Cold Spaghetti

For some of us, we were up — literally.  Too bad he’s not up there admiring the view.  He had a great helper, though, which sped things along.

Wait, helper… where is that helper?  Helper?  HELPER?

Oh, there he is.  Hi Helper.

Say, Helper, can you…

…wait, where are you going?  Helper?  WILL?

Um… what are you doing, Will?  Dad really needs you to… Will?  WILL?

Koosh ball?  Tennis racket?  Where did you… oh, nevermind, where… WHAT are you doing?

WHY ARE YOU GIVING YOUR SISTER A TENNIS RACKET?  And so close to where Mommy has ridiculously hung the video camera!?

Oh.  I get it.  You’re not helping Daddy anymore.  You’re working for someone else.  Sorry, Paul.

Miraculously, though, Paul finished the roof of the outbuilding and returned the roller this morning.  One little step done…!

Today is Will’s 5th birthday and that is a big deal. Five is just a big deal. We have five fingers, five toes. There are five workdays in our week. We have a nickel for five cents and a five dollar bill and learn to count money in fives. And when their children are at the age of 5, Mothers have to take a long, hard look and realize that they have managed to raise a newborn to an infant to a baby to a toddler to a preschooler to a kid.

This post was suppose to be my tome to my first baby, my boy, the infant I cried everyday over for months, spent hours hooked to a pump and feeding through a finger-tube. The baby I struggled to care for while starting a PhD. The toddler I took away from home before a storm destroyed our city. The preschooler who attended three schools in under a year, spoke two languages, and lived in 3 countries before turning 3 years old. The boy I now look to for help around the house. That guy.

But instead, my arm is weighed down by the heavy head of Kate, who has been throwing up for 7 hours. I’m afraid to leave her side, as she’s so lethargic that I am concerned over her ability to turn her head and not choke when her body decides it’s time for another go. She’s wiped out all her pajamas, most of my clothes, and countless towels, bedcovers, and blankets. It’s going to be a long, long night.

One thing we know is that she won’t make it to Will’s Birthday Party tomorrow.

One other thing I know is that we’re two for two on our lives failing apart right before the Po’Boy Fest; this was the same week Paul had the emergency appendectomy a year ago. I sense a pattern.

So until I can say something more complex and memorable about my darling boy, here is the picture-book account…

Will, fresh out. With antibiotic all over his little eyes. (U of Michigan hospital, Ann Arbor, MI)

Will, eating his first ever cake on his first birthday, New Orleans:

Will on his 2nd birthday. We had a small party in the front yard. Folks came from around the block and commented that this was, “the first post-Katrina party”. My Mom brought a helium tank from Alabama so that we could have some balloons, which Will spent the entire morning popping.

Will on his 3rd Birthday. Argh.

Will, with the little O’Delice cake for his 4th birthday.

Will, today, on his 5th birthday, with his classmates signing Happy Birthday (in French, of course).

Growing up, my Dad worked nonstop. Terms like ‘work-a-holic’ don’t even apply to military families, because there is no such thing as a nonworking day. Even if he did have a day off, he was changing the oil in the car or dumping my clothes drawers on the floor during a room inspection (drawers not neat, everything on the floor!) My brother and I proudly reasoned that his obsession was due to a higher calling and we did our best to understand.

Then he retired from the Navy and took a real job. And worked just as much. Then we realized that no, in fact, Dad was just a work-addict.

A little more than a month ago, Dad took a new job. Since getting that job, he’s worked from home during the day, come home before 6pm, and gone on vacation. Maybe these sound normal for some, but for my Dad, it singles major alarm. Even my Mom has been complaining that she has no idea what to do with my Dad around the house more than 10 minutes a day. Is this his mid-life crisis? Or maybe worse, could he have been given some sort of terrible diagnosis and is busy working on a bucket list? We wondered.

But I think I’ve figured it out. After meeting who he’s working with, I realize that it’s not that he is a machine. It’s that this is the first time he has not worked for crazy people. Amazingly, when faced with a normal work situation that places realistic demands on it’s employees, he began to act normally. It gives me faith for the future… if only other companies and managers and bosses and government entities could do the same, maybe we can turn this ship around.

So my happy Dad and still-i-shock-Mom just came back from Vegas, where they saw Elton John and Bette Middler. (My Dad was thrilled with their 2nd row seats, “when she slapped her thigh, we could HEAR her slapping her thigh!”) They followed up the shows with 4 days in a resort in Death Valley. Wow. So, here he is, our new Dad.

My PapPap Charlie was the only child of a rough, Swedish woman. He was well into his forties, unmarried, and childless when he met my divorced Grandma in their jobs at the Department of Commerce. He was quiet, having suffered great abuses as a POW during the Korean War, and whether due to this trauma or his peculiar personality, was incredibly socially awkward. He loved classical music almost as much as he adored my vivacious, life-of-the party Grandma, who seemed to be the light that saved him from his Charlie Brown-like days and thrust him into the wild world of our family. He died of a massive heart attack when I was 10, but my Grandma tells me that before he died, I won his heart.

Oblivious to the awkwardness he had with children, I embraced him with the all assumed adoration of a grandchild. I followed him around, chattering through the sounds of gentle classical music, invading his space when he went to be alone in his basement retreat. Years later, Grandma Betty would tell me that these were the highlights of his life. That he would sit perfectly still and simply listen, puffing away on his cigar, terrified of doing or saying anything that might offend and cause me to leave. He was in awe of me with absolutely no idea of what to do or say, so he simply sat and took in all my chatter and energy with patience and surprise.

Later, when Grandma Betty and I became roommates during my high school days, she filled these stories with more intimate ones about their marriage. Describing how he made her feel and the things that made their relationship special. My favorite antic dotes were the ones that showed Charlie’s softer side, the jokes that made my Grandma laugh. He had a dry humor with a curmudgeon twist, and like my own husband, made jokes from words.

For example, a historical time or place, to Charlie, was an** “hysterical” time or place. Gettysburg, or the Fourth of July, or the Declaration of Independence were all “hysterical” parts of U.S. History. He described the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, Virginia, the place where my Grandmother chose to have me, her first grandchild, baptized, as “a hysterical church.”

So when I approached the polls this morning and entered my vote, PapPap Charlie was foremost in my mind. I could not shake the thought of how hysterical the moment was, that I was casting a hysterical ballot on a hysterical day, a day that will go down in hysterics. I think about telling my grandchildren about what it was like to participate in the election of 2008, of getting to vote for the first Black President of our country. About how good it felt, as if our country and indeed, the world, was at a turning point and suddenly the winds were picking up to bring us back to a place of safety and honor. I wonder if they will be awed to think that I was a part of such a hysterical day.

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* Just in case someone wonder about the grammar here, I looked it up. Using ‘an’ before a word starting with the letter ‘h’ is reserved for when the word has a silent h sound… ‘an honor’, versus ‘a horse’.

** Okay, I know the rule. But really, doesn’t “an” just sound better??

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UPDATE: It seems my parents found the new blog. I know because they’ve called me several times a day over the past two days to dump on me offer rewrites for my posts. (Hi, Mom!)

My Grandma Betty was known to weave a few tails… and as the first grandchild and one who lived with her for a solid year to finish high school and then again off and on while I worked in the area after college… I was the one who heard her stories. Charlie worked a desk job in the Navy and never was a POW — these were Grandma’s embellishments. The whole thing is very Grandma Betty. I wonder if she wanted to jazz up his past for her own enjoyment, or to simply make a dull story more interesting, or if it was her way of making him seem more memorable to me. She knew early on that if anyone was going to keep our family stories alive, it would be me; Grandma was aware of the need to leave a verbal legacy through me.

So Grandma made up information about Charlie’s past. Really, I think it’s sweet. A testiment to how much she cared for him, that years after his death she would weave danger and mystery into the gentle, quiet, and reserved man she loved. So Charlie wasn’t a POW, he didn’t become ill in Korea (the story was that he contracted some type of illness and was denied medical attention while a POW), and had job with a Navy supplies department. That’s one story. The other one is of an ordinary man who was loved so much by a vivacious woman who saw him as her hero. That’s the story I like best.

While we were in Central Pennsylvania for my cousin’s wedding, Will went fishing for the first time.  On our first day there, my Uncle Corky brought him to a local creek (after their two-man fishing excursion, Will announced that, while the rest of us call him “Uncle Corky,” Will was going to call him “Uncle Cork”).

Then we all joined them for fishing the day after the wedding.  Including my cousins Stephen and Katelin and my Aunt Roxanne.  Will was without the family uniform (waders) so my Aunt and Uncle set up a special chair for Will to hold court for all the fishes that threw themselves to his mercy.  (I think the final count on this was 6.)

They caught and released each one.  When Will let this one go, it sort of floated along belly-up… whoops.  Then, my Uncle did some magic trick holding the fish still in the running water of the stream bed and after a few seconds the previously doomed fish swam away, just fine.

Will actually caught a small mouth bass.  (I can’t remember the other types of fish Uncle Corky and Stephen were quick to identify on Will’s hook… those guys seriously know their fish).  They helped instruct Will on how to hold the rod, when the reel it in, and when to pull on the line.  They were both incredibly good teachers and really let him do the work.

Will not only got skills in how to fish, but he quickly understood how to discuss the fish you catch.  As shown in the picture below:

Then Stephen stepped in for some one-on-one with Will.

When Will decided that he was “inventing a new way of fishing” involving the net, Stephen went along like a true champ.  He completely and totally earned his status as Will’s nomination for WORLD’S COOLEST GUY.

I think if you look really closely in these pictures, you can actually see Will’s little heart growing BIGGER and BIGGER.

On your birthday, you explained exactly what I should expect from a 4-year old:

“4-year olds are big boys. They don’t hit, or whine, or kick, or talk back, or have a bad attitude.”

Whoa.

I had my doubts. After all, you’d spent the months leading up to age 4 testing almost all of the above… lapsing into defiant stand-offs that involve my carrying your thrashing body back to your room for time alone. Perhaps all of this effort wore you out? Because honestly, so far, the reality of you at age 4 has been closer to your prediction (outlined above) than mine (continuing increase in maddening defying behavior and tantrums). I remain skeptical of a complete transformation but am happy to be in this place while it lasts.

One of the things I am enjoying most about you is that you love art projects. Ever since “Miss Georgia” came from the Bead Shop to teach you to make earrings, you’ve been begging to make jewelry. I am not sure you appreciate how incredible happy it makes me to hear you ask to do art and craft projects and I am doing my best to take it all in stride, lest you realize the power the request has over me. After we put Kate to bed, you and I share an hour each night doing these projects together. We paint, make jewelry, draw, make ornaments, and string Mardi Gras beads into garland for the Christmas tree.
This last activity was what we were up to when you sailed from the stool where you were perched holding beads, hitting the wooden armrest of the sofa on the way down. Rather than climb down (as you’ve done many times from this same stool you sit on regularly to play pinball), you decided to jump at an angle, as if to land next to the bag of beads. I saw the blood before you did, seeping out from between your fingers as you covered your eye. That sight — you holding your hand over your eye, screaming out while blood began to pour — definitely aged me as I considered the possibility of a serious eye injury. For the record, you only cried for a short minute. Either due to my immediate response, cradling you in my arms and speaking softly and quietly to calm you, or because you are like your sister and have a diamond-clad head. We were all very thankful to see that you missed injuring your eye, bursting open the tissue in your eyebrow instead. We are also very thankful that we had you fixed by a doctor, as the location and depth of your wound made a level of complication that we could not have addressed. Now you have one purple eyebrow patch over your right eye, making folks suggest you’re sporting a Drew Brees look. (Believe it or not, I still don’t have a picture of the injury. Coming soon, though.)
Speaking of right and left. You have begun to master these directional specifics. Although you are committed to getting them backwards. I explained how you use your fingers to make an “L” for left, but realize this is a mute point since you are similarly committed to writing letters backward.

Kate remains your biggest fan and your biggest bully. Rarely does a day go by when she hasn’t clobbered you with something. We are working hard on reigning her in, showing you that the behavior is no way tolerated, reminding you of how we all have to work together to teach her how to treat others. Still, we realize that what really needs to happen is for you to just clobber her back. Of course we will never suggest this, and if you were to take up such a position we’d correct you accordingly with much displeasure. But we think that a little dose of her own medicine would help her learn a bit faster.Despite the regular beatings, you adore your sister. At least, when she’s not playing with the toy you Just Had or taking apart the train track you Just Fixed or pushing the truck you Just Took Down or banging on the drum too loud when you Just Want To Play Guitar. All of these things are major offenses in your book and cause for incredible whining. In general, we are supportive of your arguments of injustice but the truth is that we have a hard time caring that much about it. If your Dad and I have learned anything about parenting, we have learned that parents don’t want justice, we want QUIET.In the face of our resolution that you Work It Out, you have actually begun to find ways to play with your sister for extended periods of time (i.e.: longer than 1 minute). Like the other morning, when your Dad was in the hospital and I was alone with you two, trying to get dressed in the back of the house. I could hear you, laughing and playing together up front. I was so proud, almost not believing that your playtime had gone so long without either one of you breaking the mood with an ear-splitting wail. When I finished and went to retrieve you both, I found that you were bonding over art — happily planting stickers all over your rocking chairs and supplementing the colorful menagerie with marker ink. This is now a common theme: that you and Kate find an uncanny comradery when the two of you are doing something you are not suppose to be doing.

In your 4-year check-up, you got FOUR injections. Two in each arm. You spent two days talking about how you were going to “get shots” from the doctor, so much that you seemed excited about it. When the moment came, you hesitated and then started to stutter: “B..b…but I d.. d.. don’t like to get POKED!” By the time you got out “poked,” Dr. Oates was done with two of the shots and you had an alligator tear pouring down your cheek. Aside from the time a nurse failed to hold your leg, causing you to kick and the needle to tear into the tissue of your thigh, this was the only time you’ve cried tears for an immunization. The good news is that you’re now immunized for just about everything we can immunize you for — so it will be awhile before you have to endure another poke.

At the same visit, you had the following stats:
Weight: 36 pounds, 7 ounces (75%)
Height: 42 1/5″ (90%)

These were very exciting numbers because it means you’re tall enough to ride most of the rides at Disney World. It also shows that you are actually thickening up; we’ve had to loosen the waist adjustment on your pants in order for you to button them up. Finally — eating Granna’s pie with PapPap (read: 16 ounces of whipped cream with each ounce of pie) is working to fill you in.

Each night, we still sing our songs. “Feed the Birds” remains the favorite. But when you’re truly ready for bed, you request “Stay Awake,” and sing the first few words with me before falling quiet. Like in the movie, you close your eyes in the middle and by the end, are asleep.

Kate, you’ve been with us for just over 6 months. Your short time with us has been filled with moments of learning. The relative ease of caring for you in those first days shocked me. I had no idea having a new baby could make me so happy. Your sweet big brother and I worked so hard, so hard, for everything… until I had you, I had no idea how sick I was at that time. The guilt of those lost moments with him plagues me. You seem to have inherited your parents warped sense of humor, intuitively knowing what makes us crazy and picking away at those pockets of sanity. For example, while every other baby on the planet is content to sit in those wonderful Bumbo seats, you fling yourself around like a fish until you’ve got enough foot leverage to push, yes PUSH, your little butt out of the seat. Twice we’ve caught you before you landed head first on our dinner plates. You remain blissfully unaware of your desire to destroy brain cells and happily throw yourself around, a free spirit ready for the fall. Having you convinced me of something that I’ve wondered for some time. I am now confident in the fact that I make the world’s most beautiful babies. One might think that being the World’s Most Beautiful Baby-Maker would make me smug. But no, in fact, it scares the pants off me. I fear that the universe will present me with one huge smack-down striking one of you ill or hurt or worse. Josefina (our Peruvian nanny) gave me a red bracelet for you to wear to ward off mal de ojo, but I just can’t get the darn thing to stay on! It is very stressful to be the mother of the World’s Most Beautiful Baby. Please remember this incredible stress I’ve gone through for you when you consider what nursing home to put me in.

Even more than the cats, which you chase around the house in that bumpy crawl, your brother is the light in your day. Dad and I can act goofy, making our voices hit ranges that would embarrass us to tears if heard by the outside world, and you’ll generally respond with a happy laugh. But Will… his mere presence is enough to put you into hysterics. We’d like to believe that the two of you share a special bond of understanding. We’ve heard that older siblings can translate the rough speak of younger ones into sounds that us old people can understand. Granna swears that Uncle Skip was practically mute until Kindergarten because I translated all of his whispers and signals with expert attention. We are waiting for Will to carry on in this tradition. You talk a lot… A LOT… and often say things with such conviction that the neighbors call to ask why we are torturing that poor woodland animal and please, for heaven sake, let it go! It would be wonderful to explain that no, we aren’t performing any sacrificial rituals, but just trying to figure out whether you’d like applesauce or bananas for breakfast. So when you say something like, “AAAAWWWGGGGHHHHHAAAAAA” we eagerly ask Will if he can tell us what you are saying. He takes each request seriously, focusing and clearing his throat to answer: “Baby Kate said ‘AAAAWWWGGGGHHHHHAAAAAA’”. I guess you two have some work to do on that sibling communication thing.

You should know that, at least during my childless days, I lived a life that generally did not accept the notion of fear. Having your brother gave me a decent sense of fear, but it wasn’t until you came along that the overwhelming, crippling sense of fear set in. I used to live in a dream bubble where the risks of the world were muted and dulled; I could convince myself that if we were to fly off a bridge and into water, I could somehow transform into AquaWoman, pulling your brother to safety. Your addition to the picture brought reality into my focus. My cape disappears when bridges are near. The fear of loosing one of you is crushing; somedays I wonder if it has the power to take over. My love for the two of you is unconditional and nontransferable. I used to think I could overcome anything. Now, I am much more aware of the limits to my heart.