Resolve

And I don't mean the carpet cleaner, neither. Though we've been using plenty of that the past two days.*

I'm writing this post for people who, as the year closes, find themselves surrounded by New Year's resolution-list-making-fools.

Here's the thing: I don't believe in resolutions.  Not really.  At least, not the ambiguous ones like, "work out more," "spend less," "learn to let go."  Sure...  Tell me how that works out for you.

See, in my professional life, we teach folks that goals have to be incremental, achievable, and measurable in order for them to be "good" goals.  Good goals would be things like, "work out once or more per week," "save $100 per month for vacation spending."  

If you don't define them like that, the bar is insanely low (I worked out ONCE this year, which was more than last year!) or completely un-check-offable.  Like "learn to let go." Ugh.  Just...  Ugh.

That's one of those twee-meant-to-be-empowering sentiments, like "live life out loud!" and "learn to put myself first sometimes." These are things that, to me, feel like an awful-behavior excuse cloaked in a credo. "Sorry you want me to read you a story, sweetie -- Mama's gotta go to the bar again 'cause I'M PUTTING MYSELF FIRST LIKE I'M SUPPOSED TO!' 

Where was I?  Oh, right...

Lists don't work for me. Resolution lists feel like my online shopping experiences at Gap.com.  I fill my cart with everything I could possibly imagine wearing.  Then, I look at the thirty-three items and the $800 tally and think, "Okay, these two things.  These are all I really need."

Vision boards? Those just seem like arts & crafts projects.  Putting a picture of the Eiffel tower on a cork board is not going to get me to Paris. Honestly, just ask my freshman-year roommate at Georgetown.  There I was, at my #1 choice of school, thrilled to be there.  My mind was challenged and engaged by my courses, and I fell in with a pack of theater nerds who had *also* watched Monty Python's oeuvre in its entirety. Joy! And my roommate?  Lovely girl, but absolutely dolorous over the fact that she hadn't been able to go to Oxford (because she didn't want to take the extra year to do her A-levels and fall behind her friends, year-wise).  So, in what struck me as a particularly effusive sour grapes episode of vision-boarding, she papered her side of the cinder block dorm cube with postcards of Cambridge.  Which she also did not attend.

My point is, the wish lists are the easy part for me.  The challenge is wanting something enough to create a blue print for how to get from the wanting to the having.  Not that my blue prints are solid.  Nope.  My blue prints generally look like Georges Seurat painted them.  Step back about twenty feet and I can see what's happening.  Up close though?  Kind of a dotty mess. That's OK, though, because ultimately, if I can see the whole picture, then I'm probably going to achieve it.  

At any given time, I have blue prints for two or three goals that fall outside of my ongoing goals to be a kind wife, mother, and maintain gainful employment (all interrelated, of course).  Because, honestly?  That's all that fits in my wee brain space. 

Here are my current goals (okay, fine, its a list, but I swear that I actually have blue prints and outlines and quite possibly footnotes for each):

1) Publish a short story.  Not self-published, and not through my current employer.  But through some sort of third-party:  a periodical, an anthology, a contest.  I'm hungry for that validation.

2) Work with my brothers/sisters to clear out and sell our parents' home.  There's no urgency to this since my parents were totally fiscally awesome and owned their home and left an unfathomable estate that will cover the expenses of maintaining it for awhile.  But as long as we have that home in our names, I feel a cloud hanging over us.  It doesn't offer comfort. It offers work, and sadness, and a huge blog post in which I sift through all of the feels I have about it.  Which leads me to...

3) Blog weekly.  I stopped doing this in 2013.  I know why.  My learning technique, my processing technique, is to write it down.  Always has been.  And I did not want to process this year.  I wanted to be numb.  I wanted to fold up the sadness, the missing, the hurting, into a neat little origami crane and stuff it way, way, way down where maybe it would just disappear and I wouldn't ever have to actually go through any of those feelings.  Unfortunate side effect to trying not to feel things:  it blocks up all of your other creative flow.  So that novel I've been working on for two years?  I'm only just finishing it. And oh, the editing it will need.  But the more-regular blogging will hopefully clear the blockage.

*My youngest and my husband either came down with a stomach virus procured at one of the fine rest stops along the Cleveland to Baltimore highways and byways, or should not have eaten that many of my reduced fat potato chips during the Ravens-Bengals game on Sunday.  It's kind of a toss up.  GET IT?

So Stupid (Holiday Edition)

I'm only two Christmas cards into my list of approximately eleven thousand (because, big family) and I've already shed my first tears.  I brilliantly decided to combine my holiday missives with my thank-yous to those who reached out to me via cards, e-mails, or visits when my Dad died.

And by brilliant, I mean stupid.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Time to go medicate with some red wine, I guess.  But before I do, I should note that I have no expectations for this season.  I will put on my game face, and I do have some lovely visits and celebrations planned to which I am unabashedly looking forward.  And,I  know that I will enjoy them.  But there will be moments when the reality surfaces, like styrofoam in water, that I am an orphan. That my parents are gone, and that the family norm must once again be re-set.

So, if I need to disappear...  If I need some quiet time... If I spend an excessive time in the bathroom...  Please know that it's not personal.  Or outrageous bowel trouble.  I just need some time to gather myself before I return in good humor and smiles.

For the Love of Sci-Fi

Gah.

There's just been too much lately.  Too much fun, too much sad, too much excitement, too much booze, too much commitment, too much anxiety, too much work, too much TV, too much PTA, too much writing...

I can't really distill life events when my mental still is flooded with...  Too much.  So, let me start...

Today, I deposited the checks for my share of my Dad's life insurance payout.  What a mindf*ck.  Yay!  The equivalent of what I net in a half a year!  That's awesome!  And I have this money...  Because my Dad died.

I took out some cash from the deposit.  Not a lot.  Just a little.  And I took my kids and my sister to the Maryland Science Center.

See, my Dad was a child of science fiction.  He was born in its Golden Age.  His shelves were thick with Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Ray Kurtzweil, Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, Aldous Huxley, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, Ursula K. Leguin, and hundreds of other lesser-known authors.  He had two replicas of the Starship Enterprise in his bedroom (which I'm sure my mother loved).

Did I tell you about the time when I was a seven and my Dad invited me to go to the movie theater to see 'Bladerunner'?  (I nearly went.  Mom tempted me to stay home with ice cream and potato chips, a rare treat in our family.)

One time, my husband (who shares my Dad's love of sci-fi), asked my Dad if there was anything that danced on those thousands of pages in his den that he was disappointed hadn't yet come to fruition.  My Dad thought about it for a second, sighed, and said, "I really thought we'd be living on the moon by now."

Sorry.  That got a bit jumbled.

My point is, my father loved all things science.  He was fascinated by how things worked.  So, it seemed like a good use of what I consider to be his money on a pursuit that he would have supported.  The kids loved it.  My sister loved it.  We toured the standing exhibits, then explored the current exhibit about Mummies (which is AWESOME).  That's a separate post, I think, because there's some hilariousness there.

Speaking of separate posts... I have to write about what it's like to gain from my parents' deaths, when all I really want is for them to have had more time. Don't let me forget to do that.

Stupid Outlook

I logged into my Outlook calendar this morning to see what was on tap for this week.  I noticed a personal appointment that needed to be flipped to the following week.  So, I meandered over to the next week, and boom. October 7, I was scheduled to take my Dad to a routine follow-up visit at the Wilmer Eye Clinic. Guess I have to call them to let them know that he's passed away.

Fun way to start the week.  Oh, wait.  By fun I mean depressing.

Dealing with Condolences

So, people are kind. They are sending heartfelt messages, lovely cards, gorgeous flowers. For this I am grateful.  I cannot say I handle the expressions of sympathy with grace. I try. I well up, but the tears don't actually spill. The sympathizers don't feel they've poured salt in an open wound. I think. I hope.

Anyway, before I launch into this next Tale of Wha-huh?, let me please make it clear that I am so very grateful for any/all acknowledgements of my father's passing.

Tonight, I went to a PTA meeting.  What?  You can be cool and an officer on the board of the PTA. At the conclusion of the meeting, the teacher liaison, who happens to have been my daughter's kindergarten teacher, who also happens to be my neighbor (yay, Smalltimore!), approached me.

"I just wanted to say, I'm so sorry," she said, touching my arm.

She said this without preamble, but I wasn't confused. There is only one thing about which people express their sorries to me these days.

"Thank you so much," I respond. What I can't figure out, what makes me wrack my brain, is how she knew my father had passed away.

"[Your daughter] told me about your father, and I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I met him." Her eyes went all shiny.

It was all I could do not to wrinkle my brow. She met him? When? Since my mother passed away, my father didn't really get out and about.  He came over to my house for some events, though not many.  He came to one of my daughter's dance recitals, but that had nothing to do with school.  So where did my neighbor meet my father?

Oh, wait.

She's thinking of my father-in-law.

This occurs to me about three minutes into our conversation.  What do I do here? Do I tell her she's thinking of the wrong guy? That her near-tears are for a fella that she actually never met?  Or do I just try to keep my father-in-law hidden the next time he visits so that she doesn't think some kind of wraith walks the earth?  Or, just let it go, and let her be weirded out and figure it out for herself if she sees my father-in-law sauntering around our yard in months/years to come?

That last one.  That's what I'm going to do.

When My Mother Was Terminally Ill, She Said My Dad Would Only Last Six Months Without Her

She shared this with me as she pointed out where they kept their wills.  She was wrong (to her eternal consternation, I'm sure). He lasted nearly three years without her.

My Dad died on August 18, 2013.  At home, in his sleep, without fanfare.  It is, I think, how he would have wanted it.  Really, goddamn, isn't that how we all want it?  The ultimate Irish Goodbye.

I'm so sad. I loved him so very much, and haven't absorbed the myriad ways in which his gone-ness will impact me.  But, some truth:  since my mother passed away, my father has repeatedly said he was 'despondant.' He would also tell me that he thought he was very clever, marrying a woman thirteen years his junior, cementing (in his mind) the notion that she would outlive him, and take care of him in his dotage.

When that didn't happen, when she got sick, it threw him for a loop.  I remember hugging him as he sobbed -- for only a half a second -- in the waiting room when the doctors said that the sample they'd extracted from her innards confirmed small cell lung cancer.  It claimed her five months later, just as the stats said it would.

He never really recovered.  He put on a brave face, and was there for my mother in every way.  But they were so entwined, so thoroughly enmeshed in each other, that when she died, he didn't know how to be.

I don't fault him for this.  That's love.  Pure, unadulterated adoration.  She was gone, he was done (in spirit).  The week before he died, his heart rate was elevated.  We weren't sure why.  We took him to see his doctors (geriatric specialists at Hopkins) twice that week.  They ran tests, drew blood, and gave him the all clear (with scheduled return visits for monitoring).

But then he died in his sleep.

He was 82.  This is not tragic, in the grand scheme of things.  But he was my father, the man who sang 'reveille' to me to wake me up for school; who walked me to school while whistling complicated scales; who read to me and my younger brother every night, asking us to 'stay sweet'; who embraced scatological humor at the dinner table; who read us 'the funnies' in the morning when they made him chuckle; who taught me how to wield a hammer to frightening effect; who gave me a wildly expensive camera when I was thirteen because it was a shared interest; who listened to my plea to go to art camp while he was bedridden and recovering from a hernia operation; who picked me up from a bazillion after-school events; who, despite initially greeting my husband by the incorrect 'Jake,' went on to have endless sci-fi conversations with him (which only makes sense since he was born on the cusp of a golden age of comics and science fiction); who knelt down and played on the floor with all of my children, and delighted in their every milestone.  This man who loved me, who would help me whenever I asked, whom I was helping as he grew older...  He's just gone.  And I am bereft. 

Parenting Milestone

I had a kid over for dinner who has a lethal peanut allergy, and I didn't kill him!

Am I (neighborhood) mother of the year, or what?

Some of my nephews have really bad allergies, so they are not a foreign concept to me (the allergies, I mean; not the nephews).  The boys have eaten at my house plenty of times, and I didn't kill them either.  But, their mother -- my sister -- is usually around, and I'm able to ask her, "Hey -- Fleischmann's margarine doesn't have peanuts in it, right?"

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my former peanut-free hosting duties were a little...  Lazy.  Lazy is what they were.  Sure, I'd read food labels for the obvious stuff, but I'd still thrust the package at her to make sure I didn't miss something.  I had back-up.  She'd tell me if that chicken bouillon is no good, or if that sauce is a problem.

In a play date situation, though, the other parent hands you an epi-pen and waves buh-bye.  His Dad does not stick around to serve as a safety inspector.  You have to make sure that the hamburger buns aren't manufactured in a facility that also handles nuts, and that you scrub the table where your daughter ate a deadly, deadly peanut butter sandwich a mere eight hours earlier, and then you have to give your husband the stink eye because he made her that sandwich when he KNEW a kid with a peanut allergy was coming over later (and sometimes kids drop food on tables then pick up that food and put it in their mouths), and you have to buy special desserts like these because you can't be sure that any of the other desserts you already have in the pantry are OK because you threw out the packaging during your weekend organizational/purge frenzy, and (deep breath) you have to stare at the kid's mouth like a felon to watch for any hive breakouts.

It is only when the kid finishes his meal, eating mostly the gobs of fruit you heaped upon it, and disappears into the basement to play, that you can breathe.

Phew.

Nine

Today, the Boy is nine. NINE. We are mercilessly careening toward double-digits. Ah, who am I kidding.  I'm not really worried about him morphing into some hairy were-teen or anything like that.

It seems to obvious to articulate, but I love this boy, and his sister, and his brother, and their father, with all that I am.  So many, many times I think to myself, "I am so grateful for this life."  We are well, we are stable, we are together, we have a home, we have food, we have easy access to antibiotics.  We flop all over each other, unafraid to request a cuddle.  We make each other laugh.  Most of all, best of all, we aren't chintzy with the hugs and the kisses and the 'I love yous.'

We enjoy each other.

This has been my life for...  For always, actually.  My childhood, my family, was like this.  My dating and engagement and marriage has been like this.  It's only natural that the family that proceeds from my husband and me results in the same.

It has to be said that we also get on each other's nerves, but, you know, this is supposed to be an ode to the boy.

The boy, at nine, is a prize. His chief interests right now, in no particular order, are:

(1) Growing his hair.  I've told you my policy on this, right?  While it kills me that he looks like a greaser whereas I am more of a soc, I am fairly confident that he will lose his hair in his early twenties. I promised myself that I'd allow him to wear it however he wanted to wear it while he has it.
(2) Baseball.  He likes sports, he likes math.  Baseball is all about stats, so, my only question is: why did he not discover this sooner?
(3) 'Radioactive' by Imagine Dragons.  If you haven't watched the video, you really, really must.  Trust me on this.
(4) Riding his bike (WITHOUT TRAINING WHEELS).  This particular feat was a loooooong time coming, and finally FINALLY came to pass during a two-week stay with his grandparents.  Seriously, I think my father-in-law willed this ability into existence.
(5) 'Kickin' It' from DisneyXD.  Unlike #3 up there, I can't really recommend this.  It's awful in the same way that most of these shows are awful.  Snipey, sarcastic kids; doofy adults; and situations that are wildly unlikely.  This probably makes it just like the stuff that I watched at his age.
(6) WWE:  He's still a big fan of wrestling.  I kind of am, too.  It will always have a special place in my heart, because this was the first thing that he brought to us.  Sure, he loved 'The Wiggles' with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, but they happened to be on the channel that his daycare provider had on when he arrived in the morning.  If it had been, say, 'Barney,' I bet we would've gone to 'Barney' concerts with him.  Actually, I take that back. I would've paid someone to take him, but I just would not have been able to endure it.
(7) Water slides.  Swimming + rides = awesomeness.
(8) Lego.  The Boy still loves the Lego.  This may be a lifelong thing, like the Hulk is for my husband.  I may be buying Lego kits for every Christmas and birthday for the Boy.
(9) Being funny.  He prides himself on being part of the funny group of kids at school, and, truthfully, he makes us giggle all the time.  He doesn't prat fall or anything.  He just makes jokes.  A recent classic:

The Boy:  "Hey, Mom?  Why did  Tigger inspect the toilet?"
Me: "I don't know.  Why?"
The Boy:  "He was looking for Pooh!"

And on that note, I'll close this post.

Sympathy Bargain Shoppers

I had to pick up a sympathy card a few days ago, so I stopped into a drugstore on my way to work.  Having been the recipient of a stack of sympathy cards when my mother passed away, I am actually kind of picky about the content.  I gravitate toward the ones that basically say, hey, I know this is an awful time, and I'm thinking of you. That's it.  Anything else just feels like you're trying to smooth over the recipient's loss.

So, there I was, sandwiched between the all-singing, all-dancing birthday cards, and the marshmallow fluff of the anniversary cards, when I saw it:  a twelve-pack 'value' assortment of sympathy cards.

How grim is that?

I spent the next couple of minutes thinking about the customer for that product.  Is it someone who is a planner by nature, knows a bunch of people who are ill, and wants to stock up?  Does that make them a realist?  Or a pessimist?  Is it someone who just sends sympathy cards at the drop of a hat?  Is it someone who doesn't really care what the message is, and they want to check the sympathy card from their to-do list as soon as possible?  Is it someone who fishes for a bargain in any pond?

I shook my head to clear the jumble of questions, picked out the very lovely card that was completely appropriate for the particular person for whom I purchased it, and checked out of the store.

But, I'm still thinking about that bundle...

Fireflies

"Do you want to catch some fireflies with me?" asked my oldest, the words whistling over his grown-up front top teeth.  He's still not completely accustomed to their breadth, so his tongue hasn't figured out where to go to properly form his 's' sounds.  That, like all things, will come with time.

"Yes," I answered, unhesitatingly.  His younger brother was fast asleep in bed, and his sister was out gallivanting with his aunt.  It was just the two of us, which is not often the case.  We ventured outside, barefoot, with the Gladware container his Gram had butchered so that we could catch fireflies, and keep them without killing them.

The grass was soft under our feet, rendered so by the frequent showers that breezed through Cleveland since our arrival. I was already in my pajamas, as was the Boy.  He's nearly nine, which means he's morphing from a boy to a tween, and then a teen, and then an adult.  But he's only nearly nine; he's not in college yet, or experiencing heartache.  He's still my Boy.

"Oh! I caught one!" he breathed.

"Here," I said, peeling back the lid of the Gladware. "Pop him in here."

The Boy scraped the bug from his thumb and into the waiting plastic.

"Why isn't he lighting up?"

"Well," I leaned over the container, bumping heads with the Boy. "He might be kind of afraid.  But here, I'll add some leaves."  I slipped a few sprigs of green into the dish.  "There.  that should make him more comfortable."

"Maybe," the Boy drawled, "maybe we shouldn't put them in there.  Maybe we should just catch them and let them go?"

And that's what we did.  We ran around his grandparents' yard, in the deepening twilight, catching fireflies and throwing them back into the air. Between us, we must've caught about a hundred. We meandered our way around the side, admiring Gram's bountiful blooming garden, and found ourselves on the front porch.  We were headed to settle on the swing for a mother-son cuddle, when something caught the Boy's eye.

"Oh, Mom!" he said. "It's stuck!"

He'd discovered a firefly caught in a spider web. And proceeded to rescue it.  I helped him, and we scraped away as much of the web as we could before releasing the bug back to the garden.

And that's when I felt it, viscerally: no one will ever be good enough for him.

I reserve the right to change my mind whenever I meet his intended, but in that moment, he was the sweetest, kindest, dearest boy that ever there was, and I can barely imagine the person deserving of him.  I suspect all women feel like this about their kids, but the strength of this nearly took my breath away.

I Am So Squishy

Headline:  we moved our youngest to a more convenient daycare provider.

Here's the rational side of this story:

His previous daycare provider is wonderful.  As great as she is, though, the reality is that the Little Guy is the oldest kid in her regular care.  Basically, he's hanging around with babies all day.  This does not do wonders for his speech development.  He's very baby-talky.  Not uncommon for third children since the older siblings do most of the talking for him.  But, still.  There's some work to be done there.

Also? He's hitting some boundary-testing milestones, so it seemed a good time for his boundaries to be extended. This is accomplished by placing him in an environment where he has lots of new stuff to explore.

Lastly, this place, which is where the Girl went to Pre-K, is wildly convenient.  It's located on the college campus that abuts (hee!) our housing development, so it's a five-minute drive away (as opposed to twenty-five).

Win-win-win, as far as we are concerned.

Here's the utterly irrational aspect of it:

"Are you ready for your first day of school?" I asked.  I unbuckled the Little Guy from his car seat, sliding the pieces of chest harness apart so that he could hop down and step out of the car.

Okay, fine, it isn't really his first day of school, but they have a curriculum for the three-year-old room.  They may only learn by osmosis, but that's OK.  This transition is about more socialization, a bigger environment, and convenience.  If he picks up some spelling, that's cool too.

He stood next to me, clasping his hands together.

"Don't go anywhere, sweetie.  Let me get your backpack."

I grabbed the strap of the blue book bag, embroidered with our last name.  It is a hand-me-down from the Boy, who, as a recently-graduated third grader, prefers a black-and-silver affair with approximately forty-seven pockets, one of which is for a laptop.  The Boy does not have a laptop, but I guess he's planning ahead.

The Little Guy turned away from me so that I could slip the padded straps over his shoulders.  Stuffed with his nap time blanket and travel pillow, the backpack was enormous.  He looked like an astronaut circa 1969.  Well, except for the helmet and the suit.  But, it's the same backpack-to-person ratio. Theirs had jet propulsion.  His contains fleece.

"Mom? Which way do I go?" he asked. He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the low rise of the brick building in front of us, like an English Pointer that has locked onto game.

"Straight ahead, buddy. Wait for me on the sidewalk."

He took off, bounding to the pavement as fast as his dimpled legs could carry him. As soon as he got to the sidewalk, he stopped again.  Swiveling his head back and forth, he called, "Mom? Which way?"

"Keep going straight, right up to the doors."

He took off again, the backpack patting him on the back as he bounced toward the door. I hustled behind him, carrying his lunch, his changes of clothes (because, you know, three-year-olds), and we crossed the threshold into his first day in a bigger world.  As I talked to the room teacher, and we unpacked his backpack into his cubby, he stayed close.  Not because he was scared, but because the guinea pig cage is right next to the cubbies.

"That's a bunny!" he exclaimed.  My Little Guy has this sweet little Mona Lisa grin that plays upon his lips when he's happily entranced by something.  He gets that way when he is playing with some Bubble Guppies figurines, or, most recently, the Girl's Barbie Squinkies.

"That's a guinea pig, pal." He'd never seen a guinea pig before that morning. I know. We deprive him of all of the awesome stuff out there.  Like rodents.

"He's eating!" he giggled.

"Is he?"

"He had a drink of water! With his mouth!" he giggled some more.

During this live commentary of Mr. Guinea Pig's breakfast routine, the room teacher was very kindly reassuring me that they have other picky eaters in the class (Little Guy isn't always picky. There are just some days where he decides he will subsist on milk and goldfish and air.).

Once we we'd unpacked his things, his room teacher led him to the area where the other kids in his 'class' were playing.  The play space was anchored by a Rubik's Cube-patterned carpet.  Toys were sprinkled over the colored squares, one of which was a Thomas the Tank Engine figure.

"Mom! I found Thomas!" the Little Guy held it up to me like he'd found the Holy Grail.

"Are you going to play with him?"

"Yes."

And so he did.  I watched him run Thomas up and down a track for a few minutes.  He seemed very happy, very at ease.  So, I said, "Okay, buddy, can you come give me a hug goodbye?"

Little Guy marched right over, still clutching Thomas, and said, "Buh-bye!" Then he hopped back to his spot in the middle of the carpet.

And, tears, huge pools of tears welling, threatening to spill.  Mine, not his.  I had to blink jackhammer-fast to keep those tears firmly on the correct side of my eyelids.  Him?  He was stoked to have a fresh Thomas to play with.  Me?  I had just taken my youngest to the next station in his life.

I Pulled a Tick Off Of My Daughter This Morning; How Was Your Day

"Are you almost ready for me to brush your hair, sweetie?"

"Yes," the Girl calls from the other side of the open closet door.  She was sitting on the floor, strapping her shoes to her feet. All I could see from my vantage point were Hello Kitty sparkles winking in the morning light.

She stood, shut the door, and skipped past me toward the bathroom.  Currently, she sports a squiggly crop of hair that defies taming.  Think young Merida, except blonde.

"What do you want today?  Ponytail? Floppy ponytails? Braided bun?" I asked, pulling the brush, detangler spray, and myriad elastics from the Drawer for Such Things.

"Pigtails!" she yelled.

Pigtails it would be.

I liberally sprayed her hair with the detangler, caught up a hank of it, and dragged the brush through it.  She screwed up her face in truly gymnastic ways, entertaining herself as I worked my way through her hair.  Because of the ariadnic (yes, I made that up) way that my daughter's hair knots itself together, I can't get the tangles out in one stroke.  Nope, I have to work at the tangles, layer by layer.  It isn't arduous -- the whole thing takes about five minutes.  But, it is a process.

Anyway, I brushed the hair back from her temples to the fistful that would become the pigtail.  And that's when I noticed the dark spot over her ear. A tick.  And not the cool kind, either.  It was small, and a little engorged, so it had been there for a little while.

This is one of those moments where you know if you freak out or make a big deal out of something, it's going to make the whole removal process much, much more dramatic than it needs to be.  So, I finished with the pigtails.  As soon as the elastic was wrapped around that second pigtail, I said, "Sweetie?  I just noticed something  next to your ear, and it's a tick. I have to remove it, and it'll only take a second, but I've done this before for you* and I'm very good at it."

"Oh." The Girl wrinkled her brow and frowned.  "Is it going to hurt?"

"Maybe a little," I answered. "But it will mostly be a weird tugging.  It'll be okay. Just hang on."

I went to the kitchen and grabbed a paper towel, some olive oil, and a sealable plastic bag. I went back to the bathroom, and my daughter looked even more concerned than she had before. She's only six, so I was kind of surprised that the wailing and the gnashing hadn't started.

"Ready?" I asked.  Before she had a chance to answer, I doused a small portion of the paper towel in oil, pinched it around the tick, and pulled.  It came right out, no problem. I dropped it into the bag, sealed it up, and took a look at it's creepy crawly self.  Which, why was  doing that?  I don't have a database of tick pictures in my head.  I can't tell a deer tick from a deer.

I resolved to compare it to pictures online later.  Lyme Disease, which is spread by the deer tick, is no joke. One of my brothers suffers from it, and his joints are perma-achy.

But, she was a trooper, wanting mostly to inspect the bug and then discuss the traits it shares with vampires.  There were no tears, and only a little flinching when I put the smear of antibiotic ointment on the bite mark.

Sniff.  My little girl is growing up so fast.

Apparently, My Children Think I'm a Drug Addict

The following is a transcription of the conversation I had with my older two children during bedtime last night.  Context:  they were having a 'sleepover.' This means that they bunk down in the pullout couch in the basement and watch kid-friendly Netflix 'til they pass out, which is about twenty minutes after they would normally fall asleep.

Here we go...

Me: [Boy], where's your blanket?

Boy: I don't have one.

Me: You need a blanket -- go grab one from the linen closet in the bathroom.

Boy: Okay.  (37 seconds pass.)  Mom? I can't find one.

Me:  You owe me a dollar if I can find a blanket in less than a minute. (I march toward the bathroom.)

Boy: Oh, I found one!

Me:  (looking at the blanket he selected) Aw, that's the one that Grandmom crocheted for you when you were a baby. I always think that when you snuggle with a blanket that she made for you, it's sort of like she's giving you a hug.

(The Boy skips over to the bed, flumps down, and drapes the blanket over himself.)

Girl (having overheard the conversation between the Boy and me): Mom, I miss Grandmom. But, (shrugging her shoulders as though she is a preternaturally mature teenager in a late-80's sitcom), she got sick because of smoking*, and all of the drugs.

Me: WHAT? (Laughing). Grandmom didn't do drugs. What do you know about drugs, anyway?

Girl:  Well, she drank beer, and alcohol is a drug.

Me: (Wishing Baltimore County Public Schools was a little more circumspect in how they group together drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. And also trying to figure out how to tease out the differences between beer and, say, heroin, without undermining what the kids are learning in school.) Listen, guys, I know that school teaches that alcohol is a drug...

Boy: You do drugs every night!

Me:  I DO NOT DO DRUGS. 

Girl: You drink wine.

Boy: Yeah, there are like, five wine bottles on the kitchen counter every night.

Me: No! No there are not. There's a bottle of wine. One. Listen, I drink wine, but it's not the same as drugs.

Girl: (Shrugging again) Well, wine is a drug.

Me:  (Sighing. Heavily.) Okay. Good night!

(Hugs and kisses, followed by mama having a glass of wine.)

*I have been honest with my kids that my mother developed lung cancer as a result of a fifty-year smoking habit. I don't want them to smoke. They should know what it does, and the kind of pain it causes.

Mother's Day Is Hard

Is that title too subtle?  I've been accused of being overly subtle before.  Anyway...

On Thursday, I popped into Target before heading into the office. I needed to pick up a pack of boys' undershirts for my daughter's kindergarten art project, and due to a ridiculously busy work schedule, this was the only time I could do it.  That was the only thing I needed*, but, I ended up snaking through the aisles picking up odds and ends because, well, Target.

After fifteen minutes, I'd loaded my basket with bathing suits for the kids (because they always run out of their sizes by June, no matter what their sizes are), Scooby Doo underpants that I will use as a bribe for the Little Guy (who is showing ZERO interest in using the potty), and some shredded fruit & veggie gummy snacks that I am hoping will appeal to the kids.  They have a serious addiction to the toxic sugar bomb version of fruit snacks, and I can just HEAR the things clawing cavities into their teeth.

The clock was ticking, though, and I had to get to the office. I headed toward the checkout, which is located across from the greeting card selection.  There were a bunch of people buzzing around the section.  Weird, right?

And then it hit me...

Mother's Day.  This is the annual ritual of last-minute card shoppers, elbowing each other away from THE PERFECT blend of flowers and puppies and acrostics.

I don't have a card to buy, or a phone call to make, or a Sunday brunch to plan.  I mean, I do, for my mother-in-law, who is possibly the best mother-in-law to have when it comes to feeling like an adopted daughter.  But the only way that I have of honoring the woman who soothed me when I was sick, who made me my favorite dinners on my birthdays, who hugged me so hard that I didn't think I could breathe sometimes, is to take flowers to her resting place.  And to write this, to make it known how much she meant, and continues to mean, and how much I miss her.

Mother's Day for me, for the next few years (I think) will be longing for my mother. I will bask in the nice things that my kids do for me, and for the cards and the seedlings and the traced hand prints.  But I think, for awhile, there will be this shadow over it, because I will not be doing the same thing for someone else.

*needed = had to be acquired by a certain deadline, not that a child would strut around nude without this particular purchase.  

Either I've Emotionally Scarred My Oldest Kid, or He's Learned a Valuable Life Lesson

My oldest kid, the Boy, is nearly nine.

Which, by the way: huh?  Am I really on the cusp of buying deodorant for one of my kids?

Anyway, he's not very athletically inclined.  Don't get me wrong -- the kid is lean, and loves to run around, and he's certainly not clumsy.  He just doesn't seem to want to play an organized sport.  

Herm.  Come to think of it, I was the same way, actually.  I never felt a burning desire to go out for a team, but I was capable.  I never embarrassed myself on the field or the court.  Ooh, except for tennis.  My best friend was very good at tennis, and she would beg me to practice with her. I hit the ball out of the gigantic tennis cage Every. Single. Time.  She actually got better practice out of hitting the ball against a wall than she did with me.

He tried theater when he was four (did not enjoy) and soccer when he was six, which was just okay. His soccer friends moved on from the rec league to a travel league, and the Boy didn't want to do that. He didn't want to play baseball or basketball, and we vetoed football because we did not want him to be squashed by the ten-year-olds who can shave.  We've looked at some community college classes for kids, but they seem primarily designed (schedule-wise) for home-schooled kids.

And then!  Then our local rec sports created a youth track team.  Bingo!  He likes to run and, while there's a team aspect to it, the players run individually.  Seemed like a good fit, right?  It would be a time suck -- 3 practices a week, plus the occasional meet.  But it would be worth it, because he would be Out There Doing Something.  The Boy agreed, enthusiastically, to sign up.

He liked it for the first week.  The second week was OK too.  That third week, though?  Oof.  The third week involved a meet.  And waiting, waiting, waiting for his one event at that meet.  So much waiting, in fact, that I did not get to seem him race because after two hours of waiting for his event, I had to bail and the Girl and the Little Guy back home so that they would not continuing torturing the other parents with their (understandable) whining about sitting in the cold aluminum stands.

After the meet, the Boy declared that he wanted to quit track.

This is the first time we've really had to deal with quitting. With theater and soccer, he just didn't go back after he finished out his first season. Track, though, was something he didn't want to spend another night doing. 

Personally, I struggle with the concept of quitting. It was part of the fabric of my upbringing that You Don't Quit.  My mother had deep dark conversations with my father at the dinner table about her work grievances, and she stayed at that job for twenty years. So maybe it's actually part of the fabric of my DNA, and not just my upbringing.

Anyway, I don't want my kids burdened with unnecessary tenacity.  Jobs, and relationships for that matter, are not indentured servitude.  You can walk away from something you don't enjoy. But there's a respectable way to go about doing it.  There are gradations, of course.  You don't quit a job because you had one bad conversation with your boss.  Or maybe you do?  I don't know.  Remember: I am not good a quitting.

The deal was this: he would be allowed to quit track if HE was the one who did the quitting.  I would not quit for him, and his father would not quit for him.  If he wanted to stop going to track, then he would actually need to share this information with his coach.

I didn't make this deal as some passive-aggressive way to get him to stick with track.  Frankly, the administration of my family life is a lot easier without track practice lumped into it.

No, the intent here was for him to learn how to be his own agent of change, even if it means (potentially) hurting someone's feelings. You need to rehearse that stuff in your childhood just as much as you do reading, math, and manners.  Mostly, I don't want him to grow up thinking it's cool to slink away and leave people mystified as to where he went.  Or worse, have authority figures (Mom and Dad) handle uncomfortable stuff for him.

So, last night, and the end of practice, he ambled over to his coach and said, "Um, I want to thank you for being my coach, and for teaching me about running, but I'm not going to come to track anymore."

"Oh," his coach said. "Okay. Are you going to do something else?"

"No," the Boy said, "I just wanted to spend more time at home."

"Okay, well, you're a good runner, and good luck.  Give me a high five!"

They high-fived, and that was it.  I think it should be noted that we did not script this out for him.  He came up with that on his own.

After he and my husband came home, and the Boy ran over to a neighborhood friend's house for an hour.  That's all he wants right now:  unencumbered time. I'm good with that.

So. Much. Work.

I am being (slightly) crushed by the volume of work I have on my plate these days.  Big project + impending (nay, looming, tsunami-like) deadlines = crushing.  I only wish I were as cool as Giles Corey.

But I'm not.

So, instead, I've been fantasizing about winning the lottery and/or my husband getting a promotion that would net out the differential in our income loss if I were to stop working.  Neither of these things is likely to happen this year.  End result? I will keep plugging along, 60-hours-a-week-style, 'til this thing is behind me.

Oh, how I yearn for the days of theater, when I knew opening night would be the end of my pain. The rough spots would appear in front of the audience, and would either be buffed out OR earn us some, ahem, interesting reviews.  Even with criticism, though, the thing would be DONE, released.  Not something to be refined and reworked ad infinitum.

Thank the sweet Lord we booked our vacation.  I can cling to that while I'm feeling overwhelmed.  Ah, the soothing, clarion call of the beach in July....

How I Spent My First (Real) Writing Earnings

"I would love a pisco sour," I answered our blade-thin waiter.

"Let me see," he looked up and to the left, almost rolling his eyes to the back of his head to possibly examine his brain for the information, "if we have everything we need to make that."

"Sure thing," I turned my attention back to my dining options. Our waiter cut through the dining room, heading for the bar area.

"Of course you order a drink they can't make," my husband snickered, his bright blue eyes twinkling as he glanced at me over the edge of his menu. "What exactly is a pisco sour?"

"It's a cocktail made with pisco, sour mix, and egg white.  I know there's something else in it, but I can't remember what." I shrugged, trying to evoke nonchalance.

No big deal, right? Except, this is one of the myriad stupid ways in which I judge myself. I think a girl should know the recipe for her cocktail. And since I don't know how to make any mixed drinks (at least, not well), I typically find myself ordering wine or beer. Or shots. But I got carried away because we were in a fancy-pants restaurant where we were about to drop three hundred dollars for a single meal. Which, come to think of it, means, it's pretty reasonable to expect that they'll have sufficient expertise and ingredients to craft a pisco sour.  Right?

A few minutes later, after we'd perused the menu, our waiter circled back around.

"It turns out," he grins, " that we didn't have everything we needed, so we sent someone down the street to one of our other restaurants to pick up a bottle of pisco. It should only be another couple of minutes."

"That's no problem," I said, happy they were able to work out a solution.

"Oh, you didn't have to do that," my husband said.

"Not at all," the waiter countered, smiling. "You should have the cocktail that you want. I just wanted to explain the delay."

"Thank you so much," I said, and the waiter disappeared again.

"They had to go to another restaurant!"

"I know," I laughed. "because I am a PRINCESS!"

***

That pisco sour?  She was STRONG.  And probably the best pisco sour I've had to date, and I have had FOUR of them.

Anyway, date night at Charleston was the ideal way to kiss (most) of my hard-earned writing dollars goodbye.  There was so much deliciousness involved...  amuse bouches, crawfish bisque, arugula and blood orange salad, pan-roasted tilefish, grilled squab, and a lemon chess tart.  And the company was unparalleled.

On 'Girls' and Glass

Do you watch HBO's 'Girls'? I do. And I enjoy. Though, I"m not sure why Lena Dunham gets all the backlash that she does...  Actually, I think I have an idea.  She's a twenty-six-year-old auteur (auteuse?).  She's the captain of her own (media) ship:  writer, director, national headliner. Covers of 'Entertainment Weekly,' even (YES, that is the bar by which I  measure success.) And she's a woman. Or a girl, anyway.

Yes, I think her sex plays a role in the backlash. Not exclusively. But, I don't exactly recall people insisting that Kevin Smith was just a lucky bastard when 'Clerks' came out.  He was about the same age as Lena Dunham was when 'Tiny Furniture' came out.

I don't think that's exclusively it.  That'd be too easy.  Some people also argue that since she's the kid of successful artist-types, she had a leg up.  Yeah, well, so does Rumer Willis (I'm not saying she won't be A-list some day, but she isn't right now).  The point is, having successful parents does not guarantee success for the child.  It sure as hell doesn't hurt, but something about 'Girls' struck a chord with a bunch of people.  Lena Dunham deserves kudos and recognition for that, no matter how she got there.

Weird. I don't know why I felt the need to become a Lena Dunham champion for twenty minutes of my life. I like the show, but I don't love it. I wouldn't miss it if it was gone.

I've been watching it because I have a small fascination with people-in-progress; people who are not self-actualized, but are on their way. People who are somewhat of a mess.  It might be schadenfreude.  I dunno.  But, I also watch the show because at least two of the characters remind me of people with whom I went to college, and that makes me giggle.

Okay, so there's your context for my experience with this show.

During the season 2 finale, the main character, Hannah, is having a bit of a breakdown. At one point, she says the following:

You know when you’re young and you drop a glass, and your dad says, like, “Get out of the way!” so you can be safe while he cleans it up? Well, now, no one really cares if I clean it up myself. No one really cares if I get cut with glass. If I break something, no one says, “Let me take care of that,” you know?

So, here's the thing with that quote. That quote? It is supposed to reveal a kind of a character chrysalis, where she's realizing that she's involuntarily shed a protective parental layer. Now she's all exposed to the elements, and she's having a hard time with that.

But, all it revealed to me is how much of a kid she still is.  I mean, there's some truth to what she says. A (good) parent, yes, does not want you to get hurt, does not want you to shred the bottom of your feet with broken glass.  But also?  As a parent?  I want to save myself the trouble of having to clean up broken glass AND deal with a screaming, bloodied child.  It's not just about safety and care and protection.  It's also about staying sane and not wanting to have to deal with another crisis that a young'un brings upon herself.

This is evidence to me that the character, Hannah, still has a ways to go in achieving adulthood.  What we do as parents?  It's not all about love.  Mostly it is.  But sometimes, it's about saving ourselves more work.

Business as Usual

For the past two years, I've been monitoring my Dad's finances.  My mother was the brains of the financials at their domicile, even with brain cancer.

Yes, you read that right.  My father is so skeeved out by bills that he let a woman with thirteen mini-masses on her brain handle the checkbook.  She was quite happy to do it, and it allowed her some sense of control at a time when she had anything but.

Anyway, about a year ago, I noticed some weird debits/checks written against his account.  So, I've gradually just straight-up taken over my Dad's finances.  Not to the extent where he gets allowances or anything like that.  He still has a checkbook, ATM card, and all that jazz.  I mean, the man worked for sixty-five years. He can spend his money how he likes.  (Well, except for those sweepstakes things that he didn't realize were scammy situations, which is what precipitated my more aggressive role in all of this.)

On Friday, I deposited some checks for him.  He and my mother had a bunch of investments (which he still currently has, obvi), and bitty checks roll in on a continual basis. My mother's name is still on some of them, though, which is something I suspect will be left to me to deal with because my Dad's just not motivated to close loops like that.  I don't blame him.

The teller called out, "May I help the next person in line?"

I stepped forward and announced, "I have a deposit to make for my father."

I like to state this kind of thing up front because my father has one of those names that could be a man's or a woman's name, and people (frequently) make assumptions that I am he, and it weirds me out.  Anyway, I slid the stack of checks and deposit slip toward the teller.

"Thank you," the teller picked up the stack and quickly flipped through them. "Oh," she pulled two from the stack, "[My mother's name] will need to sign these since she's also listed on the check."

"She's passed away," I said quietly, without further information. I have found that some people require further information.  Like, "She's passed away so there is no way she will be able to sign a $2.75 check from AT&T."

"Oh," the teller said, her gaze lingering on me for just a shade longer than normal for this transaction. I knew she was putting it together...  If I am depositing checks for my father, and if the woman co-listed on the check was his spouse, ipso facto, it's probably my mother who has passed away.

Behold deductive reasoning!

"Karen," she said, quietly, discreetly. "I need to ask you a question." Karen, a bespectacled, trim woman with Breck hair despite being well into her fifties, stood up and conferred.  I heard her say, "It's what I would do..."

The teller cashed the checks, handed me the receipt, and I was on my way. I was grateful that we didn't get all personal up in there, with the "I'm sorry for your losses" and such. I mean, I don't get mad when people say that, but it triggers an emotional response in me when someone expresses sympathy. And it's perfectly OK to show my soft underbelly to friends and family, but the bank teller at noon on Friday? Not really on my list of confidantes.

This marks, I think, the first time that I have shared the news of my mother's passing without getting weepy. Caught me by surprise, it did.

From the Short Chronicles

I've told you that I'm 5'1', right?  I wear gigantic (but TASTEFUL) heels most of the time so that I can look people in the eye instead of up their noses.  Because, yuck.

Anyway, I was reminded of my shortness in a fresh way this morning. See, I'm accustomed to having to get ankle/short/petite pants hemmed.  I'm accustomed to the top shelf of my kitchen cabinets being completely empty because really? They might as well not even exist.  I am accustomed to beefy 10-year-olds being able to inspect the top of my head.

But today?

Today I pulled out a pair of new knee-high trouser socks (because I ROCK THEM LIKE A SUPERSTAR).  Except, these?  They were thigh-high.

Sigh.