow-up visit. It specifically states that copies of the chromosomal testing should be mailed to me."
"Yeah, sure, I can do that for you."
The conclusion of our call and my being hurled back into full-force grief happened simultaneously. I sat in my car, engine running, only partially blocking the driveway, and wept, screamed really, until I felt like I might pass out. Safety-minded as always, I forced myself to stop, to just breathe, long, slow, deep breaths, until the bruise-colored sparkles in front of my eyes disappeared and I could see clearly again. ("Sparkles," by the way, is a monkeyism. The elder monkey described that blacking-out that happens after great spins and quick changes of position from sitting to standing, that diversion of blood to the brain, as "seeing sparkles.") And eventually I could, so I moved my car out of the busy parking lot and next door to the weedy driveway of an abandoned business. There, I shifted it into PARK, and wept some more. It came out of me in choking, coughing, bursts, that sadness, little explosions from whatever parts of me had been holding it at bay but could no longer shield me from my own ugly pain.
After a minute or two, I phoned Mr. Cakes, who is presently in CA. He was angry, but not surprised, since he apparently puts much stock in the things I insist I "know," when really I can't. He commented then that even though he doesn't agree with the people in front of abortion clinics, he does understand how they can be so nutty. For them, it's like it was for us yesterday. That tiny cluster of cells, that girl, SHOULD have been born to us!
I should still be pregnant with My Daughter!
She should have grown up, worn pigtails, skipped to the bus stop, fairy princess lunch box in hand, jumped rope, played with dollies, and written her name in glittery ink all over every notebook she ever owned.
She should have climbed trees, wrestled with her older brothers, and devised clever and sneaky ways oto get back at them for chasing her through the house with frogs and bugs.
She should have put lipstick on them in their sleep, or tied pink ribbons onto their backpacks, or any number of other girl-boy sibling shenanigans.
She should have sung songs, danced, made jokes, written poetry, been a math whiz, a writer, a politician, a doctor, a mother, a grandmother, our daughter.
She should have, but she won't.
She won't because her doctor didn't believe that a woman, not just any woman, but that little girl's mother, might possibly know a thing or two about her own body, and therefore might be able to help him keep it a healthy and hospitable place for that little girl to grow from embryo to fetus to living, breathing, person.
She should, but she can't, because now she's dead, and no one can bring her back.
I can't bring her back, but if I do nothing, there will likely be more just like her, and I can't live with that. So, I'll meet with an attorney, and I'll see what measures can be taken, and maybe, just maybe, I'll be fortunate enough to affect change. I won't hold my breath, but it could happen.
Odd as it may seem, I knew this, knew it in a way I sometimes do, knew it in that part of me that is never wrong, even though there's no explanation that defines how I know. Carl Jung would understand, and I'm sure mystics and voodoo priestesses and the like the world over would think they understand, but really only Dr. Jung's understanding would be accurate and true. As much as I like being right, as much as it serves as fuel to the constant flames of advocacy and justice that burn inside me, this is one of a few times when I seriously, absolutely, positively wanted to be wrong. Crazy even, overly imaginative, paranoid, maybe on account of the hormone storms that accompany pregnancy and its subsequent loss.
See, if there had been a defect of any sort, then I think I could have let the whole thing go. Sure, I'd have composed one of my trademark tersely-worded letters to the doctor, explaining precisely why, even though my embryo couldn't have survived, he STILL should have listened to my history and made notes about it in my chart (which he didn't, as evidenced by the total lack of the letters LPD anywhere in the entire copy of the file I have in my possession). I'd have waged verbal war in that letter, pounding into his thick skull that, despite what has worked for him for the 30+ years he's practiced obstetrics, many women do NOT, in fact, like to be poo-pooed and patted on the head and told to just go home, relax, eat a few bon-bons, and not worry about their pregnancies. Some women want, no need to play an active part in their care, are equipped to do so, and are therefore highly insulted when they are summarily dismissed.
Unfortunately, I wasn't wrong. Our embryo. That's how I've made myself think of her until now. The idea of assigning personhood to her, much less a gender-specific pronoun, was too painful, and made the loss seem so very much greater a thing. She wasn't quite big enough yet to be called a fetus, when the endometrium that should have sustained her but couldn't because the doctor was too self-important to listen and check my progesterone levels and then TREAT them so that My Daughter might have a fighting chance at life finally failed.
Her heartbeat had been strong and clear before that, twice, and we saw on the screen the miraculous growth she had achieved in just the few short days between one episode of bleeding and the next. She went from a tiny, blurry blob on that screen, a seemingly empty gestational sac, to a living being, still totally dependent on my body to sustain her, but nevertheless a new and unique creature, a miraculous result of the combining of strands of DNA from mother and father, a divine innovation that had never before existed. And never will again.
"HELLO!" that heartbeat said, "I'm here! Don't be afraid, I'm healthy and well, and I'll grow and thrive and them come out and greet you soon." Our daughter. Our girl. Our baby, had she been born, would have finally been able to wear the cutesy little girl clothes that her maternal grandmother handmade for our daughter's cousin Erin, the first of the girl grandchildren, the clothes I've been saving for her, knowing in my heart she'd one day arrive, and knowing how perfect they would be on her. She'd have had this honor after her other cousin, Sicily, not yet born, but kicking away and on her way to meet the world any day now, outgrew them, right about the time Our Girl made her own appearance in the world. But then, after more blood, so much that there simply wasn't an adequate source of life giving nutrients left for her to hold onto, that heartbeat ceased. Our girl died.
My husband, our children's father (all three of our children), is in California, so I had to give him the news over the phone. I had been out on the road when the call came, and pulled over the moment I saw the number. The nurse, Tracy, only this Tracy maybe not so wonderful as I once thought OB nurses with that name must all be, called, irritation in her voice at having had to correspond with me SO frequently over the past few weeks, and said this:
"Hi Ms. Cakes, it's Tracy at Dr. Breakyourheart's office. He looked over the results, and said they don't show any chromosomal abnormalities or anything, so you don't need to keep worrying about any kind of genetic problem. He said that means there must have been some kind of problem with an organ or something, like probably the heart didn't develop properly. So, you can stop worrying."
"So chromosomally, everything was normal then?" I said.
"Yes." She replied.
"And what about the gender? Is it indicated on the report?" My heart pounding in my ears, stomach lurching, and me trying to calm things just long enough to keep from vomiting until I could complete the call and throw open my car door.
"It was a girl."
I drew on my last little bit of strength then, from way down deep in a place I know exists, but can't figure out exactly where, and said to her, "Ok. Can you please mail me a copy of that report? I signed off on that already when I signed the release to get the rest of my chart at my follow-up visit. It specifically states that copies of the chromosomal testing should be mailed to me."
"Yeah, sure, I can do that for you."
The conclusion of our call and my being hurled back into full-force grief happened simultaneously. I sat in my car, engine running, only partially blocking the driveway, and wept, screamed really, until I felt like I might pass out. Safety-minded as always, I forced myself to stop, to just breathe, long, slow, deep breaths, until the bruise-colored sparkles in front of my eyes disappeared and I could see clearly again. ("Sparkles," by the way, is a monkeyism. The elder monkey described that blacking-out that happens after great spins and quick changes of position from sitting to standing, that diversion of blood to the brain, as "seeing sparkles.") And eventually I could, so I moved my car out of the busy parking lot and next door to the weedy driveway of an abandoned business. There, I shifted it into PARK, and wept some more. It came out of me in choking, coughing, bursts, that sadness, little explosions from whatever parts of me had been holding it at bay but could no longer shield me from my own ugly pain.
After a minute or two, I phoned Mr. Cakes, who is presently in CA. He was angry, but not surprised, since he apparently puts much stock in the things I insist I "know," when really I can't. He commented then that even though he doesn't agree with the people in front of abortion clinics, he does understand how they can be so nutty. For them, it's like it was for us yesterday. That tiny cluster of cells, that girl, SHOULD have been born to us!
I should still be pregnant with My Daughter!
She should have grown up, worn pigtails, skipped to the bus stop, fairy princess lunch box in hand, jumped rope, played with dollies, and written her name in glittery ink all over every notebook she ever owned.
She should have climbed trees, wrestled with her older brothers, and devised clever and sneaky ways oto get back at them for chasing her through the house with frogs and bugs.
She should have put lipstick on them in their sleep, or tied pink ribbons onto their backpacks, or any number of other girl-boy sibling shenanigans.
She should have sung songs, danced, made jokes, written poetry, been a math whiz, a writer, a politician, a doctor, a mother, a grandmother, our daughter.
She should have, but she won't.
She won't because her doctor didn't believe that a woman, not just any woman, but that little girl's mother, might possibly know a thing or two about her own body, and therefore might be able to help him keep it a healthy and hospitable place for that little girl to grow from embryo to fetus to living, breathing, person.
She should, but she can't, because now she's dead, and no one can bring her back.
I can't bring her back, but if I do nothing, there will likely be more just like her, and I can't live with that. So, I'll meet with an attorney, and I'll see what measures can be taken, and maybe, just maybe, I'll be fortunate enough to affect change. I won't hold my breath, but it could happen.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
I Am a Counter-Terrorist!
Someone close to me, a woman whom I love dearly, has a lifelong ilness. It could kill her if it is not properly managed, and in fact, she nearly died from it just four years ago. As you might imagine, maintaining her health is her primary concern, since nothing else matters if she's dead. Although numerous medications are available for this illness, not everything works for everyone. It took half her life, but she and her doctors finally found the right combination, actually the ONLY combination, that is effective for her. These meds keep her healthy, but they also require that she be monitored constantly, because of the potential for damage to her major organ systems.
Recently, this woman discovered that despite her consistent use of TWO birth control methods, AND follow-up with "Plan B" after the failure of one of those two, she had conceived. At nearly 40, this may well be her last opportunity to have a biological child (she has none yet), and she very seriously considered going forward with the pregnancy, despite the potential for fetal harm (about a 5% chance of defects) posed by her medications. That's still a 95% chance that everything will be normal, right? Fate, it seems, had other plans. After less than six weeks of pregnancy, she started having severe liver and kidney complications, which happens in a very low number of women with this condition during pregnancy. Her best chance at surviving was to abort. Her next best chance was to be hospitalized, indefinitely, and hope that the medical professionals might be able to keep her stable enough to prevent permanent damage; the chances of that were VERY bad.
So, she chose life. Hers. It sucks beyond description that this beautiful, strong, intelligent, compassionate, kind woman, this woman who has already faced so very much hardship and difficulty in her life, arrived in that bitter set of circumstances in the first place. I hate that anyone should ever be in a situation that forces her to have to weigh her own life, or even the quality of her own life, against that of the potential life inside her. But it happens, and I am grateful to the Creator of the Universe that my friend chose to live. See, regardless of which option she chose, her pregnancy wouldn't have. I'd have either lost a friend AND her potential child, or just the potential child. I'm so thankful I've not lost my friend.
I went with my friend to the abortion clinic. She had orignially planned to go alone that first day, as she was only getting lab work and state-mandated counselling, but I begged her to let me drive her there. I'm again incredibly thankful that she capitulated, because the protestors were standing at the driveway to the place on the Driver's Side of the entering vehicles.
The exchanges I had with these ignorant, hateful, judgemental people who beat their drums and scream through their bullhorns and proclaim their own Christianity to everyone in the vicinity were interesting. I'll outline them soon, but not in this entry, as time is an issue. I will say though, that my friend got into and out of the clinic that day, and two days later for the actual procedure, without being accosted. Also, I managed to distract and occupy the protestors, not the entire time we were there, but long enough to keep maybe a few women from being screamed at, and that doing so made me feel like I'd made a difference. A small difference, yes, but one that mattered. I'm happy with that.
More soon.
Recently, this woman discovered that despite her consistent use of TWO birth control methods, AND follow-up with "Plan B" after the failure of one of those two, she had conceived. At nearly 40, this may well be her last opportunity to have a biological child (she has none yet), and she very seriously considered going forward with the pregnancy, despite the potential for fetal harm (about a 5% chance of defects) posed by her medications. That's still a 95% chance that everything will be normal, right? Fate, it seems, had other plans. After less than six weeks of pregnancy, she started having severe liver and kidney complications, which happens in a very low number of women with this condition during pregnancy. Her best chance at surviving was to abort. Her next best chance was to be hospitalized, indefinitely, and hope that the medical professionals might be able to keep her stable enough to prevent permanent damage; the chances of that were VERY bad.
So, she chose life. Hers. It sucks beyond description that this beautiful, strong, intelligent, compassionate, kind woman, this woman who has already faced so very much hardship and difficulty in her life, arrived in that bitter set of circumstances in the first place. I hate that anyone should ever be in a situation that forces her to have to weigh her own life, or even the quality of her own life, against that of the potential life inside her. But it happens, and I am grateful to the Creator of the Universe that my friend chose to live. See, regardless of which option she chose, her pregnancy wouldn't have. I'd have either lost a friend AND her potential child, or just the potential child. I'm so thankful I've not lost my friend.
I went with my friend to the abortion clinic. She had orignially planned to go alone that first day, as she was only getting lab work and state-mandated counselling, but I begged her to let me drive her there. I'm again incredibly thankful that she capitulated, because the protestors were standing at the driveway to the place on the Driver's Side of the entering vehicles.
The exchanges I had with these ignorant, hateful, judgemental people who beat their drums and scream through their bullhorns and proclaim their own Christianity to everyone in the vicinity were interesting. I'll outline them soon, but not in this entry, as time is an issue. I will say though, that my friend got into and out of the clinic that day, and two days later for the actual procedure, without being accosted. Also, I managed to distract and occupy the protestors, not the entire time we were there, but long enough to keep maybe a few women from being screamed at, and that doing so made me feel like I'd made a difference. A small difference, yes, but one that mattered. I'm happy with that.
More soon.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
The Language of Y--- Monkey Wrangling pt. 2
I'm down with a gnarly cold, so I spent almost the entire day on my couch yesterday, jacked up on cold medicine, shivering under a blanket, and begging my boys to just PLEASE not hurt each other or the house. Yeah, Mother of the Year Award, I know. Well, I stayed conscious, they were fed adequately, supervised (ok, that part only minimally), and no one was hurt or maimed. I suppose that's something.
Oh, and of course, Mr. Cakes was out of town for work yesterday. Save for the extremely important exception of our recent miscarriage, he generally is out of town when anyone's sick. Including himself, which bites, because then I can't even take care of him! It's totally out of his control, so don't think for a moment I'm kvetching about him. Honestly, I think he has a harder time of being away and alone than we do missing him... at least the three of us keep each other occuppied. If I didn't know better, I'd think there was some Cosmic Conspiracy to keep me from having help with the "hard stuff" of raising our boys. Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch!!!
So, round about bedtime, Cakes the Younger shows up in front of me, a cup of water in hand and an impish grin on his face. "Hey Mommy! Guess WHAT!?!?!" says he, "I can blow water out of my NOSE!" Semi-coherent and feeling rotten, I guess I didn't actually comprehend what he'd said, although I was aware that he'd spoken to me. "Oh, ok," said I, "That's nice sweetie." And off he went.
A few minutes later, he's back in front of me, grin and water cup apparently unchanged. This time however, he demonstrated his new-found "talent," jettisoning a fine, but still rather profuse, mist of combined water and nasal secretions into my face and all over my blanket. Ok, that got my attention.
"EEEEEWWWWW!!!!" I shrieked, "Oh GOD, that's GROSS!!! Get... YUCK... go empty your cup into the sink NOW, and please PLEASE don't EVER DO THAT AGAIN!!!" Of course, I snatched up a towel and proceeded to de-slime myself and my surroundings, all the while muttering and grumbling my disgust. I suppose being zonked on Benadryl may have been a good thing in a way, because I wasn't quite as sharp, and therefore as pissy, as I'd maybe have been on a good day.
Obedient (mostly) little monkey(always) that he is, my little one walked quickly in the direction of the kitchen, and I didn't hear from him for about five minutes. When I did, it wasn't pretty.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Little Cakes came and stood at the threshhold between our kitchen and living room. He then shouted, "I don't WANT THIS CUP any MORE!!!" as he hurled the (thankfully now empty) vessel into the living room, behind the couch I'd occuppied most of the day. Alarmed, I turned to him and asked, "Honey, what happened?" His response? Both hands flew up and covered his face, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor, sobbing.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, DAMNIT, it was suddenly all clear to me. "Come here, Babylove," said I, in my most soothing tone, "Tell me what's wrong."
After a little more failed coaxing, I went over and scooped him up and brought him to the couch with me. He was crying so hard that I couldn't make out precisely what he was trying to say, except, "dump it in the SINK, and I did NOT LIKE THAT!"
My poor, poor, baby boy, reduced to this sobbing, hiccuppy emotional wreck, and it was every single bit MY FAULT! Gross? Um, yeah! Weird? Absolutely! But it was his NEW TRICK, and he came to me brimming over with pride at his accomplishment, and what did I give him? Certainly not the pat on his back and congratulatory attaboy he'd anticipated.
I scrambled to think of what to do and say... and here's what I came up with, once I'd calmed him a bit:
"Little Cakes, I am so very very proud of you for using your words to tell me how you were feeling just now. I hurt your feelings pretty bad, huh?"
Oh, and of course, Mr. Cakes was out of town for work yesterday. Save for the extremely important exception of our recent miscarriage, he generally is out of town when anyone's sick. Including himself, which bites, because then I can't even take care of him! It's totally out of his control, so don't think for a moment I'm kvetching about him. Honestly, I think he has a harder time of being away and alone than we do missing him... at least the three of us keep each other occuppied. If I didn't know better, I'd think there was some Cosmic Conspiracy to keep me from having help with the "hard stuff" of raising our boys. Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch!!!
So, round about bedtime, Cakes the Younger shows up in front of me, a cup of water in hand and an impish grin on his face. "Hey Mommy! Guess WHAT!?!?!" says he, "I can blow water out of my NOSE!" Semi-coherent and feeling rotten, I guess I didn't actually comprehend what he'd said, although I was aware that he'd spoken to me. "Oh, ok," said I, "That's nice sweetie." And off he went.
A few minutes later, he's back in front of me, grin and water cup apparently unchanged. This time however, he demonstrated his new-found "talent," jettisoning a fine, but still rather profuse, mist of combined water and nasal secretions into my face and all over my blanket. Ok, that got my attention.
"EEEEEWWWWW!!!!" I shrieked, "Oh GOD, that's GROSS!!! Get... YUCK... go empty your cup into the sink NOW, and please PLEASE don't EVER DO THAT AGAIN!!!" Of course, I snatched up a towel and proceeded to de-slime myself and my surroundings, all the while muttering and grumbling my disgust. I suppose being zonked on Benadryl may have been a good thing in a way, because I wasn't quite as sharp, and therefore as pissy, as I'd maybe have been on a good day.
Obedient (mostly) little monkey(always) that he is, my little one walked quickly in the direction of the kitchen, and I didn't hear from him for about five minutes. When I did, it wasn't pretty.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Little Cakes came and stood at the threshhold between our kitchen and living room. He then shouted, "I don't WANT THIS CUP any MORE!!!" as he hurled the (thankfully now empty) vessel into the living room, behind the couch I'd occuppied most of the day. Alarmed, I turned to him and asked, "Honey, what happened?" His response? Both hands flew up and covered his face, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor, sobbing.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, DAMNIT, it was suddenly all clear to me. "Come here, Babylove," said I, in my most soothing tone, "Tell me what's wrong."
After a little more failed coaxing, I went over and scooped him up and brought him to the couch with me. He was crying so hard that I couldn't make out precisely what he was trying to say, except, "
My poor, poor, baby boy, reduced to this sobbing, hiccuppy emotional wreck, and it was every single bit MY FAULT! Gross? Um, yeah! Weird? Absolutely! But it was his NEW TRICK, and he came to me brimming over with pride at his accomplishment, and what did I give him? Certainly not the pat on his back and congratulatory attaboy he'd anticipated.
I scrambled to think of what to do and say... and here's what I came up with, once I'd calmed him a bit:
"Little Cakes, I am so very very proud of you for using your words to tell me how you were feeling just now. I hurt your feelings pretty bad, huh?"
He nodded emphatically at this, looking at me with impossibly wide and teary eyes, his bottom lip still aquiver.
"I am VERY sorry for that! It makes me very sad to know that I hurt you."
At that, he reached around my neck with both arms and squeezed tightly, stifling a sob.
"Were you trying to show me the new thing you can do?"
Another nod.
"I'm really glad you learned something new today, and I understand you're probably proud, since you learned it all by yourself! It's just that I don't like water and snot on my face, ya know?"
That got him going again, and I had to rub his back and SSSHHHHHHH in his ear to settle him again.
"If you and Brother and Daddy do gross stuff like that together, hey, have fun! But it's really kind of a guy thing, huh?"
A dawning look of understanding shone on his face then, and just like that, the world felt like it had returned to normal.
When I uttered Mr. Cakes' name, I remembered that he was actually on the ground, and might possibly be reachable by phone, so I called him for back-up. Upon hearing about his littlest child's latest, um, milestone, he responded much the same way as he had the first time the boy dropped trou' and urinated, unassisted on our front lawn, in full view of the neighbors, "YYYYYESSSSS!!!!!"
Uhhh... yikes. After hearing a quick synopsis of my reaction, he said in a rather urgent tone, "Wow. Put him on the phone, quick, so I can do damage control!" As if I didn't feel awful enough, thinking about the thousands I'd already cost us in psychotherapy, thanks to my lame handling of things.
Well, Little Cakes did not want to talk on the phone right then, and so instead ran off to his bedroom, where Elder Cakes was busy playing cars. LC crawled into his bed, hid under the cover, and insisted he didn't want to talk to Mr. Cakes. I tried my best to convince him to at least listen, but he was having none of it. So back and forth I went for a few minutes, talking to both LC and the Mister, assuring them both that I'm really not evil, and was simply unaware that such feats are praiseworthy. All this time, I was sure that Elder Cakes was so engrossed in his game of cars that he hadn't heard a word of any of it. WRONG!
Elder Brother looked up at me, completely serious, and in a tone that all but screamed his pity for me declared, "Aw, Mom, it's ok, don't worry so much! You just don't speak Boy."
How and when did my six-year-old become so astute in his observations? I checked with Mr. Cakes, and neither of us has ever used that expression, the thing about "speaking Boy." So, it was a fully independent, totally innocent, and completely accurate an assessment of the situation. I like to believe that mostly, I do speak Boy. I'm just not particularly fluent in some of the finer nuances of that tongue. I guess it doesn't matter so much. What does is that neither of my sons decided overnight that I'm so ignorant that I should be shunned. Thank God!
Friday, October 26, 2007
Disappearing Friend, v.2
Ok, this one's just sad, whereas the previous one was nothing short of excruciating. No book, just a vent.
So I met a chick through one of my husband's friends. She was crazy-introverted, never smiled, and so forth, but for some flippin' reason, I befriended her. Mostly, I suppose it was pity, because she seemed so incredibly sad and lonely and unloved, like a dog that has just been kicked its whole life... once in a (GREAT) while, those kinds of dogs will blossom when they're put into even a mostly sane home. I guess the old Flo Nightengale in me just couldn't resist. Ah well.
So, chick has a kid, whom she says (and I have no reason at that point to doubt her) is the product of a bad marriage to a crack-addicted wife-beater. EGADS! Chick's kid is a mushmouth, rather lacking in the brains department, only so very very much that I actually find myself thinking of Einstein, and how it's said he didn't speak a word until after his fourth birthday. Somehow, I suppose largely in part due to her insistence that her poor anemic progeny was actually just brilliant, I got it in my head that the kid just really needed adequate stimulation, and his problem wasn't actual retardation, but rather the deplorable conditions at the welfare-mother-daycare he had to attend because it was all she could afford and then just barely. In a frenzy to get everything fixed (that's what I do, after all, fix things), I get all the arrangements made so the local jackwads at the Exceptional Students Office will screen the pitiful little waif for giftedness. Um, it didn't go well. They didn't actually say the words, "Uh, I'm not sure you understand, ma'am, the screening for the DISABLED CHILDREN is at the other end of the hall," but it was pretty loud and clear even so. Wow, nice fix, eh?
Anyway, we stay friends, have coffee at my place every morning, our kids play together with relatively few altercations, and it seems ok. My little Pet Project. I'm such an ASS! Of course, there's the day hers and mine play in my back yard, hers inadvertenly scoops up a handful of dog poo (it should be noted here that he was trying to pick up a rock to throw AT my son's head. It's kind of a good thing he's in like the 20th percentile for brains AND brawn, because being so small, mine pitied him during those strange outbursts, where he might well have knocked the shucks out of a child of normal stature) and then carries it into my house, gagging and heaving all the way. Sad, sad, sad, the boy couldn't figure out the part where you drop the retch-inducing mess in your hand! A fair amount of clothing bypassed the washer altogether in favor of the trash that day, and I decided that my two had suffered enough of being essentially forced to try to get along with the neglected misanthrope. My two, even the one that is three years hers' junior, were utterly dumbfounded by the whole afternoon, and much very NOT Politically-Correct language was heard that evening from their mouths. Not a pretty scene, but at least they waited until their, um, target, had left.
Gently as I could, I informed her of our decision to keep the boys, read hers and ours, APART for an undetermined amount of time. I was as kind as I could be, and basically blamed it all on my own children, saying that I didn't like the way they behaved around hers, and that I didn't think it was right to subject ANY of us to all of that, when it was fairly clear the whole thing was just a bad mix. I insisted that she and I could remain friends... but she didn't buy it. I was SOOOOOO relieved! Except that by the end of the week, she was calling me again, begging to please PLEASE not lose the chance to be my friend. Aggggg. Fine, whatever, as long as the kids don't have to play together. Preferably EVER.
But then, like two months later, I swear she developed a case of MPD or something. Called me on my birthday, after no contact for WEEKS and my having figured she'd bailed altogether, and said some kind of cryptic b.s. that I couldn't make sense of no matter how hard I tried. I emailed her a few times after that, eventually actually spelling out to her that I was taking her lack of response/reply as an indirect but very clear desire to not be friends, and that I was in total acceptance, if somewhat puzzled as to what had gone awry. I got back some STRANGE messages, and then received a handwritten letter in the mail a month or so later. She freakin' stalked me... but in a fairly benign way... showing up behind me in line at the drugstore drivethrough, driving by my house ten times a week, and my receiving a sudden rash of hang-up calls from a person named "UNKNOWN." Eventually, it died down, and finally stopped altogether.
I don't miss the drama. I don't miss the weirdness of it. I don't actually miss her, because she is an incredibly difficult person to be around, and adding her very challenged child to the mix makes it unbearable. Still, that rational part of my brain, the part that has been mostly on hiatus for the last three weeks, sometimes turns it all over in my head again, like a sore on the inside of your cheek that you just can't quite leave alone and so it never heals, wondering what the hell happened. It doesn't matter, and it is a tremendous lightening of my daily toils to not have that to deal with anymore. It doesn't matter, but it's like a jigsaw with ONE missing piece, and it bugs the crap out of me. I hope she's well, I suppose, but no more so than I hope any stranger I see in the grocery store is well. I just wish I could complete the damned puzzle.
Hell, maybe she found the right, mostly sane surroundings, and is existing peacefully these days, rather than attacking and ripping to shreds anyone who tries to show her kindness. Stranger things have been known to happen.
So I met a chick through one of my husband's friends. She was crazy-introverted, never smiled, and so forth, but for some flippin' reason, I befriended her. Mostly, I suppose it was pity, because she seemed so incredibly sad and lonely and unloved, like a dog that has just been kicked its whole life... once in a (GREAT) while, those kinds of dogs will blossom when they're put into even a mostly sane home. I guess the old Flo Nightengale in me just couldn't resist. Ah well.
So, chick has a kid, whom she says (and I have no reason at that point to doubt her) is the product of a bad marriage to a crack-addicted wife-beater. EGADS! Chick's kid is a mushmouth, rather lacking in the brains department, only so very very much that I actually find myself thinking of Einstein, and how it's said he didn't speak a word until after his fourth birthday. Somehow, I suppose largely in part due to her insistence that her poor anemic progeny was actually just brilliant, I got it in my head that the kid just really needed adequate stimulation, and his problem wasn't actual retardation, but rather the deplorable conditions at the welfare-mother-daycare he had to attend because it was all she could afford and then just barely. In a frenzy to get everything fixed (that's what I do, after all, fix things), I get all the arrangements made so the local jackwads at the Exceptional Students Office will screen the pitiful little waif for giftedness. Um, it didn't go well. They didn't actually say the words, "Uh, I'm not sure you understand, ma'am, the screening for the DISABLED CHILDREN is at the other end of the hall," but it was pretty loud and clear even so. Wow, nice fix, eh?
Anyway, we stay friends, have coffee at my place every morning, our kids play together with relatively few altercations, and it seems ok. My little Pet Project. I'm such an ASS! Of course, there's the day hers and mine play in my back yard, hers inadvertenly scoops up a handful of dog poo (it should be noted here that he was trying to pick up a rock to throw AT my son's head. It's kind of a good thing he's in like the 20th percentile for brains AND brawn, because being so small, mine pitied him during those strange outbursts, where he might well have knocked the shucks out of a child of normal stature) and then carries it into my house, gagging and heaving all the way. Sad, sad, sad, the boy couldn't figure out the part where you drop the retch-inducing mess in your hand! A fair amount of clothing bypassed the washer altogether in favor of the trash that day, and I decided that my two had suffered enough of being essentially forced to try to get along with the neglected misanthrope. My two, even the one that is three years hers' junior, were utterly dumbfounded by the whole afternoon, and much very NOT Politically-Correct language was heard that evening from their mouths. Not a pretty scene, but at least they waited until their, um, target, had left.
Gently as I could, I informed her of our decision to keep the boys, read hers and ours, APART for an undetermined amount of time. I was as kind as I could be, and basically blamed it all on my own children, saying that I didn't like the way they behaved around hers, and that I didn't think it was right to subject ANY of us to all of that, when it was fairly clear the whole thing was just a bad mix. I insisted that she and I could remain friends... but she didn't buy it. I was SOOOOOO relieved! Except that by the end of the week, she was calling me again, begging to please PLEASE not lose the chance to be my friend. Aggggg. Fine, whatever, as long as the kids don't have to play together. Preferably EVER.
But then, like two months later, I swear she developed a case of MPD or something. Called me on my birthday, after no contact for WEEKS and my having figured she'd bailed altogether, and said some kind of cryptic b.s. that I couldn't make sense of no matter how hard I tried. I emailed her a few times after that, eventually actually spelling out to her that I was taking her lack of response/reply as an indirect but very clear desire to not be friends, and that I was in total acceptance, if somewhat puzzled as to what had gone awry. I got back some STRANGE messages, and then received a handwritten letter in the mail a month or so later. She freakin' stalked me... but in a fairly benign way... showing up behind me in line at the drugstore drivethrough, driving by my house ten times a week, and my receiving a sudden rash of hang-up calls from a person named "UNKNOWN." Eventually, it died down, and finally stopped altogether.
I don't miss the drama. I don't miss the weirdness of it. I don't actually miss her, because she is an incredibly difficult person to be around, and adding her very challenged child to the mix makes it unbearable. Still, that rational part of my brain, the part that has been mostly on hiatus for the last three weeks, sometimes turns it all over in my head again, like a sore on the inside of your cheek that you just can't quite leave alone and so it never heals, wondering what the hell happened. It doesn't matter, and it is a tremendous lightening of my daily toils to not have that to deal with anymore. It doesn't matter, but it's like a jigsaw with ONE missing piece, and it bugs the crap out of me. I hope she's well, I suppose, but no more so than I hope any stranger I see in the grocery store is well. I just wish I could complete the damned puzzle.
Hell, maybe she found the right, mostly sane surroundings, and is existing peacefully these days, rather than attacking and ripping to shreds anyone who tries to show her kindness. Stranger things have been known to happen.
Idea for a Book...
Just off the top of my head:
Two chicks meet, kinda say pretty crunchy granola types. They are INSTANT and PERMANENT friends. Chick 1 works for Chick 2's husband, only before he's Chick 2's husband, Chick 1 maybe has a little fun with him now and again... nothing even remotely serious, just playthings. Anyway, after the boss marrries Chick 2, they have fertility issues, so even though Chick 1 is by then ready for a second child (she's married with one already), she has and keeps an IUD and absolutely REFUSES her husband's attempts to persuade her to have it removed. Why? Because, despite the total lack of logic and rationality of it, getting pregnant before Chick 2 would be horribly painful for Chick 1, and she doesn't want to see her friend put in that position. So... they wait. And conceive, literally the day Chick 2 informs them that the treatments have been successful! BABIES all around.
Fast forward nine months after Chick 2's baby is born. Chick 2, who insisted throughout her pregnancy that she would have ONLY one child, EVER, has decided maybe two wouldn't be so bad. Miraculously, she conceives immediately upon cessation of birth control measures. Chick 1 flies cross-country, kids in tow, and for two weeks does all she can to help her VERY pregnant friend. When Chick 2 is ready to deliver, Chick 1 is there. Big, crazy, dramatic birth scene. Blah blah blah. All is well, despite a few scares along the way. Chick 1, exhausted, finally leaves the hospital so Chick 2 and fly can bond.
Chick 1 has, during this time, cooked like mad (because she likes to and feels useful and it makes her happy to do that for her friend) and all but filled Chick 2's freezer with food, so Chick 2 won't have to worry with such things once her second baby arrives. Chick 1 has also seen very little of her own children, but they're with grandparents (who live near Chick 2), so they're well. Chick 1 has actually stayed in the house with Chick 2 for the whole 2 weeks, lest Chick 2 go into labor without Chick 1 in attendance, ready to help.
After Chick 2 gets home, the first thing she does is tell Chick 1 that, well, Chick 2's house is awfully crowded now, and even though Chick 1 has made no other arrangements (because Chick 2 BEGGED her to PLEASE stay in her home!), she kind of has to go somewhere else. So, Chick 1 packs, leaves, and goes to hang with her kids, much devastated at her friend's sudden lack of interest in having her around. A few DAYS later, Chick 2 calls, acts like she truly doesn't know why she's not heard from Chick 1, oh, and by the way, she really hopes she hasn't hurt Chick 1's feelings or anything! Um, right. Not at all.
So... Chick 1 kind of "gets" that Chick 2 isn't exactly able to give, so much as she is to receive. Both return to their lives... and then, Chick 1 discovers that she is pregnant with a third child. ACK!!! Having not heard from Chick 2 for several months, AT ALL, Chick 1 figures it's a longshot, but calls anyway. And then again. ANd finally gives up, because no return calls are coming. But, just as Chick 1 has written the whole thing off, Chick 2 calls, overflowing with congratulations.... blah blah blah.
Then, tragically, Chick 1 miscarries, pretty much immediately after she has finally allowed herself to be excited about the unexpected turn in her life. Chick 2 is all sympathy and condolences... and then disappears. Chick 1 struggles in ways she's never known possible, and all the while just really wishes Chick 2 would call... that they could connect, even if it's only for a few minutes and on the phone. But what she gets instead is a lame voice message, more than a week after the D&C, that says Chick 2 has just "been SOOOO busy!" Chick 1 makes several desperate attempts to reach Chick 2, to no avail.
Chick 1 finally gives the fuck up, because even though she's silly, and has entirely too much faith in humanity and the loyalty of people who swear a birth oath that they're there ALWAYS, she does actually get it. Chick 1 has spent many years insisting to everyone she talks to that it is people's actions, and NOT their words, that matter, that prove what and who they are and whether or not they truly value who and what they profess to value. This time, Chick 1 takes her very own sage advice. It hurts too.
Two chicks meet, kinda say pretty crunchy granola types. They are INSTANT and PERMANENT friends. Chick 1 works for Chick 2's husband, only before he's Chick 2's husband, Chick 1 maybe has a little fun with him now and again... nothing even remotely serious, just playthings. Anyway, after the boss marrries Chick 2, they have fertility issues, so even though Chick 1 is by then ready for a second child (she's married with one already), she has and keeps an IUD and absolutely REFUSES her husband's attempts to persuade her to have it removed. Why? Because, despite the total lack of logic and rationality of it, getting pregnant before Chick 2 would be horribly painful for Chick 1, and she doesn't want to see her friend put in that position. So... they wait. And conceive, literally the day Chick 2 informs them that the treatments have been successful! BABIES all around.
Fast forward nine months after Chick 2's baby is born. Chick 2, who insisted throughout her pregnancy that she would have ONLY one child, EVER, has decided maybe two wouldn't be so bad. Miraculously, she conceives immediately upon cessation of birth control measures. Chick 1 flies cross-country, kids in tow, and for two weeks does all she can to help her VERY pregnant friend. When Chick 2 is ready to deliver, Chick 1 is there. Big, crazy, dramatic birth scene. Blah blah blah. All is well, despite a few scares along the way. Chick 1, exhausted, finally leaves the hospital so Chick 2 and fly can bond.
Chick 1 has, during this time, cooked like mad (because she likes to and feels useful and it makes her happy to do that for her friend) and all but filled Chick 2's freezer with food, so Chick 2 won't have to worry with such things once her second baby arrives. Chick 1 has also seen very little of her own children, but they're with grandparents (who live near Chick 2), so they're well. Chick 1 has actually stayed in the house with Chick 2 for the whole 2 weeks, lest Chick 2 go into labor without Chick 1 in attendance, ready to help.
After Chick 2 gets home, the first thing she does is tell Chick 1 that, well, Chick 2's house is awfully crowded now, and even though Chick 1 has made no other arrangements (because Chick 2 BEGGED her to PLEASE stay in her home!), she kind of has to go somewhere else. So, Chick 1 packs, leaves, and goes to hang with her kids, much devastated at her friend's sudden lack of interest in having her around. A few DAYS later, Chick 2 calls, acts like she truly doesn't know why she's not heard from Chick 1, oh, and by the way, she really hopes she hasn't hurt Chick 1's feelings or anything! Um, right. Not at all.
So... Chick 1 kind of "gets" that Chick 2 isn't exactly able to give, so much as she is to receive. Both return to their lives... and then, Chick 1 discovers that she is pregnant with a third child. ACK!!! Having not heard from Chick 2 for several months, AT ALL, Chick 1 figures it's a longshot, but calls anyway. And then again. ANd finally gives up, because no return calls are coming. But, just as Chick 1 has written the whole thing off, Chick 2 calls, overflowing with congratulations.... blah blah blah.
Then, tragically, Chick 1 miscarries, pretty much immediately after she has finally allowed herself to be excited about the unexpected turn in her life. Chick 2 is all sympathy and condolences... and then disappears. Chick 1 struggles in ways she's never known possible, and all the while just really wishes Chick 2 would call... that they could connect, even if it's only for a few minutes and on the phone. But what she gets instead is a lame voice message, more than a week after the D&C, that says Chick 2 has just "been SOOOO busy!" Chick 1 makes several desperate attempts to reach Chick 2, to no avail.
Chick 1 finally gives the fuck up, because even though she's silly, and has entirely too much faith in humanity and the loyalty of people who swear a birth oath that they're there ALWAYS, she does actually get it. Chick 1 has spent many years insisting to everyone she talks to that it is people's actions, and NOT their words, that matter, that prove what and who they are and whether or not they truly value who and what they profess to value. This time, Chick 1 takes her very own sage advice. It hurts too.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Semi-closure
Well, I had the post-op visit with the doc who failed to diagnose and treat me properly during my pregnancy, and then performed the D&C for my "missed abortion." I suppose another round of thanks to the creators of Xanax is in order, since it helped me just get through the damned visit. Well, that and the Amazing Mr. Cakes, who was at my side as ever.
The cytology reports have come back, but we're still awaiting the chromosomal analysis of the embryo. So, I can't really call this chapter of things, "done." That part seriously angers me, as I expected that this would be the final bit of awfulness in the whole thing. At present, I'm consoling myself with knowing that at least I'll not have to physically be in the office again, and that the doc and his staff won't be actually touching me again. There is that. Still, the idea of receiving THE phone call, not so happy a thought. When might it come? At home? While I'm running errands? Will I be alone? Will I be with people that won't possiby comprehend my reaction, whatever it might be?
Somehow, I am certain of two things: 1. The tests will reveal absolutely nothing abnormal. 2. The sex chromosomes will be a perfect pair of Xes. When/if I'm right about either of those, much less both, I haven't the faintest notion of how I'll react, but I don't feel much confidence that I'll handle it gracefully. Or sanely, even. I suppose the only thing I can do is my absolute LEAST favorite in the world: wait. Yippee.
I did manage to get complete copies of my chart. There is absolutely no mention anywhere in them of LPD. Not that I thought there would be. Also, no notes whatsoever reflecting the exhaustive verbal history I gave the doctor regarding my odd cycles, which in and of themselves were a major indicator of LPD, certainly enough for him to have made his own presumptive diagnosis of the condition. I just gets better and better.
Also of much concern to me is that, despite the fact that I appeared at my initial OB visit with a severe URI, for which he prescribed Zithromax without so much as peeking in my E-N-or-T, nowhere in any of the labwork is there any indication that a CMV screening was done. Good times!
I have the name of a highly-recommended, allegedly ethical and very effective, MedMal attorney. I've not yet called, nor am I certain I will. If I do, it will be after I have both verbal and written results of the lab findings in regards to the embryo's ir/regularities. We'll see.
Thus, instead of being able to finally close this goddamned book, it stays open and unfinished. Not sure how much longer I can tolerate that, but again as above, I get to do my most unfavorite thing: wait.
P
The cytology reports have come back, but we're still awaiting the chromosomal analysis of the embryo. So, I can't really call this chapter of things, "done." That part seriously angers me, as I expected that this would be the final bit of awfulness in the whole thing. At present, I'm consoling myself with knowing that at least I'll not have to physically be in the office again, and that the doc and his staff won't be actually touching me again. There is that. Still, the idea of receiving THE phone call, not so happy a thought. When might it come? At home? While I'm running errands? Will I be alone? Will I be with people that won't possiby comprehend my reaction, whatever it might be?
Somehow, I am certain of two things: 1. The tests will reveal absolutely nothing abnormal. 2. The sex chromosomes will be a perfect pair of Xes. When/if I'm right about either of those, much less both, I haven't the faintest notion of how I'll react, but I don't feel much confidence that I'll handle it gracefully. Or sanely, even. I suppose the only thing I can do is my absolute LEAST favorite in the world: wait. Yippee.
I did manage to get complete copies of my chart. There is absolutely no mention anywhere in them of LPD. Not that I thought there would be. Also, no notes whatsoever reflecting the exhaustive verbal history I gave the doctor regarding my odd cycles, which in and of themselves were a major indicator of LPD, certainly enough for him to have made his own presumptive diagnosis of the condition. I just gets better and better.
Also of much concern to me is that, despite the fact that I appeared at my initial OB visit with a severe URI, for which he prescribed Zithromax without so much as peeking in my E-N-or-T, nowhere in any of the labwork is there any indication that a CMV screening was done. Good times!
I have the name of a highly-recommended, allegedly ethical and very effective, MedMal attorney. I've not yet called, nor am I certain I will. If I do, it will be after I have both verbal and written results of the lab findings in regards to the embryo's ir/regularities. We'll see.
Thus, instead of being able to finally close this goddamned book, it stays open and unfinished. Not sure how much longer I can tolerate that, but again as above, I get to do my most unfavorite thing: wait.
P
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Monkey Wrangling, Continued
I'm seriously working on the whole brevity thing, so I'm trying my absolute best here to keep it all short.
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Last weekend, I walked my sons to the schoolground immediately adjacent to our next-door-neighbor, where we were to meet a classmate and his mother. After a few hours of hardcore first-grader rough-and-tumble BOY action, all of us were wiped and it was time to go home. Mr. Cakes had joined us by then, and so he elected to accompany the boys on the walk home, while I stayed behind to ratchet-jaw with my friend for just a few more minutes.
My friend's son, who is also highly gifted and the same age as my elder boy, noticed my two boys, hand-in-hand, headed toward our street, and so inquired as to where they were going. He was terribly concerned, having not seen their father, who was only a couple paces behind them, and so asked if I thought they'd be ok. It bears mentioning at this point that we live in Baton Rouge, LA.
Said I, "They're fine, hon. Mr. Cakes is with them, and even if he weren't, I am positive that the Elder Cakes would have no problem getting them to our house, since we're just right there."
Said he, "Are you really sure, Ms. Cakes? Because, if they just go walking like that, they could end up in Illinois or something."
I hope he didn't say that on account of his knowing something I don't.
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Monkey-to-English Dictionary
Hock (adj): Of sufficiently high temperature to cause at least the sensation of being burned, if not actual damage to the skin.
Spap (v): To strike a person or thing, but only in pre-emptive or reactionary fashion. I.E. "I had to spap that bug, because it was going to bite me!" Also, "Mom, Brother said something ugly to me. You need to spap him!" [NOTE: We are often asked to do this. We decline.]
Spapper (n): Any object employed for the express purpose of spapping.
Screwdriver store (n): A retail outlet wherein a screwdriver purchase is made. [Etymology: Early Cakesian, originally referred to either of the two better-known hardware/home repair mega-outlets with logo colors of blue/white and construction orange, then gradually evolving to become the outlet wherein a screwdriver IS purchased.] See also: balloon store, milk store, popsicle store. (NOTE that in order to meet the definition, the item in question must actually be purchased, not just available, at a given retail establishment.)
Fluid (n): One of any influenza viruses. (Eg. ACHOO! I think I have a fluid.)
Dinner store (n): a restaurant
Dinnering (v): eating a meal at a dinner store. EG. Let's go dinnering.
mcdonald's (n): 1.Any dinner store that has a drive-thru window. 2. A fast-food establishment. [Unlike the worldwide franchise with a very similar name, this word is not a proper noun, and must always be preceded by a descriptive that is. EG. Wendy's mcdonald's, Chick-Fil-A McDonald's, Jack-In-The-Box mcdonald's, and Lowe's mcdonald's (because there is a Subway mcdonald's inside the Lowe's, which, alone, would be properly referred to as a "screwdriver store.")]
dark blue (adj): Descriptive phrase indicating that a given mcdonald's has an indoor playground. [Etymology is uncertain, but probably derives from Early Cakesian, Fist Progeny, when he observed that the McDonald's Playland nearest our home incorporated in its color scheme large amounts of dark blue.]
Doodah [DOOdah] (n): any of several varieties of large bead/shape sorting toddler toys, usually consisting of brightly-colored large wooden or plastic beads, running on various intertwined metal or plastic tracks that are permanently affixed to a solid wood or plastic base, and often found in the play areas of doctors' and dentists' offices.
Leaking (v): a state of imperfection and/or general disarray as applied to small children's clothing. EG. "My sock is leaking," if the sock has worked its way loose so as to no longer snugly envelope the toes. Also, "My shirt is leaking," if shirt tails have become partially untucked.
Payforits (n): a staffed, open cash-register. EG. Mommy, are we done getting groceries, or do we still have to go to the payforits? [Etymology: Early Cakesian, first monkey, from "Pay for it."]
Fickits (v): the magical power(s) possessed by our children's father, which gives him the ability to repair any item, regardless of size, construction, or severity of break/tear/breach. (EG: Mom, I accidentally dropped your priceless family heirloom and it shattered into a million pieces, but it's ok, because Dada fickits.)
Dirty Jobs Channel (n): any cable channel that is currently running an episode of "Dirty Jobs."
The Silly Show Where the People Fall in the Mud When They Miss (proper noun): MXC on the Spike channel.
Ap
Hannuka (n, adj): 1. (n) Synagogue, regardless of time of year or holiday being celebrated (EG: Mommy, I want to go to Hannukah today.) 2. (adj) Describing any item or custom used or observed in the context of Jewish Life (EG: Hey, where's my new Hannukah Hat [yarmulke/kippah]? My mommy's Hannukah scarf [tallit] is white and silver, just like my Hannukah Hat.) [Etymology: Derives from the earliest speech of Younger Cakes, who first recognized and was able to put into words the recognition of exclusively Jewish things and observances at the time of Hannukah. Since then, despite being reminded on no less than a hundred occasions, he refuses to use the "proper" terms for the items/customs, and instead goes with his own. Go figure!]
I'll add more later. Have a pleasant night.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Monkey Wrangling, Chapter One
Ok, first, let it be known that my very dear friend M!ke is NOT the reason for this blog. See, he recently started blogging here (check him out at http://www.theviewsofmike.blogspot.com/) and one of his first posts is a list of VERY funny things he has overheard at his current workplace. It's a Sorority Fly-on-the-Wall kind of thing. Great stuff. Still, I've ben planning to start putting my own list of funnies down for quite some time now, and after an exchange yesterday between myself and one of my elder son's friends, I decided I'd waited long enough. I suppose that's my own attempt to briefly (HAHAHAHA) say that, while M!ke's records have perhaps inspired me to move forward with something I've been pondering for a long time, I'm not being a copycat;)
I know that parenting and being in the presence of children are notoriously entertaining, often shockingly so, thus the old adage, "Kids say the darndest things." In my house though, not only do the kids spew forth hilarity with alarming frequency, but so do we, the parents and adults. I have been noticing, over the past years, that our responses to the monkeyshines are often bizarre and guffaw-worthy, and I've often thought we should write some of them down. So, here is the beginning of what I hope will tickle some funny bones, and maybe also help anyone who doubts their sanity as a result of this Parenting Hysteria to feel a little more normal. Enjoy.
I. THE VERY USEFUL FLY SWATTER (Or, The Grossest Thing My Littler Son Has Done. Yet.)
Today my crew spent nearly the entire day in our upstairs, which consist of one enormous room, formerly a loft of some sort, but enclosed by the prevoius owner because she reportedly feared for her children's safety. Apparently, they had "discovered" shortly after moving into this house that the then-open area above the living room might make for some very interesting couch-jumps. Good times!
Anyway, the room is kind of an architectural orphan now, and we've used it for storage, as it is up and away from the part of the house where we spend most of our time. Having just returned from Madrid and its many museums and artistic history however, my husband has been bitten by the Art Bug, and is anxious to get a work area together where he and the boys (and me too, should I ever feel like trying the Visual Art thing) might create at will. Thus, all day long, the pitter-patter-KERTHUNK of monkey feet greeted me from above, and Dad made much progress toward making the area usable.
Among the many boxes of miscellany and forgotten-but-not-yet-discarded whatnots, my younger child found a white plastic "spapper." Actually, it's a flyswatter, and was one of those freebie junk items I get at Real Estate conferences. This one is emblazoned on one end with a green logo of a mortgage company whose name escapes me. Go figure. No matter, because one little monkey was most delighted with his new treasure, and promptly set about the business of "spapping" everything and everyone in sight. Until, that is, Dad grew tired of intervening (and probably of being the subject of a spapping or two himself), and impounded my darling's bit of booty. The toddler equivalent of tearing of clothing and gnashing of teeth ensued, but the spapper was out of service for the day. Except, somehow, it found its way onto our kitchen table in all the melee, where it remained, unnoticed by all.
Roughly two hours passed without significant incident, and I called the crew down for dinner. And there we gathered, the four of us, my gorgeous babes, handsome knight, and I, their Queen, for a royal dinner of frozen ravioli and canned green beans. Blissfully we dined, basking in the glow of each other's presence, we parents gazing fondly upon our lovely offspring with a sheen in our eyes.
And then, the roof caved in. I spied, much to my horror and disgust, the Little One, eating a bit of ravioli off of, you guessed it, the "spapper." Apparently, in his book at least, it is a multi-use tool, good for shoveling food into his grinning maw AND for putting a smackdown on his elder brother. Chances are very good that the item in question has never actually been used for its intended purpose, but no one is really certain, so the possibility exists, however remote, that the thing my child was using to move food into his mouth did, indeed, have upon it the remnants of some long ago dispatched insect. Or insects.
Ordinarily (and I say that as though this kind of thing is a common occurence in my home, which is frighteningly close to the truth, I'm afraid), I'd have snatched the spapper, in all likelihood flinging marinara sauce in a colorful red arc that would later be licked up by our Belgian Malinois, and my boy would collapse in tears and wails and I'd scoop him up, explaining that it was simply not safe for him to eat with that item. Today though, was no ordinary day, nor was this an ordinary utensil.
Instead of actually doing anything, I turned my head away from my child, shielding my periphery with my hand, and looked with revulsion into my husband's unsuspecting face. Seeing that I'd gone rather green, he followed the weak finger that I was by then using to indicate his younger progeny, and upon seeing what had gotten me so nauseated, looked simultaneously ready to vomit and throttle me for having not put a stop to the scene that was unfolding there beside me. The thing is though, I couldn't! Had I tried to so much as give voice to what it was I was thinking, had I so much as said, "STOP!" to my son at that point, I honestly believe I'd instead have hurled right there on the table. The best I could do, despite the possibility that my son was at that very moment ingesting microscopic leavings of squished insect bodies, was turn away and try not to puke. Hmmm, Mother of the Year Award?
Thankfully, their dad grabbed the Utensil of Doom away from the little one, but not before it was used to deliver at least one largish mouthful of ravioli to our child's piehole. Our boy wasn't thrilled to have the cherished and multi-faceted tool taken from him, but neither did he fall to pieces right there. Instead, he simply used his fingers, those on his non-dominant hand, I guess to keep things interesting, to pinch and then stuff more ravioli into his mouth. Thus far, he hasn't developed any new or frightening symptoms, so we seem to have escaped any of the life-threatening conditions that fly-bits ingestion might cause. I'll update if this changes, but I kind of doubt it will. I truly wish I could tell myself, with confidence, that this was finally the absolute most repulsive thing one of my children would ever do, but I know better.
Until next time, Happy Dining!
I know that parenting and being in the presence of children are notoriously entertaining, often shockingly so, thus the old adage, "Kids say the darndest things." In my house though, not only do the kids spew forth hilarity with alarming frequency, but so do we, the parents and adults. I have been noticing, over the past years, that our responses to the monkeyshines are often bizarre and guffaw-worthy, and I've often thought we should write some of them down. So, here is the beginning of what I hope will tickle some funny bones, and maybe also help anyone who doubts their sanity as a result of this Parenting Hysteria to feel a little more normal. Enjoy.
I. THE VERY USEFUL FLY SWATTER (Or, The Grossest Thing My Littler Son Has Done. Yet.)
Today my crew spent nearly the entire day in our upstairs, which consist of one enormous room, formerly a loft of some sort, but enclosed by the prevoius owner because she reportedly feared for her children's safety. Apparently, they had "discovered" shortly after moving into this house that the then-open area above the living room might make for some very interesting couch-jumps. Good times!
Anyway, the room is kind of an architectural orphan now, and we've used it for storage, as it is up and away from the part of the house where we spend most of our time. Having just returned from Madrid and its many museums and artistic history however, my husband has been bitten by the Art Bug, and is anxious to get a work area together where he and the boys (and me too, should I ever feel like trying the Visual Art thing) might create at will. Thus, all day long, the pitter-patter-KERTHUNK of monkey feet greeted me from above, and Dad made much progress toward making the area usable.
Among the many boxes of miscellany and forgotten-but-not-yet-discarded whatnots, my younger child found a white plastic "spapper." Actually, it's a flyswatter, and was one of those freebie junk items I get at Real Estate conferences. This one is emblazoned on one end with a green logo of a mortgage company whose name escapes me. Go figure. No matter, because one little monkey was most delighted with his new treasure, and promptly set about the business of "spapping" everything and everyone in sight. Until, that is, Dad grew tired of intervening (and probably of being the subject of a spapping or two himself), and impounded my darling's bit of booty. The toddler equivalent of tearing of clothing and gnashing of teeth ensued, but the spapper was out of service for the day. Except, somehow, it found its way onto our kitchen table in all the melee, where it remained, unnoticed by all.
Roughly two hours passed without significant incident, and I called the crew down for dinner. And there we gathered, the four of us, my gorgeous babes, handsome knight, and I, their Queen, for a royal dinner of frozen ravioli and canned green beans. Blissfully we dined, basking in the glow of each other's presence, we parents gazing fondly upon our lovely offspring with a sheen in our eyes.
And then, the roof caved in. I spied, much to my horror and disgust, the Little One, eating a bit of ravioli off of, you guessed it, the "spapper." Apparently, in his book at least, it is a multi-use tool, good for shoveling food into his grinning maw AND for putting a smackdown on his elder brother. Chances are very good that the item in question has never actually been used for its intended purpose, but no one is really certain, so the possibility exists, however remote, that the thing my child was using to move food into his mouth did, indeed, have upon it the remnants of some long ago dispatched insect. Or insects.
Ordinarily (and I say that as though this kind of thing is a common occurence in my home, which is frighteningly close to the truth, I'm afraid), I'd have snatched the spapper, in all likelihood flinging marinara sauce in a colorful red arc that would later be licked up by our Belgian Malinois, and my boy would collapse in tears and wails and I'd scoop him up, explaining that it was simply not safe for him to eat with that item. Today though, was no ordinary day, nor was this an ordinary utensil.
Instead of actually doing anything, I turned my head away from my child, shielding my periphery with my hand, and looked with revulsion into my husband's unsuspecting face. Seeing that I'd gone rather green, he followed the weak finger that I was by then using to indicate his younger progeny, and upon seeing what had gotten me so nauseated, looked simultaneously ready to vomit and throttle me for having not put a stop to the scene that was unfolding there beside me. The thing is though, I couldn't! Had I tried to so much as give voice to what it was I was thinking, had I so much as said, "STOP!" to my son at that point, I honestly believe I'd instead have hurled right there on the table. The best I could do, despite the possibility that my son was at that very moment ingesting microscopic leavings of squished insect bodies, was turn away and try not to puke. Hmmm, Mother of the Year Award?
Thankfully, their dad grabbed the Utensil of Doom away from the little one, but not before it was used to deliver at least one largish mouthful of ravioli to our child's piehole. Our boy wasn't thrilled to have the cherished and multi-faceted tool taken from him, but neither did he fall to pieces right there. Instead, he simply used his fingers, those on his non-dominant hand, I guess to keep things interesting, to pinch and then stuff more ravioli into his mouth. Thus far, he hasn't developed any new or frightening symptoms, so we seem to have escaped any of the life-threatening conditions that fly-bits ingestion might cause. I'll update if this changes, but I kind of doubt it will. I truly wish I could tell myself, with confidence, that this was finally the absolute most repulsive thing one of my children would ever do, but I know better.
Until next time, Happy Dining!
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Counting down
We go on the 26th to the doc's office, both for post-op follow-up and, presumably, to get the results of the chromosome testing we consented to after the D&C. I have been doing my level best NOT to think about every possible reaction I might have to every possible outcome of said testing, but I've not been so very successful at it. Essentially, all I've determined is that I'll want to tear out the doc's throat with my bare hands, irrespective of whether our now-dead, almost-fetus was genetically flawed. Either way, HE DID NOTHING when I informed him of the distinct LPD patterns to my cycles. Try as I might to force order and sanity upon that fact, I can't make sense of his inaction. As long as there's no sense to be made of it, there's no way for me to be finished with it inside what passes for my mind these days. So, I've been feeling rather imprisoned by the whole business.
Don't misunderstand me, because despite being very sad about our loss, I feel mostly at peace with the notion that it's done, closed, complete. Only, then I start thinking about the fucking doctor again, and how he had AMPLE time, provided that our embryo was viable, which of course we don't know yet, to DO something to help keep it firmly rooted in its little spot, but instead just ignored my concerns, my information, my painstakingly-prepared-and-delivered detailed medical history. I want so badly for the whole thing to have a logical, sane explanation, but in my wildest imaginings (and truly, they're REALLY wild once I get going!), the best I can come up with are that he was maybe thinking about lunch, is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's and is no longer competent to attend anyone, or that he just didn't really think that a silly woman could possibly have a relevant clue about her own body and so didn't find merit in any of my contributions at my appointments. And remember, these are the best, the least paranoid, the most logical. Nice, huh?
On a somewhat happier note, it seems I may be beginning to emerge from the funk that has enveloped me for the past twelve days. I went to a birthday party today for one of my six-year-old's friends, and managed to neither collapse in a sobbing heap nor scream at anyone. I count those as pretty big accomplishments! Yippee for me.
I'll elaborate more later, really I will. Now though, I'm going to try for some sleep. That too has been abysmal, but I'll need to devote a whole entry to it. Later.
G'night.
Don't misunderstand me, because despite being very sad about our loss, I feel mostly at peace with the notion that it's done, closed, complete. Only, then I start thinking about the fucking doctor again, and how he had AMPLE time, provided that our embryo was viable, which of course we don't know yet, to DO something to help keep it firmly rooted in its little spot, but instead just ignored my concerns, my information, my painstakingly-prepared-and-delivered detailed medical history. I want so badly for the whole thing to have a logical, sane explanation, but in my wildest imaginings (and truly, they're REALLY wild once I get going!), the best I can come up with are that he was maybe thinking about lunch, is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's and is no longer competent to attend anyone, or that he just didn't really think that a silly woman could possibly have a relevant clue about her own body and so didn't find merit in any of my contributions at my appointments. And remember, these are the best, the least paranoid, the most logical. Nice, huh?
On a somewhat happier note, it seems I may be beginning to emerge from the funk that has enveloped me for the past twelve days. I went to a birthday party today for one of my six-year-old's friends, and managed to neither collapse in a sobbing heap nor scream at anyone. I count those as pretty big accomplishments! Yippee for me.
I'll elaborate more later, really I will. Now though, I'm going to try for some sleep. That too has been abysmal, but I'll need to devote a whole entry to it. Later.
G'night.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Memory. Again.
I recently "found" an old High School acquaintaince, of the male variety, but with whom I maybe flirted, and maybe even a LOT, but always maintained a strictly Platonic relationship. So, in corresponding, he mentioned two things we'd done together, one I remembered fairly clearly, and the other not at all. The absent memory was of a Senior Trip I'd supposedly attended with him, and try as I might, I couldn't remember ANYTHING about it. So, I asked him to jog my memory with as much detail as he could, and he did exactly that.
Turns out, I had in fact gone to the Renaissance Faire with a bunch of other students one year, and that was the trip he was recalling. And after I read through things a bit, it came back, not with crystal clarity, but vividly enough that I am certain it really happened (No "recovered memories" here, thank you very much!)
A quick point, because it is a gorgeous quality this guy has: Note he not only USES spell check, but actually ADMITS to it!!! Can you even believe? Now, if I can manage to get him to get that across to all the CEOs in the world, we're all on the fast track to Utopia, BABY! Simply beautiful!
Anyway, I'm tired as hell now, and so I'm lazy and just going to copy and paste the exchange. Here it is:
Okay...it was MY senior trip, and some worthy non-seniors got to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival. My oldest friend in the world, Lionel, was with me, and we all started talking and you and I sat with each other on the bus.
Some snooty girls were talking bad about you, maybe because I was dating Rachel and sitting with another girl...I dunno. I quietly informed you as you were digging for something in your bag with your head down where they couldn't see you. You affirmed that you understood the problem. How did you respond? As you sat up, you wiped your mouth and smiled at me...to the shock of the snooty squad. Ah, the conclusions they must've come to...LOL. Later, you exchanged heated comments with a couple of them. The conflict was brief, however.
And you, being the Ren Fest expert, you told me all I should expect from it, including the double-entendres. Did I spell that right? Maybe because it's French the spell check doesn't recognize it. SO ANYWAY...we enter the grounds, and as you're reminding me of the innuendos I will undoubtedly hear (and I got the impression you were impervious to such shenannigans), a girl jumps out into the street and points at you. You gasped and stiffened as she asked, in an obviously fake cockney accent (actually, it wasn't bad), "WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HAD A GOOD TWELVE INCHES??" You promptly turned around and walked briskly away, and she called after you: "OH, COME ON! GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER! I WAS TALKING ABOUT SAUSAGE!!"
She was vending sausage. The Mighty Toff, toppling so quickly. Over festival food. So sad.
We shared a muff (snicker) and pretty much stayed together the whole time. And if I remember correctly, you fell asleep for a short time on my shoulder.Remember now? If you need to correct me on details, or you remember more, let me know!
I responded to him as follows:
You know, Mr. Jagger has it SO dead on: "What a draaaaaaag it is getting old!" I'm so glad you gave me the replay on that, because I guess I'd banked that whole set of memories somewhere WAY back in an old, dusty, super-crazy-locked-tight part of the ole noggin. I was thinking maybe you had me confused with somebody else. I kept thinking that I had only been on a single RenFaire trip, and that was with my SPARK class. DUH! It took a little priming, but the neuropumpthingy FINALLY kicked in, and I remember it now. Not vividly, but clearly enough.
See, if I had the sausage experience today, I'd have volleyed back immediately, probably making a big show with a swift swat to your ass (for dramatic effect, of course) and a comment along the lines of, "Gee, (turning to you as though for confirmation, maybe checking my Swatch nonchalantly) what's it been, hon? Five minutes since we got off the bus?" And THEN I'd have walked off.
Its so peculiar, the way I've always had that sassy, rebellious streak, but I had to kind of try it out, like I was learning to walk or something. Hey, no sweat hinting to the Mouthy Broads that I had to see DAILY that I'd just performed fellatio in a crowded bus on a guy who was very much dating another girl, but somehow snapping back a saucy reply to a total stranger at the flippin' RenFaire was too much of an ego hit!?!? Go figure. Those sausage wenches though, they'll catch you off guard EVERY time!
Ok, maybe growing up isn't all that bad... at least for me, it has removed a lot of concern about other people's opinions of me. In those days, I really wanted not to care, and I tried my best convince everyone that I didn't, but I did, of course. I like to think I put on a relatively good show of indifference, but I was a mess just below the surface. I suppose pretty much everyone was. Because seriously? There's no WAY Coca-Cola shirts would have ever caught on otherwise!
I do indeed recall the post-Faire shoulder-snooze, too. I seem to remember yours being the best I'd had. (Your SHOULDER!) In fact, I don't think I found its equal until about nine years ago, so yours held the records for most inviting/comfy even through my first marriage! How important you must feel now, having had that little tidbit bestowed upon you by "The Mighty Toff." (har har) How wonderfully flattered I am that you called me that... silly as it is. Occasionally, that little insecure Sophomore chick gets a major boost from a seemingly ridiculous detail like that, even if it is twenty years old or thereabouts! So, uh, keep 'em coming if you have any more little gems in there. That's GOOOOOOOOOOD stuff!
I never cease to be blown away by the how weird a thing the human memory can be! I wrote an entry on it about a year ago, and even after a terrible bout of syllaborrhea, I never felt like I'd really quite captured it completely, how two people can have shared an experience and come away with drastically different recollections of the identical events. Too, it's always so curious to me that Event X might be something that remains with me as a waking memory until I reach the grave, whereas the person who shared Event X with me might forget all about it and have to be spoon-fed the details in order to call it back up (witness the above Senior Trip!).
Big, waterlogged, glucose-hogging, protein-dependent, organic computers hanging around up there in our heads, that's what we have, only there's no Microsoft to systematize things all nice and neat with any discernible file structure! Nope, it's all handled behind the scenes. While we dream and when we're busy doing other things, some aspect of ourselves just plugs away, putting this memory in that folder, that folder under super-duper-crazy-double-lockdown-security, and keeping this other memory floating around in the forefront of our minds like a damned mosquito, because it really doesn't make any flippin' sense that we keep THINKING about it! Shit, I need to go see my shrink! (har har har har--- no, really!)
It's seeming more and more, when I talk to people from back in those years, that maybe some part of me has worked REALLY hard to keep as much of my life between the ages of about 14 and 24 stowed neatly away, where not even I can access it readily! I'm positive I don't have any kind of trauma worthy of a Lifetime Movie, no creepy molester guidance counselor uncles or anything like that, but it was a very FULL and very trying decade in all. I guess that's reason enough that some part of me tries to protect me from it. I am really really glad that you and I are corresponding... it is nice to have GOOD things pop back up in my conscious memory about 'dem days. It reminds me how it is that I can be a fairly stable and productive adult, despite all the crap.
Friends is how.
Ok... and now I'm feeling all inspired and stuff, so I'll probably copy and paste at least parts of this and flesh it out for a blog entry. So now you're my Muse too. It just doesn't end, eh? Oh, what WILL the Mouthy Broads say???
Have a restful night, and may it be as comfy as that long ago shoulder nap;)
Turns out, I had in fact gone to the Renaissance Faire with a bunch of other students one year, and that was the trip he was recalling. And after I read through things a bit, it came back, not with crystal clarity, but vividly enough that I am certain it really happened (No "recovered memories" here, thank you very much!)
A quick point, because it is a gorgeous quality this guy has: Note he not only USES spell check, but actually ADMITS to it!!! Can you even believe? Now, if I can manage to get him to get that across to all the CEOs in the world, we're all on the fast track to Utopia, BABY! Simply beautiful!
Anyway, I'm tired as hell now, and so I'm lazy and just going to copy and paste the exchange. Here it is:
Okay...it was MY senior trip, and some worthy non-seniors got to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival. My oldest friend in the world, Lionel, was with me, and we all started talking and you and I sat with each other on the bus.
Some snooty girls were talking bad about you, maybe because I was dating Rachel and sitting with another girl...I dunno. I quietly informed you as you were digging for something in your bag with your head down where they couldn't see you. You affirmed that you understood the problem. How did you respond? As you sat up, you wiped your mouth and smiled at me...to the shock of the snooty squad. Ah, the conclusions they must've come to...LOL. Later, you exchanged heated comments with a couple of them. The conflict was brief, however.
And you, being the Ren Fest expert, you told me all I should expect from it, including the double-entendres. Did I spell that right? Maybe because it's French the spell check doesn't recognize it. SO ANYWAY...we enter the grounds, and as you're reminding me of the innuendos I will undoubtedly hear (and I got the impression you were impervious to such shenannigans), a girl jumps out into the street and points at you. You gasped and stiffened as she asked, in an obviously fake cockney accent (actually, it wasn't bad), "WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HAD A GOOD TWELVE INCHES??" You promptly turned around and walked briskly away, and she called after you: "OH, COME ON! GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER! I WAS TALKING ABOUT SAUSAGE!!"
She was vending sausage. The Mighty Toff, toppling so quickly. Over festival food. So sad.
We shared a muff (snicker) and pretty much stayed together the whole time. And if I remember correctly, you fell asleep for a short time on my shoulder.Remember now? If you need to correct me on details, or you remember more, let me know!
I responded to him as follows:
You know, Mr. Jagger has it SO dead on: "What a draaaaaaag it is getting old!" I'm so glad you gave me the replay on that, because I guess I'd banked that whole set of memories somewhere WAY back in an old, dusty, super-crazy-locked-tight part of the ole noggin. I was thinking maybe you had me confused with somebody else. I kept thinking that I had only been on a single RenFaire trip, and that was with my SPARK class. DUH! It took a little priming, but the neuropumpthingy FINALLY kicked in, and I remember it now. Not vividly, but clearly enough.
See, if I had the sausage experience today, I'd have volleyed back immediately, probably making a big show with a swift swat to your ass (for dramatic effect, of course) and a comment along the lines of, "Gee, (turning to you as though for confirmation, maybe checking my Swatch nonchalantly) what's it been, hon? Five minutes since we got off the bus?" And THEN I'd have walked off.
Its so peculiar, the way I've always had that sassy, rebellious streak, but I had to kind of try it out, like I was learning to walk or something. Hey, no sweat hinting to the Mouthy Broads that I had to see DAILY that I'd just performed fellatio in a crowded bus on a guy who was very much dating another girl, but somehow snapping back a saucy reply to a total stranger at the flippin' RenFaire was too much of an ego hit!?!? Go figure. Those sausage wenches though, they'll catch you off guard EVERY time!
Ok, maybe growing up isn't all that bad... at least for me, it has removed a lot of concern about other people's opinions of me. In those days, I really wanted not to care, and I tried my best convince everyone that I didn't, but I did, of course. I like to think I put on a relatively good show of indifference, but I was a mess just below the surface. I suppose pretty much everyone was. Because seriously? There's no WAY Coca-Cola shirts would have ever caught on otherwise!
I do indeed recall the post-Faire shoulder-snooze, too. I seem to remember yours being the best I'd had. (Your SHOULDER!) In fact, I don't think I found its equal until about nine years ago, so yours held the records for most inviting/comfy even through my first marriage! How important you must feel now, having had that little tidbit bestowed upon you by "The Mighty Toff." (har har) How wonderfully flattered I am that you called me that... silly as it is. Occasionally, that little insecure Sophomore chick gets a major boost from a seemingly ridiculous detail like that, even if it is twenty years old or thereabouts! So, uh, keep 'em coming if you have any more little gems in there. That's GOOOOOOOOOOD stuff!
I never cease to be blown away by the how weird a thing the human memory can be! I wrote an entry on it about a year ago, and even after a terrible bout of syllaborrhea, I never felt like I'd really quite captured it completely, how two people can have shared an experience and come away with drastically different recollections of the identical events. Too, it's always so curious to me that Event X might be something that remains with me as a waking memory until I reach the grave, whereas the person who shared Event X with me might forget all about it and have to be spoon-fed the details in order to call it back up (witness the above Senior Trip!).
Big, waterlogged, glucose-hogging, protein-dependent, organic computers hanging around up there in our heads, that's what we have, only there's no Microsoft to systematize things all nice and neat with any discernible file structure! Nope, it's all handled behind the scenes. While we dream and when we're busy doing other things, some aspect of ourselves just plugs away, putting this memory in that folder, that folder under super-duper-crazy-double-lockdown-security, and keeping this other memory floating around in the forefront of our minds like a damned mosquito, because it really doesn't make any flippin' sense that we keep THINKING about it! Shit, I need to go see my shrink! (har har har har--- no, really!)
It's seeming more and more, when I talk to people from back in those years, that maybe some part of me has worked REALLY hard to keep as much of my life between the ages of about 14 and 24 stowed neatly away, where not even I can access it readily! I'm positive I don't have any kind of trauma worthy of a Lifetime Movie, no creepy molester guidance counselor uncles or anything like that, but it was a very FULL and very trying decade in all. I guess that's reason enough that some part of me tries to protect me from it. I am really really glad that you and I are corresponding... it is nice to have GOOD things pop back up in my conscious memory about 'dem days. It reminds me how it is that I can be a fairly stable and productive adult, despite all the crap.
Friends is how.
Ok... and now I'm feeling all inspired and stuff, so I'll probably copy and paste at least parts of this and flesh it out for a blog entry. So now you're my Muse too. It just doesn't end, eh? Oh, what WILL the Mouthy Broads say???
Have a restful night, and may it be as comfy as that long ago shoulder nap;)
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