As my eight-year-old grabs the phone and begins to plan our social calendar for the next 48 hours — down to the hour, I have a few thoughts..
Children
Just Say No
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Jitter Bug
There’s a bug going around the school this spring. I usually resist the urge to pump my kids full of unnecessary antibiotics, but last night Thing2’s nose was runneth-ing over, and I got out the purple stuff.
Literally taking his sniffles in stride, Thing2 came limping over to me (apparently this particular strain of flu is being sponsored by the American Branch of the Department of Silly Walks) and opened his mouth. I popped in a spoonful of grape-flavor. He danced on one foot and then the other quickly and then looked at me and smiled.
“I’m just making sure it gets everywhere, Mom.”
“The flu?”
“No, the medicine through my body.” His legs regained functionality as he slid around the floor, jitterbugging to his internal iPod. “And, I think it’s working, Mom.”
One of us clearly doesn’t understand how the purple stuff is supposed to work, but it might not be the guy dancing around the kitchen in his jammies.
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A Simple Life
Growing up, I loved Little House on the Prairie. I loved it so much, I thought I wanted to switch places with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I loved the idea of making everything you used, and there seemed to be a simplicity to their lives that doesn't exist now. Once I got older and learned to appreciate things like penicillin and voting, that wish vanished (now I'd settle for a Time Machine for the occasional visit),
Searching through town records and shared family trees, it's clear rural life was definitely simpler back then. You were born. You lived. You struggled. If you were lucky, you made it to adulthood and struggled some more.
We struggle with bills and schedules. We struggle with chores and parenting, but when I come across the all too-frequent pairs of dates indicating the existence of a child who died as soon as he or she drew breath, I know I don't really struggle at all.
That struggle is one any parent can imagine. To imagine it happening one or two times in a row – sometime five or six in a lifetime – and still keep fighting just so you could keep parenting the children that managed to draw a next breath, however, is to begin to understand what real strength must have been (and still is where this story continues to plays out around the world).
It is also to begin to appreciate in earnest that a complicated life is actually a fortunate one.
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White Noise
Tuesday, we were looking forward to another snowy night and day. Like most northern regions, it takes a lot more than 6-12″ to get Vermonters flustered, but, to be perfectly honest, it’s not the snow that rattles my nerves, it’s the snow day.
I work from home. Most of the time it’s a good racket – especially when Thing1 and Thing2 get the unexpected day off. It’s not all sunshine and lollipops, however, especially when Thing1 and Thing2 get the unexpected day off. They’re good kids, but, try as I might, I have not found the trick to getting them to sit quietly with their hand folded over their laps while mommy deals with customers online (if you’ve found it online somewhere, send me the link). But, as I found out over Christmas break (almost two weeks of expected days off), silence isn’t always golden.
Seven-year-old Thing2 – already plastered to the ceiling in anticipation of Santa’s visit – had spent the morning migrating from lego projects to torturing his brother. At one point, he managed to combine activities, causing a crescendo of ‘MOM!’ from thirteen-year-old Thing1’s room. Thing1 had ‘accidentally’ knocked Thing2’s lego sculpture out of his hand. The ruins of his engineering masterpiece were strewn about the floor. One of the witnesses to the ‘accident’ was red faced, the other was in tears. I was chatting online with several customers at once and decided there wasn’t time to call in CSI to determine if the destruction was accidental or premeditated, and I ordered Thing2 to the living room for a cool-down on the iPad.
Lips pursed, arms folded over his chest, Thing2 marched to a corner of the couch after retrieving a blanket from his bunk. He stood on the couch, arranging the blanket just so and, when he had created his cave, grabbed the iPad from the table and retreated under the patchwork tent.
Thing2 has loved the iPad since it emerged from its sleek white box. Like most kids, he knows more about it than a seasoned software engineer, and I’m ashamed to admit that it plays babysitter too often on days like this.
The next day, each Thing retreated automatically to his own corner. One was in his room working on a computer project with a friend in Maine. Two was under his tent with headphones borrowed from daddy. For most of the morning, the only sound came from my keyboard.
That night, I finished work on time and, with a small break in the depression that had been amplifying for months, I thought an after dinner post was in order. But as the Big Guy took up residence on the couch for his winter’s nap and I began loading the wood stove to cook dinner, I noticed that it was still very quiet. The dishes clanking were the only noise.
Thing2 was still under the blanket and headphones, his legos and sketchbooks gathering dust. There was no new dance routine to watch and animate. There was no impromptu party waiting in his room. And suddenly I was scrambling for something to write.
Like a nagging housewife driving her husband to the arms of a lover, my quest for quiet had silenced my inspiration with electronic lithium.
Cousins arrived the next day, and neither child was interested in anything electronic as we celebrated Christmas.
The Monday after the family left, the silence was deafening, but the iPad was nowhere to be found. Thing2 emerged late in the morning, dragging his tent. He looked for his digital drug, but, not finding it, deposited his blanket on the couch and padded over to the Christmas tree where his latest Lego project was still sitting, the remaining 500 pieces sorted into empty ice cream buckets.
For the rest of the morning, he delivered a muted monologue of the building of his new starship. Occasionally, frustrated tears punctuated the chatter and interrupted my work. I broke up a few fights, but, when dinner time rolled around my inspirer-in-chief joined me in the kitchen to show me his latest dance moves. And, oddly enough, the noise made the work day better.
I didn’t write that night, but Tuesday morning, that probable snow day got me just rattled enough to get out of bed early and start tapping.
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Wedge Issues
Thirteen-year-old Jack and I have always been able to bond, not just over the mother-child kissing of boo-boo’s or doling out of hugs after a meltdown, but because we have a lot of the same interests. Lately, Jack’s primary interest has been focused on all things computer. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with this interest. I love that he has a hobby that lets me bond with my son while we discuss digital life. I hate that his passion has also become a wedge.
At the end of the school year, Jack brought home a less-that-stellar grade on a final exam, and the Big Guy and I lowered the boom. He had already enrolled in computer camp (his first sleep away camp), so we let him indulge his obsession over the summer. When he got home, however, we made it clear that until a satisfactory first progress report came home from school, he was grounded from the computer. We live in the middle of the woods and any social event requires us to act as chauffeur, so traditional grounding is redundant. Jack’s obsession revived the punishment as a useful stick.
We’re not shy about removing privileges or assigning extra chores when the occasion arises, and, in the past, Jack has seen the error of his ways and usually accepted our punishments as just. Something about being thirteen, however, has made the enforcement of this sentence much less pleasant.
The punishment has inspired tortured looks of betrayal from my first born. It’s prompted legal arguments about the wisdom of ending the punishment earlier and, as homework requires more time on the computer, it’s also inspired him to attempt head-on defiance of the punishment. No longer are we the people he trusts without question. No longer is our judgement sound. In his eyes there is now the constant question that, if we are so wrong about this punishment, what other things have his parents been wrong about? I don’t think he questions our love for him, but, for the first time in our relationship, he’s actively questioning if we know what we’re doing. I have that question all the time (and I can write it because I know he doesn’t read this blog).
I remember my parents using similar carrots and sticks and how they became wedges as well. It didn’t take becoming a parent to see around the wedge, but I think it did take walking this mile in their moccasins to see that the wedge really brought us closer because at that point they weren’t trying to be my friends. They were being my parents. And that’s ultimately what any kid needs.
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The Fountain of Youth
“Advanced Maternal Age” read the chart when I peeked over the doctor’s screen. I was only 38, and I’ve known women who had their first child in their forties, so I was a bit taken aback to be lumped into a category that labeled me as ‘old’.
“It’s just to track risk factors,” explained the doctor as she glided the ultrasound wand over my growing belly. When I was pregnant with Jack, six years earlier, I already had a little of the feeling that the Big Guy and I were late getting in the Family Way. Most people we knew had started their families within a year or two of getting married, while the Big Guy and I spent four years acting like teenagers together. But, despite that most of our friends’ kids were grade school and beyond by the time Jack arrived, we never questioned our decision to take things slowly – until that moment.
My ultrasound was a little off, and we ended up needing to go to a bigger hospital for a closer look at developing Thing2, but the possibility that he might have Downs Syndrome was not the cause of my age angst. Rather, it was the slow recognition that I would be almost two generations older than my youngest child. I would be hitting the ‘change of life’ when he starts getting pimples. When he gets to his age of adventure, I and my body would be wanting to slow down.
Seven years later (Thing2 will be seven in October) I can still remember that moment in the doctor’s office as if it were seven minutes ago. At the beginning of the summer, I about it a lot as I huffed and puffed to the top of the driveway. On Labor Day, I thought about it again.
Labor Day Monday, Thing2 and I ran in a race together. I ran the 5K, and he ran the kid’s half-mile fun run. It was a friendly crowd of five thousand people, and there were about 200 kids in the fun run. I was excited for the 5K, but I was nervous for the fun run. Thing2 is a country boy – how would he deal with the four foot high surge of humanity flowing around the block? Would he be scared? Would he get discouraged if he got tired?
The starting gun went off, and I had my answer very quickly. Thing2 was at the back of the group, so we had time to get to the finish line. As he came around the corner, he briefly faltered, but the smile never left his face. He passed us, barely hearing our shouts of encouragement, and I realized that tears and not the soft drizzle were making my face wet.
Thing2 crossed the finish line and waited for us in the kids’ area. When we got to him, he had already collected his green ribbon. I hugged him and raced to the starting line of my own race. His smile never left my mind, and it propelled me – with a smile of my own – the entire 3.10 miles.
Our runs were the culmination of a summer of fitness and following my kids around mountains and into dried-up waterfalls and down sandy beaches. It was a summer of being inspired to live better and do more with both my boys throughout. I ran my last half-mile, singing to my music and thinking about the upcoming kids’ winter sports, and that seven-year-old memory came back to me. This time, however, when I pictured the doctor’s office, it wasn’t the words on the chart that flashed in front of my eyes – it was the memory of the grainy black-and-white screen glowing with the image of my wriggling fountain of youth.
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Dispatches From the Road – Romance and Better Things
At five in the morning after a night of trying to stretch out while still fulfilling my duties as pillow-in-chief to six-year-old Thing2, the train seemed a lot less romantic than when we got on the night before. The rosy glow was gone, but what remained was better.
We had planned an elegant evening meal in the dining car but, realizing we would need to bring our bags or leave them unattended, decided to take turns foraging at the snack bar. In the time it took each of us to find some microwave pasta and sandwiches, Thing2 had befriended the four-year-old in the seat in front of us, scoring himself a box of crackers in the process.
It wasn’t late, but it was dark by the time we all finished snacking and eating, and Thing2 and his new friend had little trouble snuggling against their respective pillow-moms for a short summer’s nap. They said goodnight to each other, and eyes were closed in a few short minutes. It wasn’t romantic, but it was cozy.
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When Words Don’t Work
We drove down on Saturday to spend the night with Jack’s aunt and uncle who live in the same town where the summer camp is being held. Their proximity to the camp was a small source of comfort to me – I knew any real emergency would not involve Jack waiting three hours for a loved one to get to him. My stomach still ached when I woke up Sunday morning, however. It wasn’t the 80 degree heat at 6:00 AM that was bothering my system. It was the knowledge that I was about to leave my first born, Jack, on his own for the first time.
Twelve-year-old Jack, excited about the week ahead at a college just the night before, was quiet when he came down to breakfast. He ate his usual mountain of food, speaking only in answer to a direct question from me or his aunt. Feigned stoicism has been a hallmark of his tween years, but when his little brother failed to goad him into a squabble over a Lego ship in his cereal, I asked Jack if everything was okay.
“I’m just a little nervous,” he answered, pouring a third bowl of cereal.
“You’ll do great. You’ll do fine,” His aunt and I responded in unison, but my own worry was growing. Was he ready for this? I was about the same age when I spent my first summer away, but for some reason, my child seemed much younger.
The morning passed quickly, filled with a last minute haircut and shopping for toiletries. The distraction seemed to relax him, and by the time we drove him to registration, he felt confident enough to enjoy a little eighth grade humor.
The summer camp is being held at a small college where Jack will get to indulge his computing addiction for a week. When we got to the camp the first order of business was filing out forms and giving a deposit for his dorm key. Paper work done, we followed paper signs with big blue arrows down the hall of the college science building toward the computer lab.
The arrows lead us around a corner and into a large room with a wall of windows. Rows of tables weighted with the latest in computing technology filled most of the room. As Jack noticed the games on a few of the screens and the very low-tech chess boards setup at the front of the room, he began to smile.
In less than an hour we had installed him in a dorm room and met his roommate (a one-year veteran of the camp). We brought him back to the computer lab to say goodbyes. Now, I was the only one feeling nervous, but it was for myself. How was I going to spend a week without seeing his face?
All nervousness had left Jack’s face as a counselor invited him to play a computer game while he waited for the rest of the group. I knew, for the first time, he was with other science-oriented kids, and he would be fine. The Big Guy and I were smiling as we drove out of the college campus.
But the day’s story had just begun.
The Big Guy and I made the three hour trip home with our six-year-old. We stopped for dinner and ice cream and settled down on the couch to try and find a new, temporary routine. Exhaustion was helping us put the day behind us when my cell phone began beeping. I clicked the home button, saw a Skype alert and clicked it.
“Are you there?” It was Jack.
“Are you ok?” I texted back.
“I think I want to come home,” he wrote.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Is anyone teasing you? Do you feel scared?” He answered no to my questions, and I knew he was going through what all kids experience on their first night away from home. Making sure that he felt safe, even if he was already homesick, the Big Guy and I talked and texted him to let him know we were supporting him.
“Words just don’t help right now,” he wrote after a time. I knew they didn’t. I knew the only thing that would help was for him to get through the first night and see things from the fresh perspective of a seasoned camper.
Technology was a blessing and a curse in the unfolding of this story. Once, when summer camps controlled all communications, allowing only mail and care packages in and emergency phone calls out, the parents may have been aware of the first night fears. The ability to connect from anywhere at anytime, however, ensured that we felt his angst as keenly as he did. As we texted good night, I also wondered if the ease of connection was less a safety net and more a crutch.
I spent most of the night with my phone on, waiting for a midnight text and worrying how he was doing. Most likely, he’s eating breakfast right now and getting into his day, his parents once again an afterthought – as we should be this week. I’m still watching the text screen, hoping for a positive update, but knowing that at this moment that ‘No news is good news’, is a lot more than a tired cliche.
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Hungry
The same storm systems that spawned numerous twisters out west few weeks ago, brought unusually violent spring weather to southwestern Vermont last week. Six-year-old- Thing2 and I were just pulling out of the supermarket parking lot last Sunday when one of them hit. I’ve had enough near-death experiences to know that this was not one, but it was life-changing it its own way.
I should be too old to be nervous during storms. However, having spent 20 minutes two years ago waiting out a waterspout-turned-tornado while all the adults in the family leaned against a set of massive sliding glass doors to keep the wind from popping them off their tracks and flinging them into the room at my parents’ house in Michigan and then watching funnel clouds form to the north of I80/90 in Indiana last year, I will admit that I am afraid of thunderstorms. And last Sunday’s was a big one.
Just as we were turning out of the parking lot, we were surrounded by pink light and a deafening boom. My arm hair was standing straight up, and I decided to look for someplace to wait out the storm with my youngest child. We drove a few blocks, looking for a substantial building with a parking spot near a door. The lightning was frequent and spectacular, and bye the time we pulled into a fast-food place, my nerves had all but killed my latest diet.
My cell phone heralded our entrance into the restaurant by suddenly emitting a loud warning signal and severe, immediate weather alert. A few other phones began emitting the same alert (the company’s support rep would later tell me that this was part of their service). The warnings seemed superfluous and late at first, but as I read the company’s alert text, it became clear the storm was getting worse.
Thing2 usually carries his superhero persona (SuperDude) with him – costumed or not. As the wind whipped harder, however, the adults around us discussed the ferocity of the storm. The restaurant staff momentarily forgot their ‘posts’ and began chattering loudly with each other and the customers, and, noticing the nervous faces, SuperDude became a six-year-old for the moment.
I actually dread these moments. There are plenty of times when my job description entails soothing his fears – big and small, real or imagined. Usually, I enjoy the cuddling and the bonding. When I’m also scared, keeping Thing2 from feeling the fear is tough. It’s hard because I’m hoping he doesn’t figur out I’m telling him to not do what I’m doing (shaking in my boots), but it’s also hard because it’s the reminder that I’m the one for both of us to lean on and to show him the way.
At that moment the only thing to do was listen for more warnings and keep occupied. I ordered us some food, hoping carbs and a cheap, plastic toy would distract us both. The restaurant managers were wrangling the staff back to their posts now, and we sat down to eat.
Another alert sounded a flash-flood warning. Outside I suddenly noticed cars negotiating bumper-deep water and wondered if we should have found refuge elsewhere. The manager confirmed my doubts a few minutes later in an unexpected way.
The wind was subsiding. The lightning was not, however, and I was a little surprised to see two young employees heading for the door. I thought they were headed home, but the manager called out to them to leave their radios on the table with her. They complied and, rolling up their pants, went outside to clear the parking lot drains, jumping occasionally as lightning cracked nearby.
Had my twelve-year-old been with me, the sight of a manager prioritizing the safety of electronics over her more-easily replaced employees to ensure that a foot of water wouldn’t impede the sale of french fries for five minutes would have been an opportunity for (yet another) object lesson about the importance of studying. Instead it was an object lesson for me. My momentary appall at the complete disregard two human beings’ safety quickly shrank into shame, turning bitter the french fry I was eating.
Any comfort derived from the salt-and-carb salve was gone. I knew I financed this sort of thing everyday. I just don’t see it up close and personal. I waited for Thing2 to finish his meal. When the storm subsided enough we left, and, even though I’d eaten a full day’s calories, I felt empty. I knew, however, that I would only find whant I needed at home. I also knew that I could not keep coming back to that place on the GPS or in my own heart that helps my own apathy flourish.
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Of Beanstalks and Boys
I had planned on re-dubbing Thing1, my twelve-going-on-twenty-year-old 'Goliath'. At the time, I was just getting used to reprimanding and rewarding my first born while looking up at him, and the name seemed to fit him. But despite his occasional flashes of teenaged angst and backtalk, my giant is a gentle one.
I've used pseudonyms for my boys, not so much out of fear of stalkers, but because I want them to have as much control over their identities online as I would want over mine. The stories I tell about them and the Big Guy are my vision of them, and someday they will want the chance to define themselves. But now, as Thing1 is evolving and daily declaring his independence, the nickname that fit him just a year ago, doesn't seem to do him justice.
I love the name we gave him. It's different. I wanted the nickname I gave him online to evoke the same feeling I have when I hear his given name. So I began running through a list of names, finding things that rhymed until I hit 'Jack'. Initially, I discarded it, continuously rattling off names as I shut the door to my office to let him Skype with his friends. I went across the hall to throw another load in the machine and while I continued the end-of-school project of sorting through hand-me-downs. As I was grumbling to myself about how much more expensive it was about to be to buy men's pants for my firstborn, I came back to the name Jack.
It's not particularly different, but suddenly it fit him. He has been growing like a proverbial string bean, but lately he's a bit more like Jack than the beanstalk. He's headed to overnight computer camp this summer. It's his first time away from family, but it's also the first time he's made his own choices about his education. He wanted to go to learn. He chose which course seemed most interesting. He's the one making decisions about how he'll finance and build a new computer.
This boy who has begun to thrive on challenge is so much more than a mischievous imp (although he's still that quite often). He's ready to make his own adventures. He's Jack.
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The Path Twice Taken
It’s been almost seven years since the Big Guy wheeled me to the door of the hospital and went to get the car. With a carefully swaddled bundle in my arms, I waited, but we weren’t alone. The hospital staff was watching over us, but I had another more trustworthy companion waiting on me and the newest member of the family.
Only three days earlier, when I’d looked at Jack, my then tow-headed boy, I has still seen the baby I had nursed and cuddled. As he stood beside me, however, hovering over his new brother and checking to make sure I wasn’t getting too much draft, I realized he was firmly into the next phase. Only then, as I sat near the hospital entrance, glancing at my new baby and then at my very protective and increasingly capable first born did it hit me that we were about to start the journey of taking a completely dependent life form from diapers to door-holding all over again.
It was a journey full of phases. Some were longer and more arduous than others, but we loved every one of them. I loved the nursing (once we got the hang of it) and the toothless smile. I loved the tiny arms that wrapped around my neck, and I was already loving watching him discover the world outside our yard.
This would be the last time I traveled this path. I was still fairly busy negotiating the next steps with Jack. At the back of my brain, however, I made a promise to myself to not let the confidence gained over the last six years of parenting translate into indifference to the joy that the upcoming phases with Thing2 would bring.
Trying to keep that promise has been challenging when we’re busy or swamped with bills. For the most part both, though, the Big Guy and I have been lucky enough to see and mark the special moments. We’ve seen the first smile and step, and we’ve been treated to the antics and theatrics. And we’ve both repeatedly commented that it’s all going too fast.
A few weeks ago I went to a family reunion. Cousins and cousins-once-removed all brought children to the event. The ages ran the gamut from nine months to 19 years old. Some of the cousins met for the first time that weekend, but any shyness was trampled under the feet of toddlers chasing teenagers around the yard.
The nine-month-old belonged to the daughter of one of my cousins and was the perfect age for the grown ups to play with. The child’s aunts and grandparents and cousins were only too happy to hold and cuddle her so that the young mother could take a break.
On the last night of the reunion, the youngest cousin was hungry and fussy after a day of sight-seeing, and, when her mother went to fetch a bottle, I offered to help.
“Will she come to me?” I asked hopefully. The ten-year-old holding her was looking less enchanted as her whimpers threatened to escalate, and he nodded at me. I scooped the baby out of his arms, settling her into mine and began to rock on my feet, mentally traveling that time when I was able to solve all my boys’ problems with milk and a snuggle.
She settled somewhat. Her mom handed me the bottle. She sucked the nipple into her mouth and began to drink. Her eyes became slits, occasionally widening to make sure I was still holding the bottle, until, sated, she gave into sleep. For a brief minute, I thought, I would love to do this all over again.
As if on cue, Thing2 emerged from the basement where the older children were watching movies. He watched me with the baby for a minute before wrapping his arms around my waist. At first I thought he might be jealous or having memories of that era when he rarely left my arms. Then he looked up at me.
“Mom, can I help with the baby?” he asked. I looked down at him. In that moment, I took another time trip, but this time it was to that moment in the hospital lobby. Thing2, a superhero who always rescues me from my darker thoughts, now helped me mark a new special moment where I noticed he has slipped out of the baby/little kid phase and become part of a wider world, and I smiled at him.
“No, thanks, Buddy,” I answered and asked him if he could announce to the downstairs that it was time for the big kids to eat. He smiled, instantly forgetting the sleeping baby two feet away as he ran to the basement door and shouted to the other kids to wash hands. I handed the somehow still-sleeping baby back to her mother and went to get a plate together for my fussier eater and continue our journey.
Picking My Battles 