Don Skixote

Sure it's summertime now.  But let's take a moment to enjoy the evergreen material that is laughing at all my wintertime mishaps.  Whenever/wherever you're reading this, have an active day!


It takes a certain kind of person to snap one of her ski poles in half just getting on a chairlift.  It was my first ride up of the day—my second of the season—and I was trying to feel good about it, and then I somehow planted my pole between my feet just as the chair was coming around. I figured I would sit down anyway—things would work out fine—but the chair and the ground and the pole all formed a bizarre love triangle that creaked and groaned and ground everything to a halt before the chair finally lurched forward.  I looked over my shoulder to shout “Sorry!” at the lift operator and saw the sea of polar fleece hats in the lift line duck, taking cover at the noise of the metal and plastic and who knows what other kinds of space-aged materials fought the turning gears of that great machine. 

“Great,” I said to my date, looking at the handle of my pole, “now what am I going to do?” 

“It’s not like you need your poles,” he said, “you don’t use them right anyway.”  He was pulling his neck gator over his face, either to protect himself from the wind that had kicked up, or from being recognized.  Later, he imagined out loud that those who had witnessed my own special brand of clumsiness were turning to each other, reverently saying things like, “Wasn’t it nice of that girl’s brother to pick her up from the institution and take her outside like that?” He told me, with flagrant disregard for my feelings and everything else, that I was a skitard.

In my defense, the day that my trusty ski pole and I unknowingly jousted a giant, I’d already been through a lot with the sport of skiing. As someone who’s done nothing but watch TV since she was born, the concept of skiing as a nice, enjoyable, attainable sport didn’t jibe with the “agony of defeat” scene from the opening sequence of Wide World of Sports. My parents were never athletic or outdoorsy, and the thought of driving an hour each way over mountain passes and black ice in a 1975 Ford LTD was a little too much for people who eventually sold their season tickets to the Broncos because they refused to brave the traffic or sit outside in winter weather.  Like the clichéd character in sitcoms and movies who’s terrified she will die a virgin, I vowed to ski, in a half-assed attempt at finding something—anything—that could whisk me away from our house on the weekends. I lived in a shrine to the NFL, where worshippers came in their Sunday best jersey knockoffs to baptize themselves in Velveeta and chili, and where “the host” referred not to the body of Christ, but to Howard Cosell.

The Taoist Mother

Just when I think there's nothing new for my mom to teach me, she reinforces the fact that, although I'm in my 40s and a mother myself, there are still deceptively simple lessons to be learned and re-learned again.

I come from an all-news-all-the-time upbringing, which might explain the bomb shelter I designed and depicted in a diorama for my sixth grade art fair. (I still believe that the only reason I won is because the other entries were either stolen or pornographic.)  And not only was the news always on, it was on at ear-splitting levels, so that there was never any escaping the crime waves, the plane crashes, the floods, fighting, and financial crises that were sweeping the nation at any given moment.

From the day I moved out of my parents'  house, I decided never to watch the news again. And, as it turned out, I didn't need to. Because the second something big, bad, or baffling happened, my mom would be on the phone, making sure I was informed.  Of course, the Interwebz eventually complicated everything, with its urban myths and chain letters urging recipients to beware the new computer virus that would delete your recipes for potato salad, the killer that was hiding in your back seat, the cockroach that hatched inside a woman's tongue. Mom was calling me daily for several years with one form of bad news or another, until one day, I finally snapped.

"I just thought  you should know," she said on a spring day in 2008, "that there's a man at the hospital who says he has a bomb strapped to his body."

"Why would I need to know that?" I scolded.

"Well, in case you're driving that way, the road might be closed," she said in her defense.

When I asked her when she was going to ever call me with good news, she said she would try to come up with something more cheerful. A few hours later, called again.  "Good news!" she chirped. I could hear the pride in her voice, and so I asked her what she had for me.

"They shot the guy with the bomb."  Determined to turn things around, I said, "Then I guess it's a good thing he was already at the hospital."

It's no story of the Taoist Farmer, but it's true and it's mine, and it's a testament to my mother's wisdom, whether it's intentional, channeled, or accidental. I've been thinking a lot about my family lately, and how it's going to change and move and shift, as families do after the loss of one of its members, and I cling to this memory as proof that we're all going to be fine. Story at 11.

Kindergarten Krisis

I am avoiding going to the store for school lunch fixin's. I am most decidedly dragging my feet on this, the day before the day before Sophie starts Kindergarten. I had no idea I would feel so much anxiety, such nostalgia, such terror. I've spent the better part of today feeling fragile and weepy, probably because it seems impossible that I'm going to commit my little girl to a big brick building with a flagpole outside, where she will stay all day with people she doesn't already know, and then come out, hopefully holding the same lunch bag she went in with. I know I will obsess over whether it's empty at the end of the day, or still packed with 2/3 of the food I sent with her. And so I will drag my feet through the grocery store, choosing the things that will become Sophie's first school lunches with the care that Indiana Jones chose the grail. Will I choose wisely?

I took Sophie to her last day of preschool this morning. She's been going there since the age of 20 months, with a brief hiatus while we served a winter-long sentence in Vail. On her first day there, she sat down for circle time and requested the song "Pistol Packin' Mama." When her teacher said she didn't know it, Sophie reminded her that it started with the lyrics, "Drinkin' beer in a cabaret..."

Our preschool was a small school where everyone knew each other, and where I felt super comfortable. I considered it an extension of our own home environment: A place where I wasn't afraid to be myself. I wrote the class newsletter (sometimes), and helped organize events. I went along on field trips, and made phone calls urging parents to attend the next meeting. Sometimes. I joined a school-sponsored exercise group and carped about Alex's carping about tuition. Lunches and snacks were provided; I never packed one meal. Now that all that's over, I don't know what I'm doing. How exciting.

And I don't know that her new school will know what it's doing, either. How will Sophie's teacher know that such subtle cues as wanting to sit down and rest mean that a trip to the school nurse--and then probably home--is in order? How will she know that the statement, "I have a forehead," means that she's feverish and headache-y? How will she know that Sophie spends as much time falling down as she does standing up? Who will be there to apply the bandage, and will it have princesses on it? I am tempted to write a how-to manual, staple it to Sophie's shirt, and then show up at school to read it aloud. I am tempted to tattoo her address and phone number to her belly, upside down, so that if she blanks, she can look down her shirt and read it to whomever needs to call me--stat.

Thankfully, Sophie is unable to come along for my midlife crisis-like hayride. Her excitement is palpable; she couldn't be happier about this next adventure in big-girl beginnings, which is why my behavior must baffle her right out of the pink Chuck Taylor's she's about to outgrow. While I was rooting around the fridge for the makings of yesterday's one-food-group dinner that we ate standing at the island in the kitchen instead of the table, Sophie mentioned her friend, Grace. "Mom, can you believe two of Gracie's teeth are loose?" I spun around, pointed my finger at her and said, "Don't even think about starting to lose your teeth yet!"

But I have hope that by the time the leaves fall and it's dark enough in the mornings that an alarm is necessary to wake up on time, I'll have it together. I imagine we'll get busy making bake sale cookies and memorizing school plays. And it'll be like I'm getting to go to school all over again, only with wine and chocolate at the end of the day instead of milk and carrot sticks. I'll learn all over again what kind of mother I am, and what kind I'll become. And if I get stuck, I can always ask Sophie for help. She seems to have everything under control.

You've Waited Too Long to Potty Train When...

After April's breastfeeding frenzy post, "You Know You've Been Breastfeeding too Long When..." the clamoring for more of my child-rearing advice has reached new (and totally fictional) highs. Today, a loyal reader in Fort Lee, New Jersey asks, "My three-year old son is still happy to wear diapers, and shows no interest in potty training. When is it time to lay down the loo law?"
Sincerely,
Poopy Pants McGee

Dear Poopy,
First off, only you can decide when it's time to take a more aggressive approach in persuading your little bundle of joy to stop hauling around his own little bundles. Ask your pediatrician when it's developmentally appropriate, given your son's history and temperament. And, I've put together a set of guiding principles to help you and other parents decide when enough is enough.

• When you send the kid out to buy a package of his own diapers--along with some milk and eggs--you've waited too long to potty train.
• When he tells you he's had an accident, and it's necessary to clarify whether he's talking about his pants or his car, you've waited too long to potty train.
• When your daughter complains about the lack of thong-style diapers on the market that match her Hooters uniform, you've waited too long to potty train.
• If your precious one is audited by the IRS for claiming Huggies as an expense, you've waited too long to potty train.
• When your son is forced to leave basketball practice because his cup runneth over, you've waited too long to potty train.
  
• When you decide to switch from wet wipes to Swiffer Wet Jet pads, you've waited too long to potty train.
  
• When you offer to read to your daughter while she sits on the potty, and she suggests a Danielle Steele novel, you've waited too long to potty train.
  
• After offering to show your son a movie about potty training, and he asks if it's called Two Girls, One Cup, seek professional help. And also, you've waited too long to potty train.
  

New Mom Felony Prevention

I'll never forget the days and months when nap time was THE most important time of the day. And even though we lived then on a dirt road in a tiny mountain town, a solicitor or delivery person of some kind would find us, and knock on the door. This meant tears for everyone, as the dogs would bark wildly, waking up little Sophie, who would, upon noticing that she had been tricked into falling asleep DURING THE DAY, scream and cry and wreak havoc on my plans to shower or use the bathroom by myself. I would fling open the front door, in tears myself, and wreak havoc on the young salesperson's plans to keep breathing.

After a few of these episodes, I posted a note on the door that said simply, "No solicitors." But here's the thing about solicitors: Much like a lot of us, they're in denial about who and what they are. After scolding one such well-meaning boy holding a container of dish detergent, he explained, "I'm not a 'solicitor,'" going so far as to bend his fingers into quotation marks on either side of his head. "I'm spreading Joy." I wondered if a judge would believe me if I said, "I didn't staple a 'no solicitors' note to his head, Your Honor. I was simply spreading the word."

No matter. I went back to the drawing board and soon after and invented a sign that worked so well that I made several copies and handed them out to all my new mom friends who bemoaned the same problem. Now, thanks to the Interwebszs, you can use it too, in the hopes that it leads you not into the temptation to spread the word with your red Swingline stapler.

Happy Mother's Day, Even if it is Fake

Why yes, actually, I am the 2009 Mother of the Year. And because I'll suspend my disbelief six ways from Sunday for any amount of appreciation, I'll take the award and pretend it really exists. Now if you'll excuse me, I've only got a few minutes before the press corps shows up wanting to know what's next for a woman like me.

Four

I.
You were born on September 23^rd, 2004 at 9:50 PM mountain time. “Hey, it’s Bruce Springsteen’s birthday too,” we said, laughing and singing "Born to Run" in the delivery room. You are four today, and I’m already doing that thing that parents do when they realize that in the blink of an eye, you’re going to pack up your 2017 vegetable oil-powered Subaru and speed away into your future because you’re THAT excited about what’s next. I’m a little misty, I’m a little verklempt. I realized on your 2^nd birthday, the only one in which you would double your age in one year, that you weren’t going to stay little for very long. At the time, this was really good news. Today you’re twice the person you were last year, even if you’re only one year older, and I find myself trying to slam on the breaks. (See also: Good luck with all that.)

II.
I couldn’t be prouder of you. You’re already the kindest person I know, with a self-awareness that I didn’t possess…ever, maybe. My friend Carol calls you “the future president of the United States” and says you’re the oldest soul she’s ever known. This is what friends are for, to tell you that you’ve managed to produce the finest person since Thomas Jefferson (who was born on my birthday, by the by.) But these are the things that stick with me: You can make friends anywhere, even if it’s a dog, or a bug, or a kid who doesn’t speak English. And you are able to give an unapologetic voice to your needs. As a woman who is guilty too often of torturing herself for needing anything at all, I can’t tell you what a relief it is that you’ve always been able to tell me what you need, and ask for what you want. I’m trying not to mess that up.

III.
That day I was trying to hurry you into your car seat, and you looked at me, tearful, and said, “I’m fragile today” made me grateful beyond measure for your way with words. What a relief that you can at least tell me what’s wrong, or what’s right, even if I fail to listen right away. The night I was trying to get dinner made, despite your whiny requests for milk, for a snack, for some paper and markers, you finally said, “I need attention.” Dinner waited that night, our schedule got all messed up, and nobody died; in fact, we were all better off for it.

IV.
You’ve decided lately that your old man is OK. In fact, you’re pretty sure he’s cooler and funner than the rest of us. I knew this day would come; it doesn’t make it any easier, though. After four years of your unabashed worship, it’s downright painful to pass on the baton, even if it does make bathtime, bedtime, and life in general a little easier. I have my own plans, that’s true, but the day you decided to join “Boy Team” as you call it, I considered setting them on fire. You are joining the legions of all the other creatures I’ve brought home who have adopted the habit of ignoring me until sick or hurt, at which point you all come limping back to me. That’s OK. Let the record show that, no matter what, I will be your Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman. I will be the president of your fan club. I will be your teacher, your student, your sidekick. And I will continue to uphold the doctrine your father and I carved into stone the day we learned of your existence: We will love you, whoever you are.

I Want a New Drug Car

If it's considered romantic to continue to learn things about one's spouse long after the nuptials, consider this: I realized not long ago that I happened to have married a man with a very interesting feature. Somewhere in Alex's head is a little invisible clock, a timer that is constantly counting down to zero the minutes and seconds in which it will be time to rid ourselves of each of our worldly possessions. He seems to own one of these little clocks for everything material thing--mine, his, ours. Nothing escapes his timer; even the houses we've lived in have been on the clock, and in fact, deciding on a dime to sell our first home was how I learned of his expire-o-meter in the first place.

A few months ago, Alex began making little noises about my car, a Subaru sedan. They were little, introductory-type messages that indicated that it was becoming time to sell my car, as opposed to the statement, "I sold your car today." I appreciated the warm up to the main event. I , of course, dug my heels in and proceeded to drag my feet, kicking and screaming all the way to Craigslist the day we put it up for sale. Someone bought it the next day. I cried, wee wee wee, all the way home.

I enjoy forming attachments to my things, and keeping them until death do us part, which is why Sophie is using my childhood bedroom furniture, and--no kidding--sleeping on my Snoopy sheets from 1974. Apart from finding this sort of conservationist quality in myself a strength, I also know that I do it because that's how much I really hate shopping to replace the stuff we've parted with. I think I may also have contracted a case of Being Old Fashioned, which makes buying new things with new features and shiny buttons and knobs a lot like putting the cast of Hee Haw on the space shuttle: an embarrassment to those who have spent their lives and enthusiasm furthering technology's advances, and a plea for space aliens to just shoot us all and eat our brains--NOW.

I say all that, knowing I'm a little sad that I'm no longer such a gadgety gal. The truth is, technology doesn't do it for me like it used to, and that's perhaps because I live in a house full of nutjobs intent on ruining everything I care too much about. Motherhood has done things to me, beyond the obvious, physical things that it does to all of us, and I'm afraid that it's shown me that anything with buttons on it, anything mechanical or digital or electrical, is soon rendered inoperable with extreme and swift prejudice.

I also know that I've inherited a lot of my no-nonsense, frugal behaviors from a long line of people who had just enough, and needed to save every bit of it for as long as they could. Just today, I built a fort for Sophie out of the same (reupholstered) couch cushions with which my dad made countless forts for me. My first car, which made it past college graduation, was the 1971 Camaro my dad bought when I was two years old. Mom and Dad still live in the same house they bought when they married in 1968; they probably always will.

Without entering territory that I would call stingy or cheap, my family's Depression-era thinking has rubbed off on me, a fact that I'm almost proud of, in a noble way; a kind of waste-not-want-not kind of way. In a way that makes my husband, a person I also plan to keep as long as possible, dizzy with anxiety. Funny, that.

So in addition to calling him Rapunzel (behind his back), I shall now refer to Alex as Chronos, Timekeeper of All Our Things. It's a good thing, and an annoying thing, and I'll take it because at least the man is the buying type in addition to being the selling type. Yesterday he bought me a car--a "pre-owned" one, as I like to call it--at my urging. It's just like my old car, only newer, and neater, and in much better shape. No, Dr. Freud, it's just a cigar.

I told Alex that I wanted a newer car that was modestly priced, and that got good gas mileage. I wasn't looking for anything fancy, understanding that fancy is relative; I reminded him that my cell phone only does two things: takes phone calls and makes them. (I think I actually had to pay extra for that.) And now I have exactly what I asked for. For now.

Now it's time to wait and see. Because maybe the clock that governs his clocks is going to wind down to 0:00:00, and he will forget to stop me from keeping and loving every single thing that has ever served me, and we will finally see each other for who we are: People who need deserve each another.

The "P" Word

Ours is a household with loose rules. We try not to sweat the small stuff, parenting-wise, so that Sophie, Alex and I are together and present, instead of arguing over whether it's OK or not to wear your Crocs to bed. It's not for everyone, but this is the way our family is. Sophie takes great pleasure in picking out her clothes each day before school to create a very unique look that I like to call Boca Raton Bag Lady. Further, the rules are: You can pretty much wear what you want to bed, as long as you sleep; you can pretty much have whatever you want for dinner as long as you eat at least some of it. Wearing seatbelts in the car is non-negotiable, but, hey, you can use any word you want at home, as long as you don't cuss at school.

And then today, the chickens came home to roost.

"Mom," Sophie explained to me today, "you can call big girl underpants 'panties.'" I think I may have lost consciousness for a moment.

You see, for reasons I can't explain, but that probably have to do with a certain series of obscene phone calls that plagued my childhood home in the early '80s, I can't bear to hear the word "panties," much less say it. Even typing the word gives me the heebie-jeebies, and I'm probably going to have to spend the rest of my night with my fingers resting in a bath of sulphuric acid. ("You're soaking in it!")

No one is sadder than I that a new reign of censorship has begun between my daughter and I. Here we are, after three and a half years under my careful tutelage--"These are your underpants"--arguing over the P word in the backyard.

"No, honey, actually you can't call them panties," I said, wincing. "They are underwear or underpants or even undergarments, but that's all." And thus a new rule was born: You can call them panties, as long as you only do so at school. I can't wait for her teenage years; I'm considering getting it over with and taking a pickax to my eardrums now.

Winter Time Warp: How a Virus Turned February Turned Into April Part I

A few months ago, which seems like a few years ago, I was trying my damndest to get Sophie well from some virus that desperately clung to her like one of those creepy boyfriends we’ve all had. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Steve.) She’d been sick with something or other pretty much all winter, which I was trying not to take personally, even though in Boulder, that’s almost impossible. When learning that a family has fallen prey to cold and flu season, it’s not just customary—it’s mandatory—to ask the mother if she’s fed her family anything but organic vegetables, or to blame gluten, sugar, artificial colors, or hand sanitizer. And if the mother had committed to breastfeeding longer, her children wouldn't get sick in the first place. Yes, mea culpa on making sensitive, deeply personal decisions, like weaning Sophie a month, a day, a year longer than someone else thinks I should have. (Like sometime before she started shaving her legs and bringing home calculus homework, for example.)

And while Sophie was entering the third or fourth day of viral symptoms, I slogged inside our nearest drugstore with my clammy, whining toddler draped over my shoulder for an over-the-counter medication we use when things go south. The woman at the counter looked at me as if I had just asked for cyanide. “We don’t carry it,” she eyed me, “people overdose their kids with it.” I’d been fetching juice, laundering the vomit out of everything we own, and watching Blue’s Clues for 48 hours straight, and it took herculean restraint not to overdose that woman’s face with my fist.

This illness, at first, wasn’t anything that I hadn’t endured before, and I had to be grateful that we’d moved away from Vail, where I didn’t know anyone who could help me while Alex was away, and where the physicians were more like EMTs in really expensive shoes. It was during that winter we spent in Vail that I invented a system of helping nurses and doctors triage their pediatric patients in the waiting room just by looking at the kind of shape their mothers were in. When Sophie was on the well side, I looked like a regular mom who could have used some highlights and a breath mint, but was otherwise holding it together OK. When she got really sick, and when her fever rose to 104.5 the minute her medication wore off, I looked a lot like Nick Nolte’s mug shot from 2002.

Living in a real place, where my parents can help me when things get really bad, and the doctors know how to do other things besides treat ski injuries, I felt a little better. Then on the night of February 5th, after we’d seen Sophie’s pediatrician, and were taking a new round of antibiotics, I looked at Sophie and didn't like how she was doing. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something told me things were bad, and were going to get worse. With my spidey sense tingling, I paged the on-call doctor, and got a phone triage nurse at Children’s Hospital. “What you’ve just described to me constitutes a 911 call. How does she look?”
“Like shit actually,” I said. I hung up, and packed us all into the car. I didn’t bother changing my clothes; despite the weather, I didn’t even put on a coat. I headed for the emergency room without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars.

Stay tuned for the continuation of Winter Time Warp: How a Virus Turned February Turned Into April, coming soon.

No Move is Good Move: A Primer on What My Problem Is, Part III

If you're new to the No Move is Good Move saga, you'll find part one here, part two here, and part three here.

To add to my mounting panic over our nest-less existence, those were the months that marked the beginning of the end of Sophie’s career as a baby who slept like, well, a baby.

From her second month of life, Sophie sleep in her crib, every night, from 6 PM to 6 AM, and that was the problem: We had it too good. “This is it,” Alex and I said, congratulating ourselves during quiet, unhurried dinners, “we’ve got it made. She’s a sleeper, thanks to our stellar parenting and undeniable good looks.”

We moved to Boulder. Two weeks later, we went to Mexico. Two months after that, Sophie broke her collarbone on the babysitter’s watch, an episode that disturbed us much more than the bout of pneumonia she caught about as soon as her tiny bones mended. I would put her in her crib and stroke her head, either for an hour or until I’d rubbed off a good portion of her hair—whichever came first—and try and make dinner before she was able to figure out that she had accidentally fallen asleep. There would be night terrors sometime between midnight and one, and at least three other teary awakenings on a bad night. She would ask for—demand—milk each time she woke, and by morning, had drunk enough to add up to a volume that justified keeping a cow on the premises. And as if there was something a mere doctor could do about it, Alex and every relative I have implored me ask our pediatrician for ideas.

“You moved?” asked the pediatrician, as if he’d never heard such nonsense, “Oh, well.” He wrote the word “moved” in Sophie’s chart, and said,“That’ll do it.” He told me that a move can mess up a baby’s sleep schedule for as long as six months, and so can an illness, an injury, and a big change in routine, like starting day care, which she did in between bouts of the Bird Flu. Accepting that we’d sent our daughter’s schedule straight to hell in a basket bearing a nice pink bow, I told Alex to buck up. “We’re never sleeping again.”

Of course, I was wrong. We would sleep, but with a child in between us who apparently was dreaming that she was executing a triple axel toe-loop combo. In exasperation one morning, Alex looked down at the two of us in bed, Sophie occupying ¾ of the king-sized bed by lying diagonally, her feet in my face, and said, “This must end.”

We all deal with challenges differently. I usually hide under the covers of whatever bed is available with a box of strawberry Pop Tarts (frosted). Alex threatens to help, usually in the most condescending way possible, which is what he did the night he suggested, “Do you want me to read a book on this stuff or something?”

“Sure, go nuts,” I said. I went to my office and retrieved a half-dozen books with so many bookmarks and wrinkled Post-It Notes thrust between the pages that they resembled little paper porcupines. “Which philosophy do you want to subscribe to?” I asked him. “There’s Ferberizing, there’s the almighty American Academy of Pediatrics.” I tossed them onto the coffee table as I summarized. “On one end of the spectrum, there’s Dr. Weisbluth and his all-cry-all-the-time approach and the Sears clan at the other, who openly come right out and ask you, ‘What’s up your ass? Jesus. Just take the kid to bed with you.’” I shrugged and said, “I’m paraphrasing, of course.”

It was out of the kind of hand-wringing, hair-pulling, crazy-making, all-encompassing desperation that only severe and extended sleep deprivation can cause that I’d turned to the experts in the first place. Knowing that they’re just trying to help while they make a good living, I know that there’s a problem with relying too much on them. The problem with experts is that you can’t really call them up at 3:24 AM to say, “The best thing about not sleeping is that Bosom Buddies is on now.“ The problem with experts is that they may or may not have changed their minds about something they’ve written between having written it and having decided that maybe it would be better just to give the kid a big slug of whiskey.

The problem with experts is that, while I’m listening to the second half of an hour’s worth of screaming and crying that will no doubt escalate to the kind of wailing that eventually culminates in a vomiting jag, the good doctor is probably in his study, deciding what to bring to the next Rotary Club potluck. Just as he’s asking the shadowy figure of his wife in the doorway, “Do you think Swedish meatballs are too salty?” I’m wondering if it would be wrong to just put my head in the oven, next to the dinner that’s four hours late.

And then, of course, the problem with experts is that sometimes I just want to do things my own way. Because sometimes, unlike a certain ’80 sit-com, I like to think I know exactly who the boss is. (Of course, I’m almost always wrong.) Bossing aside, I do believe that ninety percent of the time, we know what to do with the crises in our lives, no matter how big or how small they are. We can trust our instincts, we can trust ourselves. Although she would win any day of the week in a cage match against Major Houlihan from MASH, and although I often wonder if astronauts can see the stick up her ass from space, the pediatrician’s nurse took me aside on Sophie’s fifth day of life, and told me that she had some advice about advice. She poked me square in the chest and said, “Now that the baby’s born, everyone wants to give you advice, but the best advice is already built-in. It’s in you.” She was telling me what I had already concluded after years of near-disastrous dates and relationships and experiences. Those experiments in substituting my judgment with someone else’s have served me well in the form of painful lessons that hold up over time. Nurse Ratchet with the Rave home perm reminded me that there’s hard-won wisdom in me, and damned if I was going to forsake it because I’d spend $24.95 on some yahoo’s thesis.


To be continued, unless you beg me to stop.

In My Next Life I'd Like to Have Better Time Management Skills

Maybe then I'll find a way to mention in plenty of time that you can order something from this very special line of tee shirts, mugs and cards. It's perfect for Mother's Day. (Depending on the mother, as you'll see.)

Until my next reincarnation, have a happy day, mothers!

Addicted to Recovery, or, This is What Sleep Deprivation Can Do to a Person

I might complain about it, but living with someone who is constantly bogarting the TV remote is kind of a blessing. No, I usually don’t care to watch all four hundred episodes in the James Bond marathon, thanks for asking, or an entire round of an Ultimate Fighting cage match, so I sit next to Alex and practice scales on the guitar—as loudly as possible. It’s good for me. When it’s my birthday or a night when I’m home alone, though, I get the remote to myself, and if the TV gods are smiling, the show Intervention is on.

I loved Intervention right away for its message that radical transformation can happen, even to people who will at first fight it tooth and nailgun; it’s a bloody war between the forces of good and evil within a single person, and we get to watch without fearing the shrapnel that’s flying from scene one.

One minute of the show we’re shaking out heads at Alyson, a three-time White House intern-turned-crackhead who regularly breaks into her dying father’s room to steal his morphine. “When the safe is open,” she says, “I feel like it’s my birthday. Like I won the lottery.” We break for commercial and let it sink in that there’s a mother out there who is not only going to be a widow soon, but has been moved by her own daughter’s behavior to keep her dying husband’s drugs under lock and combination. Minutes later, after accepting her family’s free ride to a treatment facility in Anaheim, Alyson is running the place and entertains a career as an author. “I can do it,” she laughs as the credits roll. “It’s possible.” And we believe her.

It’s usually at the end of the show, when I’m full of good old-fashioned inspiration, that I beg Alex to stage an intervention on me. “Please,” I beg, “I’m dying to go to rehab.”

If Intervention is as true to life as I’m sure it isn’t, I would put on my headphones, or open a magazine, or make nice chit chat with my interventionist before our flight touched down in a nice, warm place. We’d head over to what the show calls “detox,” which sounds like code for “getting a big snoot full of uninterrupted sleep.” After that, check-in at a facility that looks like a hybrid between a cottage and spa, for what could be weeks or even months of talking about myself to adults who are paid to listen. Yes, maybe I would have to cook or clean there; maybe I would have to sleep in the same room with someone who may decide one night to melt down my jewelry, suck it into a syringe, and inject it directly into her heart, but I’ll hand her my wedding ring myself if she promises to be as quiet as a little mouse while she does it. I may have to deal with cigarette smoke at rehab, but I’m pretty sure that no one will wake me at least three times every night, begging for another cup of milk, an hour of hair-stroking, and twelve more rounds of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

“There’s one small problem,” Alex always says. “You don’t really even drink.” He can be such a wet blanket.

“Don’t I?” I try and argue. “Maybe you’re just in denial.”

“Fine, then chug this beer.”

“Enabler!”

He’s right, of course, for ignoring my cries for help. I know exactly what would happen. I would exit recovery, fresh as a daisy, hugging the pillows I had needle pointed with sentiments of a slightly spiritual flavor, believing in myself. And then after a few months of normal, everyday life, where a certain someone is physically incapable of putting his dishes into the sink instead of the dishwasher, and another certain someone likes to let herself outside, step in dog poop, and then come back inside to walk over every single square inch of carpet, I would find myself itching to go right back to the bliss of one full night’s sleep after another and the ability to eat a whole serving of…anything, without having to answer several questions about it before giving more than half of it away to someone who is too cute to refuse.

There’s no recovery from normal life, I guess, unless you count dying. As someone without an addiction to a substance or behavior that’s destroying my life and others’—except for the way I play guitar—no one has ever insisted that I “work a program.” I realize that I should be so grateful for this seemingly small fact that I start speaking in tongues, and so I'll express my undying gratitude to whatever forces kept me from beneath the giant ax of vice by telling you: I know that part of my problem is that I've had it so good. I also know that part of my blessing is that I've lived within a hair of those who have had it no good at all.

Having it good, having it bad...let's forget all that for a minute and get back to the things I can influence. Until I can change the minds of my friends and family, I’m going to work my own clumsy hodge-podge of twelve or so steps from now on, maybe even going so far as to gather my friends together for telling our ugliest truths and our most glorious ones, holding hands, singing songs, and shoring up our own hopes for what’s possible when we live life in delicious, bite-sized chunks. Note to self: Buy a coffee urn and make flyers.

I’m Jody Reale, and I’ve been without an entire night’s sleep for 392 days. Thank whatever higher power is available right now, I know that this, too, shall pass.

A Toddler’s Guide to Dog Ownership, Part I

Start the day by sneaking up on one or more of your sleeping dogs and yelling, “Wake up!” as you jump on top of him. Without skipping a beat, show your mother that everything’s on the level by patting the dog gently on the head and looking into his sad, tired eyes and repeating, “Aw, you’re a good girl,” over and over.

When your breakfast of a pancake slathered with butter is ready, insist on walking around the entire house with it, despite certain urgings from someone in the kitchen to please eat the damn thing or put it on the kitchen counter. Offer it to one of your dogs by very nearly ramming it into her mouth. When the dog actually shows the nerve to try and eat it, use the pancake to beat her about the head and shoulders while shouting, “No! No! No!” Sing the theme song from the show Dora the Explorer sixty seven times to drown out the din of battle. If possible, work in a few original verses about pooping in the potty and your undying love for the yogurt smoothie product, Danimals.

Discover that one or both of your dogs has eaten the pancake you left on the coffee table so that you could ram twenty seven CDs into the five-CD changer. Lose your mind to the tune of relieving yourself on the carpet, or ideally a piece of leather furniture. Run a hysterical circuit around the house, simultaneously chasing your dogs if possible, screaming, “I want that pancake!” until one of the dogs turns tail to face you and barks as loudly as possible right in your face. Escalate your hysterics until NASA calls to find out if they can use your grand mal seizure to power the next Space Shuttle flight.

Insist on a Band Aid. “A Dora one,” sob to your mother, and point to a half dozen places on your face where you think the noise from that one unconscionable bark may have broken the skin. By the time you’re dressed and ready for preschool, wonder why your mother hasn’t yet called the vet to make an appointment for euthanizing the offending dog. Adjust your Dora Band Aid forty two times to adequately cover one gaping wound after another. When asked in the car why you think your dog barked at you like that, pretend you’ve suddenly lost your hearing for a few minutes before answering, “I have poop.” Affirm to yourself that tomorrow those mutts are in a lot of trouble. Instead of butter, you're asking for a billy club to go on your pancake.

Thanksgiving

We met on your birthday. I was thirty five, you were zero, and the time was 9:50 PM. We found ways right there on the spot to make you special before you were gone from the womb in sixty seconds: You were the obstetrician’s last delivery in private practice; you were born on the same day as Bruce Springsteen, Miles Davis and Ray Charles, and your head was as round and as perfect and as peachy-creamy-looking as the C-section babies' even though you were born the old fashioned way. The doctor rubbed your back and said, “Come on, cry, baby.” You did.
That was pretty much the last time you did as you were told.
You’re two now. The time went by, as every parent says, so quickly and yet so slowly. You are growing like a weed. You are unique in all the world.
From my observations, the twos aren’t so much terrible as they are terrific. You are enjoying yourself at levels that should be reserved for rave-goers on their fortieth hit of Ecstasy. We play games that involve my threatening to bite your toes, your belly, your knees, your neck, and when I make good on each promise, it makes you laugh so hard you fart. You are so afraid of falling asleep and missing something that I've seen you actually hold your eyes open with your fat little fingers. For reasons that are unknown to me and maybe to you, you have a love-hate relationship with one of our dogs, and a love-love relationship with all others. You sing along with the songs on your CDs in the car, and the way you dance can only be described as free-style. You do it as if everybody's watching--and you like it that way. You are by far the most delightful person I’ve ever met, which makes me wonder if we are all this wonderful, but forgot.
I admit I’m still a little intimidated by the vocation of parenting. The hours are long, the mistakes are begging to be made, and the pay sucks. Before you were born, what I wondered most was how in the world I would deliver you to adulthood a healthy, educated and loved person, so that you could keep yourself safe and happy for the rest of your life. What stymies me now is how I can keep you from forgetting that you are terrific, at any and every age. I’m comforted by the fact that I don’t have to figure that out right this second. We have some time.
At completely random intervals, you will demonstrate a skill that the teachers at your preschool taught you as soon as you joined their class. You will grab one of my hands with yours and say, smiling, “Nice to meet you.” Indeed it is, my dear. Thanks for coming. Let’s spend our next hour, year, decade, lifetime getting to know each other and ourselves like all get-out. And to seal the deal, here, pull my finger.