we have a sad little trend happening here in the wreke house: kids terrified that their mom (read: moi) is going to die.
my kids have been through an emotional mill. they remember a time when i went to the emergency room and didn’t emerge for a few days. they visited and saw a mom who was covered, head to toe, in purple blotches, with needles in her arms. (the perfect visual: my BFF jaxx came in, took one look at me, and announced: you look like a crack whore.) then, a day after i was released, i was back in the hospital for over a week. my recovery from ITP took months (and i’m still in remission — yay, me!), and during that time, i learned how each handles this stress.
while i was in the hospital, BC (ever her mother’s daughter) apparently cried every single day at school. her first grade teachers and the guidance counselor were absolutely amazing — they took her under their wings, they gave her TLC, and they let her know that they were in her corner. once i came home, she settled down a bit.
jools, on the other hand, a sturdy almost-three-year old at the time, was fine at school. once i returned from the hospital, though, he wanted to be with me at all times. at night, he didn’t want to go to bed for fear i would not be there in the morning.
the hardest thing about being a parent with a serious illness may very well be coping with, and for, your children. that peaceful, calm moment of childhood is ripped away from your children suddenly; and in it’s stead lies a terrifying potential reality of extreme loss. it never really leaves, either: my mother’s first bout with breast cancer happened when i was 15. she’s always very up-front with me about things, and yet, i still get nervous every time she goes to a doctor. and i’m a grown-up.
it stands to reason, then, that every time something seriously medical is on the horizon, my kids prepare for the worst. and, in short, i have to get my gallbladder out. and suddenly, everyone is afraid. BC isn’t sleeping; her upset makes her coughing so much worse. jools is randomly noting things, such as: “when you die, i want to give you my star (that he made in his kindergarten class earlier in the week.)” it is enough to make me wonder whether they know something i do not.
but, to paraphrase mark twain, the rumors of my impending death are greatly exaggerated.
sure, any operation is a little riskier for us CVID folks, as any infection is not something we need. but this is my gallbladder. it’s not brain surgery. it will go well; i’m not too terribly concerned. but it doesn’t matter how many times i tell my kids that so many of their loved ones have had this very same operation. girlfriend and mr. man are on the alert.
i have to get past my own angst here and do whatever i can to make them feel more comfortable. short of constantly reassuring them, though, i don’t know what else to do.
it crushes me to know that i am the reason they’re so distressed.
while you’re at it, make sure you throw pink into your reader. her posts are thought-provoking. and i especially enjoy her haiku, particularly this one.
and then, there’s john mccain. apparently, while he was in that awful POW camp, he was missing his beautiful, former model wife carol. what he didn’t know was that she was in a horrible car accident. she needed 23 operations. and she held it all together, children and all while he was away, serving the country of course, but still away.
when he returned, he essentially screwed around on this poor woman. he ended up dumping her for his current wife, a beer heiress 17 years his junior. even ross perot, who paid carol’s medical bills — and there were heaps of them — put it succinctly:
let the record show mccain’s cheating past. and let that info go straight to the working-class women voters he’s trying to woo. i’m sick and tired of public men getting away with this crap. they cloak themselves in the garments of American Hero, but somehow, the content of their character is betrayed by such cowardly acts of disloyalty.
it’s after midnight. and for over a week now, girlfriend awakes in this time, starts barking and coughing her head off, and generally gets hysterical. with her coughing history, we are never sure whether it’s allergies, reflux, an actual infection, a virus, or none of the above. a good friend’s twins also has this and was told it’s viral, which of course means we just have to suck it up and deal.
but it’s hard to suck it up and deal when no one is getting any sleep around here.
girlfriend already missed two days of school last week because she felt so incredibly awful. of course, this week is the week that her class is in mandated swim lessons. today, she told me she could barely make it through the laps she was required to swim; it was difficult to breathe. between the nasonex, albuterol, allegra (interspersed at times with benedryl, which gave her scary dreams last night when she was sleeping), and the z-pack, i just don’t know what the hell to do.
girlfriend gets hysterical because she knows she’s waking everyone up. getting hysterical, as we all know, doesn’t help. no one is mad at her because she’s coughing. we people of the adult variety may seem a little stiff and gruff at this hour only because we, too, are feeling the effects of negligible sleep; but no one is mad at the girl. we want to help her. we just feel completely helpless at the moment.
my magic wand is broken at the moment, so i can’t seem to wave it and make things all better. it just so figures it would fail me at this moment.
good old bronski beat. is it gayer than gay? you betcha. and i. don’t. care. see, a great dance song is a great dance song. period. it doesn’t matter, especially when the whole damn thing is infectious.
i certainly didn’t care about the band’s sexual orientation when i entered the melody, a now-defunct club in cespool scenic new brunswick, nj, [motto: it’s a shithole, but it’s our shithole] in the mid- to late-80s. club shmell, smell, hell, or any derivative you prefer, was the dive place you could often find me and my friends on a thursday, friday, saturday…hell, we loved that dirty old sinkhole, which has since been raized (but for which a devoted following still reunites to dance and reminisce.) i was wondering what would be painted on the walls that week, often in full dayglo technicolor. i was hoping i could make my fuzzy navel last for at least an hour while i bopped around. i was searching the upstairs and downstairs, pondering the sort of crowd that would be there (other than the regulars and often matt pinfield, who dj’d there among other souls. he is such a sweetie; i attended one of those reunions last february and was delighted to talk with him for a few minutes. in the words of junie b jones, i love that baldie.)
it was a filthy musical nirvana, a place where young johnson & johnson execs rubbed elbows with rutgers students who, in turn, danced around with the less-than-affluent townspeople at times. and it was the first place i heard hit that perfect beat, a song that, to me, screams flailing around with your girlfriends and ignoring the guys who are staring at you, wondering whether they ought to take a chance and ask you to dance. [answer: don’t bother.] ah yes. there i am, a gallon of stiff stuff in my punky tresses to make it stand up like a cockatiel.
(hey, i’m a jersey girl. i’m obligated to have big hair.)
so if you play smalltown boy or hit that perfect beat, you may make my hair stand on end; though now that i think of it, jimmy somerville’s banshee wail could do that to anyone, cosmetically-bolstered or otherwise.
plenty has been written about what happened on 9/11. people especially focus on what happened in NYC, as the sheer number of lives and the immense destruction of the twin towers is just overwhelming. but on this anniversary of one of the worst days we have ever known, i thought i’d share a glimpse of what life was like for a mom and her small child directly in the flight path toward the pentagon and DC. it’s something i perpetually need to exorcise.
tuesday morning, 9/11/01, started like any other tuesday. most tuesdays, BC, then almost 3, stayed home from her preschool in BS’s office building. i had negotiated that in my last job — tuesdays were my mommy and me days, and i ended up leaving that last job when my then-boss, a seriously unhappy person who had inherited me from my previous angel-of-a-boss, just didn’t like that i didn’t sit at my desk 80 hours/week.
anyway, like all tuesdays, we were off to our co-op at a local community center. BS had a meeting way up in Maryland that day, so he wasn’t going to be able to take BC in to school, anyway, so it was just as well she was home with me. i did what i always did at about 8:50 am — i plopped her on the couch, turned on the Today Show, and started to put on her shoes and socks. only that day, i was instantly transfixed by one of the Twin Towers on fire. my aunt told me once that she occasionally helped a friend in the office downtown. i wondered immediately if she was there. i couldn’t move, though. just couldn’t. then, as i finally started to dial the phone, i saw, live on TV, a second plane. my heart immediately flipped into my throat: where’s my aunt?
i looked down at BC, who was messing about with something on the couch. oh my G-d, she musn’t see this, i thought. quickly, i clicked the TV off and ran back to the phone to call my aunt. no one was answering the phone. okay, okay, okay. don’t panic. don’t panic. i decided normalcy should be the order of the day. i quickly put BC’s shoes on, packed her into the car, and went off to the community center.
once we arrived, i saw moms huddled around a small television set. BC was the oldest in the co-op group (and has always been spookily emotionally astute), so i prayed she would get busy in the dress-up corner. but just as we seemed to be finally calming ourselves down, we heard the worst: a plane had hit the pentagon. as in, the building just down the road apiece.
and to add ridiculous insult to injury, the rumors began to fly that there was another plane in the air; that a plane had hit rosslyn, the state department, the Capitol; that the water was going to be contaminated. and there we were, right in the middle of the national airport and dulles airport flight paths. everyone began to sob. mama, BC asked, why are all the mommies sad?
sucking in all the air i could, i replied: they’re just feeling very sad today, sweetheart. how on earth do you tell a 2.5 year old girl that the world is imploding all around and nothing feels safe? you can’t. you’re a parent: your job is to maintain their world of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, happy cartoons, and teddy bears. you keep a straight face, a stiff upper lip, locked knees, and a stout heart. accepting my answer, she toddled back to the other little kids, who were pretty much oblivious in that way that only toddlers can be.
this left me free to quietly freak out. i tried to call BS’s cell phone. first, he didn’t answer. then, the lines were all beeping dementedly. decision time, and its all down to me.
i decided to take my baby girl home.
once we arrived home, i declared it an ALL BARNEY DAY! little girl could not. believe. her. luck. i stacked the videos of the VJE (Vile Jurassic Entity) in our family room and prepared to play them, one by one. and then, if we ran out, i’d play them all again. she was only under three — at that age, they love to watch things repeatedly.
i then moved out to the sun room. i set the TV up to the news and began to field the calls, first from my mother (my aunt — her sister — was later found at her significant other’s apartment, safe and sound. but at that point, neither of us could find her, and we scared each other), then from my mother in law, then from a local friend who told me that i needed to fill up my bathtub in case they attacked the water company. (i dutifully filled up the bathtub, then locked the door so that little BC didn’t toddle in and drown.) no, i had no idea where my husband was. no, i didn’t know whether the planes were continuing to fall here, but i had heard they might. as we live in the flight path, i listened for any sounds of planes overhead; all i heard was an eerie silence.
i continued to watch the TV. i watched as my town’s firefighters, police, etc, swarmed at the pentagon, the first on the scene as it happened. i hoped that my husband would come home, and soon. (he didn’t come home for hours: he had volunteered to drive three other people home, a drive on panic-riddled roads literally to the other side of maryland, then back again to virginia.) i prayed the carnage would end.
i was grateful that BC was home with me that day. on any other day, she would have been downtown. she would have been stranded, as BS was not at the office, left with the other children, children who had no food delivered to their daycare/preschool because the federal building was shutting things down due to the emergency. (the parents in the building banded together, bought all the pizza they could from the cafeteria, and brought it to the children.) with traffic snarled all around the city, i do not actually know how i would have gotten to her. i made a mental note to call my girlfriend, who worked with BS: should this ever happen again, please, please… take my child wherever you go.
and i sat, all alone, panic-striken, frozen, terrified i would jump out of my skin. but then, i’d see this little girl, her little blondey-boop-a-doop pony tail bopping around to there are seven days in the week. i had to keep her wrapped in cotton wool. there would be time later to talk about the truth (in her case, when she was eight), but for now, i had to be the strongest, most dependable mom on planet earth.
i tried my best; i really, really did. and i don’t think i have ever been so close to a nervous breakdown in my entire life. it took hours for BS to come home, and he told me how he had driven past the pentagon mere moments before the plane hit. later, i would learn that the wife of a colleague of mine was on that plane. later, i would volunteer my yard to house one of the 184 trees in my county planted to memorialize the Pentagon victims. later, i would drive by the burnt-out Pentagon and catch my breath; later still, i would drive by the Pentagon and have to catch my breath again when i saw the incredible rebuilding progress.
it would take me years before i stopped looking up at the sky, wondering whether the plane would stay suspended in the air or whether it would fall on my home, ending everthing in an instant. it would take me years before i would feel comfortable sending my children back to school in a federal building, especially one so close to the Capitol. it would take me years before i would get used to seeing SWAT teams occasionally atop places like the Dept of Justice or FBI (mercifully, no longer) or occasional armed army guys in the Metro. it would take me years to get used to concrete barricades around my children’s playgrounds; it would take longer still for me to grasp the contingency plans we’d have to make in case something threatened the FBI building catty-corner to the playground –things like shrapnel, pieces of building falling into the place where kids on slides might be. it would take me years before i felt okay living so close to the Nation’s Capitol.
it would take me years before i would feel safe and sound.
today’s my half birthday (yes, i track these things, yes indeed i do). because i’m such a fun gal, i’ll probably be experiencing a two-hour HIDA scan while you folks out there are reading this. thus, i thought i’d try to block out the blogging yuck factor and instead focus on something happy and more powerful.
in this vein (no pun intended on the scan front), my pal testosterone zone, who i suspect may be related to me if not by birth then by experience, has graciously given me an award: the kick ass blogger award.
that chick knows a thing or two about kicking asses: she’s surrounded by boys and men, 24/7. i love reading her accounts of days where i marvel at her ability to handle immense stress and pressure while resisting the urge to run through the streets menacingly wielding some sharp object. she always knows the right thing to say, and she has no fear whatsoever in saying it (something to which i aspire.) i am honored by her nomination! go read her. i’ll wait…
of course, i need to share the love. there are so many people i heart here, so i’ll flip coins and such cos i can only list five and there are so many, many more i would share if i could.
so, drum roll, please… these five people kick ass:
foolery kicks ass because she makes virtual milk come out of my nose.
ms. nylonthread kicks ass because though she may, just may, resemble sarah palin when she wears her glasses, she would never in a gazillion years think like her.
momzombie, who says things i dare not speak, and whose blog sports old skool fischer price little people.
surelyyounest, because she keeps it real… real crunchy. and real fun.
alejna at collecting tokens, because she just had a baby and is still blogging.
go forth and conquer, ladies. here is your mission, should you decide to accept it, from Mama Dawg, the originator of this thang.
linda ronstadt is one cool, determined, strong lady with a killer voice. as the original female rock arena queen, she has taken some incredibly gutsy artistic risks by moving away from her stock and trade – country rock – and trying her hand at opera, broadway, nelson riddle pop standards (long before the likes of rod stewart was singing them), and traditional hispanic mariachi music. i have tremendous respect for her, even though i’m not fond of a ton of her catalog. she has been a very generous performer, too, featuring music from then-lesser-known artists like warren zevon and elvis costello.
okay, sure. when i was like 11 or 12, i wanted to BE linda ronstadt. i wanted to be jet-setting around with governor moonbeam, or the eagles, or any of those folks, preferably not fueled on cocaine. i wished i had a HUGE voice that could probably knock down a tower of speakers with a single note.
but i didn’t. and i still don’t. still, that won’t stop me from trying whenever you’re no good comes on the radio.
(of course, this is the weirdest video of it i’ve seen. ronstadt is playing live in a prison wearing a dorothy-from-oz dress. guess toto was too scared to come along.)
G-d help anyone within earshot when this song comes on (my kids cover their ears on demand. it’s THAT painful.) and yes, i know she’s covering it, just like she’s covered a zillion other songs. but in this case, no one’s ever captured the angst that she conveys. angst coupled with anger: i bet she’d probably rip you to shreds if you were the song’s subject.
probably why the prisoners watching her didn’t move a muscle during her performance.
her original, for purists her prefer her without the wizard of oz get-up.
i believe in the free trade of ideas. there are a lot of people who have different opinions on everything i hold dear. that’s okay. i just don’t have to vote for them.
social conservatives scare me. i don’t care whether they’re male or female; anyone in power — say, a mayor — who wants to ban books from their local public library is not a person i want a heartbeat away from the presidency.
that tear in my eye isn’t because my car currently smells like the sour milk sea (thanks to jools’ spilling an entire bottle of nestle quik nearly two weeks ago). it’s not because my poor BS is suffering from a horrible sore throat (which does sadden me, of course, to a point.) nope.
kindergarten starts today.
my little boy is starting kindergarten. he was initially skeptical of the event, belligerently fighting against any attempts to introduce him to the place. but one of the silver linings of last week’s vacation misadventure was the fact that we returned home in time for the school’s meet your teacher event. jools complained at first bitterly about having to attend this; but with some coaxing from BC (school is SO FUN! she cooed to her brother. boy, i owe her big time), he went.
at first, mister man was not interested in his lovely teacher or teaching assistant. we walked around the room, admiring the displays, finding the little tiny bathroom, and picking up important mountains of paperwork. BC then became antsy to meet her teacher, so i left jools and BS in kindergarten, hoping for the best.
when i returned, the boys were sitting in the reading corner. jools doesn’t read yet, but he loves books. and when he saw an entire collection of early reader I Spy books in the reading nook, well, love comes to everyone, you know? the boy would. not. leave. in fact, we closed the place.
i LIKE kindergarten, the boy announced. when does school start???
[insert hallelujah chorus here.]
for me, while this means both kids are in school together, it also means that i am now a full-time, stay at home mom. i have to go full-tilt in homework land. i’ll probably be volunteering a bit more. and i have those kids otherwise, 24/7. i’ll need to hone my skills in time management, project management, people management. and the mom mobile, which currently smells foul, will probably smell even worse after all sorts of things, edible or otherwise, have been dropped, forgotten, or left for dead on the floor.
i’m excited. i’m nervous. i’m thinking about ear plugs.
i suspect the TV and the computer will need to be regulated a bit more now. i suspect the two kids who fight over air will fight that. much. more. i wonder when i’ll resort to charts for keeping track of everything. it wasn’t where i saw myself 10 years ago, but it’s my reality now, a reality i know some might actually give their eye-teeth for. (note to self: must look up the word eye-teeth before hellboy decides to attempt to somehow develop a new, realistic concept of the term on his own, with potentially violent — or vile — results.) i’m so used to having only one kid 24/7 at a time. now, it’s time to do the two-kid shuffle. if my mom worked and juggled three kids, surely i can hack two, right?
i just hope i remember to stop, take a breath sometimes, and enjoy it.
