Fine Young Fauves

Of course, in the last week I have been thinking a lot about our late brother-in-law Will Caldwell. Our relationship was slow moving. We saw each other once or twice a year at family gatherings over the course of more than fifteen years. We had a bond based mostly on having married into the same family, and being subject to its quirks. The bond was strictly unspoken though– now and then at a choice moment, we made eye contact.

He always struck me as so competent. I remember his cooking– one time for a party he was meticulously putting together these appetizers that consisted of tiny red-skinned potatoes, cooked and hallowed out, then stuffed with chives and sour cream and topped with caviar and a chive garnish He always knew the right wine and brought out plenty of it.

He had a sharp sense of humor. Here are a few of my favorite Will quotes:

 When describing a book he had read, he said, “It was so boring I wanted to scratch my eyes out.”

 When describing Roseanne Barr, he said, “ She used to just be a normal disgusting fat person, but now that she’s had all that plastic surgery she IS TWO HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS OF CHISELED FAT!”

 When responding to my story of how Lena dog had been attacked by two beagles on the street , and how I threw Isaac into a snow bank and went to great lengths to break up the fight, which she was clearly winning, he said, “What I would have done is just taken Isaac home and put him in his crib, then walked slowly back and said, ‘I will now help you bury your dog.’”

At Ben’s younger sister’s wedding Will and I both had to read a passage in front of a lot of people. While we were driving to the wedding, I said, “If I didn’t have to read, I’d be feeling fine right now. I’m just going to a party, so what’s the big deal? EXCEPT for the reading part.” “I feel exactly the same way,” he said. This surprised me because he always seemed so incredibly confident to me and able to do anything on earth. Afterwards, I asked him how it went. He said, “Well, I got up there and I forgot how to breathe."

One thing Will did that was really nice– after we lost our baby Jacob in 2001, we didn’t see Will for several months. But when we saw him at a family party, he just came over to Ben and put his arm around him. He didn’t say anything, but with that gesture said a lot. He said in effect, “I know you’re hurting over it, I haven’t forgotten it, and I care about you.” This meant so much to Ben at that time. It really was touching.

 We will miss him. Here’s his obit in his hometown paper: http://www.legacy.com/tcpalm/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=86446108

Last Friday evening Ben was on the way home from work. As we often do, we were chatting on the phone while he drove. Just talking about the day and what to have for dinner. He got another call and went to take it. A few minutes later he called me back to say that it had been his mother, calling from Brooklyn and that his sister’s husband Will had been in some kind of accident.

We talked anxiously for a few minutes—what kind of accident? Did he break his arm? Was it a car accident? Ben’s mother and sister Kate were walking towards the house and would tell us soon. I said that we shouldn’t worry until we have something to worry about. A few minutes later he got another call. When he called me back he was sobbing. Will died two hours ago, he said.

What? This is the sort implausible news that sucks the air out of your lungs. How could Will die? He was only 44 and the picture of health, always playing tennis and going on sport fishing trips and so on. I started crying too—my first thoughts focusing on those poor girls, our nieces. Only 7 and 10 years old or so, and now without their father. And Priscilla—a widow at 42.

You know, one of my persistent fears is that one day I will open the door to find state troopers there telling me that Ben has been in an accident. He drives so much! And this is exactly what happened to Priscilla. She was home, laid up from recent ACL surgery, and the police came to the door: your husband has been in an accident. He had just gone out to get groceries or something like that, and apparently had a massive heart attack on the street only a few blocks from home.

Poor Priscilla had to go to the hospital to see his body—on crutches! (Somehow the CRUTCHES really bothered me.) I thought that this was probably the saddest thing in all the world until later in the week, when I saw those beautiful pale little girls walking behind their father’s casket.

I have some familiarity with being at or near the center of a stunning tragedy like this. My brother Jonathan died in August of 1995, when he was only 17. He had a heart defect that had been corrected with open heart surgery when he was a toddler, and then they were doing the surgery again now that he was full grown. It had a 97% survival rate, so it didn’t seem really on the horizon that he would end up in the 3%, but so it was. For the first week or so our family was in the center of this whirlwind of support. People converged at the house, coming out of the woodwork, bearing food. (My father says that this is like cells rushing to a wound in the body.)

This is the situation that Priscilla and her girls were in all week. Ben flew out on Saturday, feeling an urgency to simply BE there. Once he assessed the situation and the day for the service was set, he came home on Sunday. Handled some things at work, collected us, and we all flew out on Tuesday, just ahead of that massive blizzard. I mean JUST ahead. We flew out in the morning, and by afternoon no more flights were going. The storm chased us and on Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, the day of the funeral, we did everything in a howling, horizontal sleet sort of winter gale.

Of course, as these things always go, both our kids were somewhat sick. The baby had a fever of 101 the night before we had to leave. Isaac was showing signs of pink eye and an upper respiratory infection. But what could we do? We just had to be there and that’s all there was to it.

We got through everything– the service was heart breaking. Priscilla stood up and gave a speech that left me dazzled by her poise and calm and ability to think clearly under such intense pressure. She reminded me of Jackie Kennedy, the beautiful young widow who held it together for everyone else. I really am certain that in her place I would NOT have been able to stand up before — what? a thousand some?– people and calmly summarize my husband’s life, our life together, and give words of wisdom to my children. She was a marvel.

Childcare was of course a problem… I had hoped to hold the baby during the service and just nurse him if he fussed, but at that moment he had a fever and headache and wasn’t so easily consoled. I was so happy that this woman appeared who works for the family out there and offered to take him if need be. Before the service even started I had to off-load him to her. I hoped that he would go to sleep and then she could bring him back, but no. In fact, as Priscilla was speaking I heard his distant screams wafting into the huge echoing nave of this old stone church. I was sitting in the front row. Isaac beside me was also getting restless. So the instant Priscilla was done I took him and walked all the way to the back and out into this little room where the woman and Elias were waiting. I spent the last half of the service in a little ante room reading Stinky Cheese Man to Isaac and nursing Elias.

Managing Isaac during all this was a challenge. He has so much energy, and was struggling himself to make sense of what had happened. One light moment: as we were going through security on the way out, Isaac stopped to talk with a guard there. “Well,” he began, “I have some bad news…”

At times too he showed rising anxiety that HIS father would die like this too. When we were waiting for the enormous church to empty in order to find Ben, Isaac became more and more agitated. “Where’s my daddy?? WHERE’S MY DADDY!??” etc. He actually started melting down as we stood there on these slippery stone stairs watching the crowd file out. (“It was a very ecumenical service,” Ben said. “If it had been just Episcopalians there’s no way we would have had that traffic jam.”)

Later we were in the car and Ben ran in someplace for a second. “Did he die?” Isaac asked.
“Did who die?” I said.
“Did Daddy die?”
“What? No, no. daddy just went in there for five minutes, he’ll be right back.”

But the fact is that Will’s IS one of those sorts of deaths that puts a vein of fear through everyone who hears about it. There is no special reason that it was him and not us, no real logic to it. Which means that it could BE any of us at any time.

I for one am not ready.

On Thursday we came home through travel hell. JFK Airport was really in full-on Soviet mode. The three hour lines to rebook brought Krushchev to mind. The poor souls sleeping on cots lined up along the walls… the bare shelves in all the stores. The storm was over, but the fall-out was still very present. Of course we called ahead! The computer claimed that our flight was on time, but it so very much wasn’t.

My favorite moment? While Ben was waiting in this insane line to check our bags, Elias began screaming and to my amazement shot out double barreled blasts of green snot. Quite forcefully and huge for such a tiny nose. I scrambled in my magic diaper bag and found a Kleenex. He fired again. I cleaned him up again. Isaac began to scream for a snack, and I produced a box of raisins. I got the baby situated, nursing in his sling while I stood up (not a chair for miles.) All seemed well briefly, before Isaac began to shriek, “I have to go potty! I can’t hold it!” This just as I saw Ben handing away our bags with all the clothes in the world (one of our suitcases had a free trip to San Juan, as it turned out). I remembered a friend who said that she flew all the way from Mexico to Cleveland, including a change of flights in Houston, with her little boy. He had had a diarrhea explosion at the beginning of the trip to the extent that she had to throw away all his clothes including his shoes. He wore a towel, she said, around his chest like a prom dress.

But we made it. Our flight was only five hours late (Isaac chattering away all the while—fruit bats versus vampire bats and much more) and our wonderful neighbor shoveled out our house enough so that we could park and carry our stuff in.

It was nearly midnight and Ben and I both were done in with exhaustion. But in this context everything seemed wonderful. We’re alive and well— are children our well, our marriage is generally a happy one– all our concerns in the world are utterly trivial. Life is perfect.

I like winter probably more than most people. Having grown up in Minnesota, I’m no stranger to the sensations of sub-zero arctic blasts—snot freezing inside your nostrils into little rocks; eyelashes struck together with ice, etc. I’m okay with all that and find it indeed rather bracing and invigorating. But with a baby, not so much. In fact it’s now Wednesday morning and I haven’t taken the baby outside since Friday when I brought Isaac home from piano school. I need some serious Inuit gear.

The days of polar confinement have had some real rough patches, but we got through it. Isaac’s school was closed on Monday so we all stayed home together, a situation that at times felt like “No Exit.” I had a dream, even, that we were being held captive in our house against our will. Yesterday his school was open, unlike all the others in town, but I was still loath to bring the baby out into the wind that was around 20 below, no matter how bundled. So I kept Isaac home yesterday too. This morning the temperature has soared up to 11 degrees, with only a 4 below windchill, so we’re basically going back to normal.

An example of a rough patch: We hit our nadir, I think, on Monday evening. At the end of a long, LONG day inside the house, Isaac took his cowboy belt, with heavy buckle, and hurled it over our atrium to the ground. If this was not enough, he soon began to swing it around his head until it collided with the back of his friend “Superman,” whose costume I gather dulled the blow. And then, when I took the belt away from him and put it up high, he got into an extreme tantrum. While attempting a kickboxing move that I believe is called the “roundhouse,” (directed at me), he KICKED THE BABY IN THE HEAD. (I was holding the baby at the time, of course!) Such that, the incredibly docile mild-mannered baby, who normally doesn’t make much fuss at being constantly bonked and bumped and yelled towards by Isaac, actually burst into pain-crying. My screen went red. I scooped Isaac up and put him in his room in an angry and distressed fashion. A permanent time out? Is that possible? It occurred to me.

This cold snap came along at the end of a very trying week for all of us. Ben exhausted from work and driving; me exhausted from being up all night with a possibly teething baby; and Isaac totally mentally deranged for who knows what reason. At home, sleeping and eating erratically. At school, getting scolded for not listening. “It’s not me, it’s MY BRAIN!” he explained. “I want to listen but my brain won’t let me.” Ever resourceful, his teacher (Dutch kick-boxer) Mr. Johan gave Isaac some “powers” to help him take control of his own brain.

I’m not sure if the powers were strong enough though. Isaac brain, and also his body, was really acting up. A question that daunted us all last week was basically, “Have we severely overscheduled him?” He’s in school now full days, except on Tuesdays. He has swimming lessons on Saturday morning, skating lessons on Tuesday afternoons, and just started piano lessons on Fridays. Mr. Johan suggested that Isaac’s behavior problems may stem from anxiety from being in so many new situations at once. Possibly so. But individually he’s really enjoying each thing and is unwilling to drop anything. I think that my plan for the moment is to cut back on his regular school time and put in some more flexibility and just hang-out time.

On the flip side, though, the idle hands are the devil’s workshop in Isaac’s case. Also, an adage from dog training comes to mind: “A tired dog is a good dog.” All winter my life managing the needs of our two boys has been really a challenge. It seems to me that I’m always pinned down by nursing and Isaac is always running amok. But perhaps the silver lining of this cold snap is that it gave Isaac (not me!) a little mini-vacation from everything. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday we didn’t leave the house at all. He got very well caught up on his sleep, and submitted to eating some protein options rather than just fasting or eating carbs (the situation last week—hellish—manic or comatose being the personality choices). So maybe with his batteries recharged we can embrace the balance of the week more calmly.

Some highlights from last week:

Isaac went up to a black guy who was bagging our groceries and said, “WE’RE WHITE PEOPLE.” The black check-out girl thought this was funny and cute, but the bagger, no. He scowled all the way through the transaction. The next day, Isaac accosted a large black police officer at our new piano school and said, “We’re not criminals!” Which everyone thought was funny, including the policeman, who just laughed and said, “I know that!” After this I got into the car and then it occurred to me just how narrowly I had dodged a bullet. I sat a moment and offered a prayer of thanks: “Dear Lord, thank you for not letting him combine those two ideas and tell the man, ‘We’re not criminals– we’re white people!'”

What else? the cat. Yes. the cat decided to finally strike back at us after lo these many months of terrible neglect. (Although since we saved her from being a girl of the streets, and she’s not out in the subzero weather, I ask you: Is this gratitude?) During my pregnancy I could not change the cat box because of toxoplasmosis, and Ben would let it go until I was basically on my knees begging for him to change it. It’s possible that at some point she got locked in our bedroom closet also, which may have caused her to improvise, I’m not sure. But anyway, after I had Elias I took over the cat box duties, but I tended to follow the squeaky wheel plan of cat box maintenance. And it so rarely squeaked! How odd. Until last Friday. I came home to find that the cleaning ladies had come to the house and cleaned apparently AROUND a large steaming lake of diarrhea courtesy of Lena. I cleaned that up and then went upstairs to find that our bedroom was fogged with a potent cat-crap stench. I looked high and low and found then a smoking gun, if you will– in the closet. Upon closer investigation I found that a whole bunch of clothes, a quilt, a box of summer clothes and so on, were all soaked in cat pee!! The litter box had been so low maintenance because for who knows how long she had been using the closet floor! Somehow unbeknownst to us! I cleaned this all up, throwing away no less than two full garbage bags of clothes and whatnot. (I just couldn’t begin to cope with salvaging them.)

Then I changed a poopy diaper.

Then a little voice pipes up from the other room, “Mommy! I have poop in my underpants!”

So at that point I decided to change my title from “at-home mom” to “major domo of the shit brigade.”

The cat is now being rehabilitated through crate therapy in the laundry room. She has a comfortable metal jail cell there, with a cat box, a bed, food and water, and nothing else. Nothing to read. She is forced to be alone with her thoughts. She hates it there and meows piteously, but I’m hoping that after a week or so she’ll get her head on straight and NEVER think outside the box again.

Ah winter… Perhaps this is just February in Cleveland. It occurs to me that this is not the first time I’ve had a rough patch at this time of year… see my old blog: http://dev.freeverse.com/blogs/catherine and read the entry for February 5, 2004, “the fog of winter.” Three years ago to the week!

But today the sun is out, Isaac is in school, and the house is (until the baby wakes up) all quiet. I’m going to fold some laundry and make chicken pot pie and try to pick up the pieces.

This week Isaac has been off of school, and yet Ben has been at work. This is not a good combination, I find, and it bodes ill for the months of June, July and August. When I say "this week" I'm talking about Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Three days, 72 hours, and yet… seems a lot longer than that. The marathon of tag-teaming children who made it basically impossible for me to do anything beyond carrying the one who cries and chasing the one who runs. 

They seemed to be conspiring together to alternate who would keep me awake at night. Monday night, Elias went on the hourly schedule, spicing it up with a 1-3 a.m. fretting session. Isaac chimed in by waking up at the very moment Elias went to sleep on Tuesday morning. Even the dog got in on the game, by barking to be let out just when I had a tiny moment of calm. Tuesday night, Elias slept like a lamb. Ben attempted to put Isaac to sleep, but ended up only putting himself to sleep while Isaac came in to keep me awake until just moments before Elias woke up… arg. 

We settled into something of a routine. Isaac would wake up around 7 a.m.; I would attempt to get him to watch "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit". My goal would be to get Isaac ensconced in the show and Elias nursing or sleeping, such that I could drink tea and read the New York Times. Just a half hour! That's all I wanted. Such a small thing that would make such a big difference in my outlook on the day. But it was impossible.

Yesterday for example, I got Isaac all set up watching the show and eating cereal. I settled down on the couch with the paper and my perfectly brewed cup of earl grey. However, Elias immediately began a hopeless crying jag, such that after trying everything else, I simply had to go upstairs and put give him saline nose drops and suction out his snot. He was too stuffy to nurse well and insane with hunger. This helped, and eventually I got him calmed down and got all settled with my tea and paper again, baby nursing away peacefully. But at that very moment Isaac began his bi-minutely, although polite, requests for me to come and watch the movie with him. (Hello? What is the point of using the television as a babysitter if I have to watch it too??) 

Him: Mama, will you come up and watch with me? I'm lonely.

Me: No, honey, not right now. I'm feeding the baby. 

A few minutes elapse, I read a paragraph. 

Him: Mom, will you come up and watch with me?  

Me: No, just watch by yourself for a little while.

(talking from downstairs to upstairs via the atrium space between us.)

A moment elapses. I read two sentences. 

Him: Mom, will you please come up here?? 

Me: Isaac, No! Listen! Just watch it by yourself. I'll be up in a little while! 

repeat, threepeat, etc. 

Finally, obviously, I had to give up this charade, disturb the baby, and forsake all hope of reading the paper, not even the op-ed page. Then we moved on to phase two of the day: trying to get out of the house. This entailed seemingly hours of Isaac running around in his underwear, eluding capture and creating diversions to the point that I had to pull out the nuclear option: put on my coat, bundle up the baby and feign leaving. 

Me: well, have a nice afternoon. I’ll see you around dinner time.

Him: but who’s gonna take care of me?

Me: well, you’ll have to take care of yourself. I don’t know how you’re going to get a snack though…

Him: I’ll get too hungry! I’ll be too scared!

Me: hm. Maybe you’re right. I think you’d best just come too.

Him: okay! That sounds great!

Me: but are you going to go in your underwear??

Game, set, match!

The question and the daily challenge was: how to exhaust Isaac's boundless energy in a situation that is also Elias friendly? 

On Tuesday I took him to this place full of inflated jumping things. That was a big success. Although it was a fairly long drive, although the din of air compressors and screaming children gave me a headache, and although the blinding neon pattern of the carpet burned my retinas, the two solid hours of non-stop vertical jumping left Isaac drenched in sweat and asleep for the rest of the afternoon. huzzah! On Wednesday the weather was gorgeous and we went to the zoo. I kept Elias in the stroller while Isaac ran over hill and dale. It was too chilly to actually nurse outside however, and so we spent a long time in this wonderful veterinary clinic they have there. It's set up so that if they're, say, spaying a zebra or setting a flamingo's broken leg, you can watch the procedure. If not, there are doctor bags with activities for children to do. Isaac had a great time bandaging up stuffed animals and giving them many painful (judging from their cries) shots. Yesterday I was utterly exhausted and the only thing I could get Isaac to agree to do was go to Target with me. I needed to get a host of household supplies anyway, and Isaac cooperated in order to get a toy. Elias very kindly slept through all that. 

But niceties such as getting myself fed and dressed have gone by the wayside. I've been eating at random as I pass through the kitchen. This morning I consoled myself that while my socks didn't match, at least they coordinated. 

Today is a much brighter one because Isaac has gone to stay with Ben's parents. Hallelujah, praise the lord! On Monday school starts again, and Isaac will be going full days most of the time. His swimming and skating classes start this week also.

But the summer? I'm concerned…

Just to clarify… "asshole" is not a word we use in our family– unless you count words thought but not spoken while driving– and not one that Isaac has ever heard. He really was saying gas hole in complete and touching innocence of its sound-alike kin. We're pretty good about keeping the language around here G-rated, at least since Isaac was in the picture. I checked his views on "ass" and found only "a kind of donkey?" (from Shrek, I think). Butts and Poop and farts are nearly constant sources of mirth and commentary, I should add. It's just all in more kid-friendly terms. 

Isaac piped up from the back seat: "Why does this car have two assholes?" 

Granted, I left a 4-year-old unattended with a pomegranate. Mea culpa on that one. But baby was crying. Isaac was happily eating the thing, and not for the first time. What I expected when I returned with baby in a sling five minutes later was that there would be a few seeds on the floor as a natural consequence of the process. What I found was more like a murder scene. The walls, the floor, the table were all splattered with red juice. The pictures on the walls, the baby's pack-n-play, and as far away as the chopping block (a good 8 feet), the whole room was splattered in red juice. Isaac was splattered, his face, his forehead, his shirt, and his entire hands were dyed red. 

I'm getting pretty infatuated with this baby. It may be his plumpness, the chubby rolls on his limbs. It may his male pattern baldness, with an especially monkish fringe around the back. It may be his ever expanding array of sounds, a diverse repertoir that includes rusty weathervane, squeaky toy, car that won't start, and lonely dove cote. It may be his expression, flitting with incredulity and chagrin like an accountant whose numbers do not add up. Or that now he not only smiles but beams. Yesterday I tried snoozling his tummy to see if he would laugh. He didn't, but a look of distant bemusement played around the corners of his mouth and lit up his eyes, like it wasn't funny, exactly, but he appreciated that I thought it would be. 

I think I'm like pretty near all mothers, when I go around marveling at my good fortune. Of all the babies in the world, I got the cutest one! 

Along with this infatuation, I find myself entertaining anxious second-date concerns: does he like me as much as I like him? Does he think about me as much as I think about him? For him, is it all just about milk, or does he really like me for me? 

Nevertheless in the past few weeks I have made three specific and chilling mistakes, all due to tiredness, I think. Ironically (as I need sleep all the time) these are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night. 

1) I was nursing him on the couch. Someone came to the door. I set the baby down, positioning him carefully to make sure he couldn't roll off. I spotted and moved a power cord for the laptop, which was a potential strangulation hazard. Then, satisified that it was safe, I stepped out and accepted a package from the UPS man. It took a moment, because he had to walk to his truck and back. I waited on the porch. We chatted briefly. I stepped back inside and set the packages down. The baby was still on the couch where I left him, but as I neared him I saw that he was tangled in a parachute! A PLASTIC, white parachute belonging to one of Isaac's army guys. I hadn't seen it because it was white on a white couch. But plastic! Elias's little arm was moving in that spastic way of his, and had become tangled in the string. The crumpled plastic was beside him, not smothering him, but NEAR him! 

2) I was getting ready to take Isaac to school, slightly late and rushing about. I had Isaac dressed and Elias dressed but needed to get myself dressed. Isaac was sitting on the bed, watching the baby who was safely — so I thought– in his co-sleeper. I was in the bathroom and heard Isaac calling me, "Mommy! Mommy! He's the king. He has a crown." I came back to see what he was talking about. "See his crown? He's the king!" I did see: Isaac had a SHOELACE AROUND THE BABY'S NECK. The baby was fine. Not strangled. But I nearly fainted. "Isaac!' I yelled. "NEVER put something around the baby's neck! He needs to breathe!" Isaac looked sheepish and concerned, and I wondered whether I should punish him. But how? What would fit the crime? It was of such a magnitude that a time-out would almost minimize it. It seemed that he saw the stricken, terrified look on my face and understood the gravity of what he had done. Tears flooded his eyes as he explained, "But he's the king…" (Hello? In what way does a shoelace around the neck resemble a crown, anyway?)

3) All along I've had the anxious concern that in my sleep-deprivation and in the hustle and bustle I would forget the baby someplace. You know, like those tragic people who leave the baby in the car and go inside for a full day of meetings, with horrible results. I feared that I would come home, stumble inside, make myself a cup of tea and fall asleep on the couch for three hours. And THEN remember that I left the baby in the car. Well, yesterday I got a small taste of this. I arrived at Isaac's school to pick him up. And I wasn't actually all that tired! I mean, chronically, yes, and we had a horrible night two nights before, but the previous night had been half-way decent. I stepped out of the car and locked it. Beside my car another car was idling, with a pregnant lady behind the wheel reading a magazine. The idling sound of her car made me stop to wonder, did I leave my car on? I unlocked it, looked inside, checked the ignition. No, it wasn't on. I locked it again and walked away across the parking lot. Then someone honked. I stopped. Is she honking at me? Is my car actually ON after all? I stood there for a moment trying to decide, but then figured that she (the pregnant lady) just bumped the horn by mistake. I walked to the door of the school. And as I was opening the door, I realized that I didn't have the heavy, bulky, unwieldy car seat in my hands! The baby! Asleep back in the car! I rushed back and found him where I had left him. Cozy, safe, not at all traumatized by two minutes unattended. But the whole thing chilled me to the marrow. I still live with the fear that someone… perhaps the pregnant lady… will confront me about it. How DARE you leave your baby in the car?? And how horrible and pathetic to have to explain, "I well… I … forgot him there for a second!" (It reminds me of this headline I saw online yesterday, "Mom Says Vodka in Baby Bottle was Honest Mistake.") Driving to school through a snow storm this morning, I was suddenly taken with dread that I had left him back on the curb. I said, as casually as possible, "How's the baby back there? Is he asleep?" Isaac answered me as he usually does, "Yeah, he's sleeping, cute little guy!" PHEW. Today I have been going from place to place muttering to myself like a crazy person. "Do NOT forget the baby. Do NOT forget the baby." 

He's right here beside me (I'm in a cafe with free wifi), sound asleep, safe and well. Good lord above, it's nerve-wracking. 

I think I can safely say that it's overwhelming having two. AND the housework. I recently read this disturbing statistic: in 1965, the average housewife spent 10 hours a week caring for her children… and 35 hours a week doing housework! No wonder the entire gender had to revolt against this arrangement. 35 hours a week!!? I look at this and several possible explanations spring to mind: a) all the modern time-saving conveniences weren't invented yet; b) people weren't as terrified about abduction and child safety, and so "go out and play" was a viable option; c) people weren't as obsessed with the brain development of their children, especially birth to age three, and so felt okay just plopping them in a playpen rather than providing a brain-enriching environment every minute of the day; d) women actually cared about their houses 3.5 times more than they cared about their children. Can that be right?! I can't believe that. But I can say that the most common response to overwhelmedness of mothers that I know, working outside the home or in, is to lower housekeeping standards precipitously. You just can't CARE about it all that much, unless you have the money to have a housekeeper to care about it for you. If you care about it too much, you will go crazy. 

The last couple weeks have been rough in that regard, although recently I've been coming up for air. I think it was the combination of a major holiday (the cooking and guests, all of which I enjoyed a great deal, but to the detriment of regular work), and the fact that Ben and I were both sick. The week before Thanksgiving, it seemed to me that every time I turned around, Ben was in a coma and I had two screaming kids on my hands. But he wasn't being lazy.. he actually WAS incapacitated. Then I got sick too and so we both were down for the count. The laundry loomed skyward. The living room became a perfect "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" project. And between chasing down the high-energy Isaac, and feeding the non-stop breastfeeder, all I could do was look impassively at the carnage all around us. 

I was thinking of posting a blog called "The Drudgery Report" but I never had the time. 

When I get these little slivers of time, when somehow both are napping or Isaac is at school for the full day, I find that there are way too many things that leap to mind to do. It's like 20 people trying to rush out a door at the same time, and they are all yelling ideas: pay bills! do the dishes! do the laundry! answer e-mails! tidy up! Cook dinner! write thank-you notes! take a shower! eat a sandwich! sleep! And while I mull this over, standing there for a second, another shrill voice comes along yelling, "Hurry up! just choose something! time is running out! He's going to wake up!" It's stressful to always be in this position, so very behind the 8-ball. 

I talked to a mom with a full-time job the other day and she said, "Do you just sit around and knit and do all these wonderful things?" I said, "Are you kidding? I'm like, I barely have time to go to the bathroom." 

Isaac is getting better though, or maybe I am. Although he still seems to be mentally deranged about half the time, this is an improvement over ALL the time. He has his moods of course. Yesterday he was so disappointed about this crapiness of this Batman glider thing we bought at Target (it was a bribe to get him to let me try snow boots on him), which broke in his hands before he even played with it once, (Mattel: expect a sharply worded letter from me), he went into full air raid siren mode all the way home. But I could see his point there. In his place, if I loved Batman as much as he does, I would have been upset too. Maybe not screaming full-tilt for half an hour… but… 

Later on last night he really messed with my head. He was standing there naked except for socks and Disney "Cars"-themed pull-ups. He was putting on huge red slippers in the shape of race cars, embodying Lightening McQueen, a character in Cars. (He persists in calling him "Lightening, The Queen" which goes a long way towards undermining the machismo…) And then, as he put his slippers on, he looked up at me with the most serious, sincere look on his face. "Is this a dream?" he asked. "No," I said quickly, "it's real." But for the rest of the night, and even on into today, I have lingering doubts. 

As a follow up to our recent dental spelunking in the eroded caves of Isaac’s teeth, we went to his regular dentist on Monday. There I told chapter and verse of what happened and, while “Dr. John” was very professional about it, his reaction was basically, “there’s no way in hell it should take three hours to do a pulpectomy, even on a screaming and kicking four-year-old.” He was appalled… I wonder whether after I left he called that lady up and asked her some pointed questions about her technique. He said, “I do that procedure all the time on kids Isaac’s age, and it takes 45 minutes at most.”

(One parent we know sums up his entire philosophy of fatherhood as “speed and confidence.” I think that’s what the lady seemed to lack, although her office was very festive and cheerful…)

Also, Dr. John pretty near refused to explore with me exactly WHY Isaac has been thus afflicted. I came armed with a series of possibilities. Was it a) prematurity (the teeth form in the last trimester of pregnancy; some studies show about 50% of premature babies have defective tooth enamel; Isaac’s anemia has been really bad and it was caused by his premature birth, even though he was only a month early); or b) lead exposure between 8 months and one year old, right as the teeth were poised to erupt (lead sucks the calcium out of tooth enamel before tooth eruption and that’s exactly when Isaac’s exposure was off the charts); or c) that we have been filtering the Floride out of our water along with the chlorine and heavy metals? Or d) That he lives on candy and Kool-Aid and no one cares about his teeth and we’re bad parents, especially me?

Well, of all these (and really, let’s be honest, I wanted proof of A-C such that I could secretly rule out D in my own mind), the lead idea was the only one that Dr. John thought held any water. He said that really can be bad, and that it remains to be seen whether, if that’s what happened, it will go on to be a problem for Isaac’s permanent teeth. But he didn’t seem to care too much about any of the other possible explanations. He said very clearly, “You didn’t do anything to cause this. And also it’s not that uncommon. I mean, I see it every day.”

I pressed, “Okay, but, well, what I can do differently so that it doesn’t happen to this one?” (Indicating Elias, who, you will not be surprised to learn, was nursing at the time.)

He said, “Nothing. Because you didn’t DO anything wrong or anything to cause this at all.”

I felt as if he were prodding a raw nerve of my own by telling me this, even though it was actually a comforting message. I had to look away and load Elias into his car seat in order to avoid losing my composure. Later I asked, “Should we start having check-ups more often, like say quarterly instead of every six months?” And he basically burst out laughing. He said, “You remind of this other lady who was in here. She was so upset I think she would have come in WEEKLY if I would’ve let her. No. Seriously. Just come every six months.”

Then he really finally silenced my fears with this remark: “Look, I’m a pediatric dentist and MY OWN SON had the exact same thing as Isaac. My daughter had no cavities whatsoever. I didn’t do anything either way. It just was like that.”

I took great solace in the idea that his own son was dentally blighted also. Well, maybe it’s just bad recessive genes. Luck of the draw. That sort of thing. Who knows???

Anyway, here we are. Isaac needs two more appointments to fill the other cavities that are there. Just getting his teeth cleaned he screamed and struggled. In fact, he’s now so fragile and gunshy that yesterday I took him for a haircut (to a place he likes, with videos and toys where he’s usually very content) and just getting his hair COMBED he wanted to hold my hand and soon set in to screaming.

He’s shell-shocked. He really is. But … what can we do? I certainly don’t want another root canal situation to happen, nor for another tooth to end up infected, abscessed, etc. So we do need to do it, no matter what. Dr. John also said that general anesthesia is a bad idea in its own right, and that he would never have done that had I brought Isaac to him first. Nor does he use valium. He just works quickly using gas and Novocain and gets it over with—speed and confidence!—and then sends the child off with a prescription for a milkshake. (No chewing, so no risk of biting the numb tissues; and the sucking motion on the straw helps the numbness fade more quickly; and of course it’s tasty and delicious and soothes the soul…)

I’m getting battle-scarred enough that I’m not even all that worried about what’s to come. It seems that there’s no way it can possibly ever be as bad as it was with the root canal and so everything else seems easier to manage now.

Meanwhile, an interesting turn of events at Isaac’s school. Turns out it’s a little more overtly religious than we were led to believe.  Yes, it has a Catholic name and is physically located right next to a large Catholic church. But we were emphatically reassured that this is only because they rent the space there. They are NOT Catholic. People of all religions attend there. Now, for contrast we looked at a REALLY Catholic school—you know, a statue of Christ greeting you at the door, teachers who are also nuns, prayers over the loud speaker each morning. Now that’s a Catholic school, and after we looked at it, we decided no thanks. But Isaac’s school was different. We were told ((?) or was it just implied?) that the only “religious” aspect of the curriculum was the Good Shepherd program, which is a few materials in one corner of the room that the child can look at or not look at as he wishes. And you could opt out of even that if you wanted to.

Anyway, so we were comfortable with that. And then… the other day a few other parents and I were early to pick up our kids. As we waited outside the class room, we heard a chorus of tiny voices singing, “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!” This caused us all to stop and listen intently. Soon, we heard the children reciting a prayer along the lines of “Thank you God for my family. Thank you god for the rain.” Etc. etc. A whole list of things.

Okay… Hm. Openly praying and singing in a group was not exactly what we signed up for. And to me there’s a vast, vast difference between individual/optional religious instruction and compulsory/group religious instruction. I got the uneasy feeling that the school was actually a revival tent incognito.

It turns out that the tricky part is that they’ve changed leadership this year. So possibly the previous principal had a different view than this one does. Or perhaps as a recruiting master, the previous principal just told us what we wanted to hear. But our research and conversations with other parents now indicates that there is a religious element to the school, in addition to Good Shepherd, when it comes to the holidays. Seems they were practicing this special song for the big all-school Thanksgiving lunch coming up soon. And if Thanksgiving is this religious, I guess we’d really better be braced for Christmas.

Also I should add that this song comes with hand gestures. Hallelujah! (arms waving over head) Praise the Lord! (hands in prayer position) that the children were all doing in unison. Isaac demonstrated for me and so evoked the stadium mega church that I thought it was really funny. It took some effort to not laugh outright.

Ben and I have talked about this in some detail now. The bottom line is that it’s not a deal breaker. I mean, we wouldn’t yank Isaac out of the school over it. Ben’s a Christian after all. (He’s a Quaker…) And Isaac is very happy with the school, loves his teacher and the other kids, already has detailed plans to marry a fellow student, and has really already learned some pretty emphatic counting to ten that he’s quite proud of. It’s just, what’s annoying about it, is the false advertising feel of the whole thing. If this had been more honestly presented, I would not have been surprised nor upset about it. I’ll explain that to the principal and we’ll leave it at that.

It helps that Ben takes Isaac to Quaker Meeting fairly regularly. We have an alternative religious orientation to offer to Isaac. Ben said to him, “Is that how we go to church? No…” And asked, “What would happen if you went into our church and said, ‘Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!’ What would people say?” Isaac said, “They would say, ‘SHHHH!’”  (Quaker Meeting for Worship is silent.)

In other news, our beautiful, laid-back little Elias has learned to smile. Or I should say, a smile happened to his face in the same way sneezes and hiccups happen. The smile overtakes his mouth and seems to surprise him as much as anyone.  Last night he was smiling at Ben and trying to take his glasses, which is all as it should be.