Fine Young Fauves

We just got home from a ten-day visit to the south. There’s no doubt about it– it’s a whole different region down there. We drove from here (Cleveland) down through West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and landed on the coast of South Carolina on this wonderful little barrier island called Pawleys (no apostrophe). There we sat on the beach, looked for shells, rearranged large amounts of sand, and, when a bell rang to alert us to feedin’ time, went inside to eat mass quantities of delicious low-country cooking. This coincided perfectly for me with the end of my first-trimester nausea and illness, and the beginning of cravings and ravenous hunger. And need I say it was wonderful to NOT cook it myself? Nor shop for it? Nor do the dishes? Nor even decide what it would be? The freedom to dine barefoot was another plus.

Some highlights:

1) On the way down at some point in maybe a Carolina, we stopped for gas and a potty break (Isaac is the supreme champion of the potty now). Ben took Isaac into the men’s room, only to encounter a local man with his own son, about Isaac’s age. Unfortunately, the man and his son had just been out huntin’ possum or something MANLY like that. They were clad in hiking boots and maybe even a touch of cammo. Furthermore, Isaac, by contrast, was wearing a pink striped shirt, shorty overalls, and pink sandals. This gave Ben some sort of ineffable sense of .. I couldn’t really figure out what… but something like emasculation. He was able to describe it to me only in wordless body language, try as I might to probe the true nature of the feeling. “It was just…” [slumping shoulders, mouth agape, arms limp] he explained. I said, “Was it… like you were jealous?” [Head shake] “Unmanned?” I offered. “Embarrassed? P-whipped? Angry at me for letting him dress like that?” (Isaac had chosen his ensemble.) No… “It was just … like..” he trailed off again, then restarted. “Like there that guy was with HIS son, and there I was with Isaac, and… really it was the SHORTY OVERALLS that took it over the top…” I persisted, “But, I mean, what was IT? Shame? Regret? Inadequacy as a father in teaching your son about the ways of men?” My inquiries got really nowhere, as Ben just couldn’t possibly explain it. The shorty overalls recurred as the real crux of whatever it was. As if he had managed to bear the pink striped shirt and even the pink Tevas stoically, but those little overalls were just… beyond… beyond endurance. (I have to say, though, that over the course of the week we did encounter a certain genre of Southern gentleman who DOES wear pink shirts, and wear them with a lot of style.)

2) Isaac had a keen sense of female beauty on the beach, and whether chatting up attractive five-year-olds or glossy bikini-clad co-eds, he was very gregarious on the sand. At one point he was across the way talking to a very lovely young woman, perhaps a beauty contestant as she had that sort of slightly plasticy tan-with-long-golden-hair sort of beauty. He talked to her for quite a while, gesturing emphatically and apparently making one of his impassioned speeches. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. When he came back to the umbrella where I was stationed, I asked, “What were you talking about with her?” He said with a shrug, declining further elaboration, “Lizards and guns.”

3) In the library at the Inn (seaviewinn.com) they had this David Macauley book about “How Things Work.” Clearly this is a book for Isaac, although it’s really very much over his head in the way it’s written. It often frustrated him because he couldn’t understand it, but he still wanted to read it all the time. The part that he became fixated on was the part in which the process of making paper was described. We read it many times. Then one afternoon we were sitting on the dock behind the inn, out in this salt marsh, catching blue crabs with a piece of chicken on a string. We would catch a crab and let it walk around on the dock for a while, then let it fall (or we would push it) back into the water. Strictly catch and release, just for fun. Well, as one crab was sitting there on the dock, Isaac took a moment to explain to it, in great detail, how paper is made. “Crab? Crabby?” he said to get its attention. “First you cut down all the trees. Then you chew off the bark. Then you chop it all up and make it into stuff that looks like grits….” And so on. The crab seemed to be taking this all in, although its facial expression was pretty hard to read. Honestly, it was one of those exquisitely surreal moments that I just wish I had on tape. Ben and I sat there smiling at each other and both thinking, He’s really explaining to this crab how you make paper. …

4) On the way down I told Isaac that I had a baby in my tummy. This was because he had a way of jumping on me when I was unprepared, and also it just seemed best for some reason. In the car and all week we had lots of time to process it. He seems happy about it, although unshakable in his conviction that it’s a girl. He started calling the baby “Sappy,” which then grew into Sappy Lappy. Then I misspoke and called the baby “Sassy Lassy.” (I think I got confused because the lady running our inn was literally called Sassy.) So now it’s Sassy Lassy all the time, and we refer to her (?) like that. I can say, “Sassy needs a drink,” or “Sassy needs me to rest for a few minutes,” and this seems to not only convey to Isaac exactly what I need him to know, but also to simply DELIGHT him. At any mention of Sassy he beams. He’s very excited about being a big brother and went around the dining room telling people at random, “My mother has a baby in her tummy!” (um, thanks…) He also started in on the next natural line of thinking… how did the baby GET in your tummy? I’ve read in Penelope Leach that when you’re asked a question like that, you should just strictly answer that question and then wait for the next one. Don’t prattle on. I said simply, “Daddy put it there.” And Isaac just said, “Oh,” and went on with his day. But of course, after a while, he wondered exactly how did Daddy do that? With an airplane? But he hasn’t pressed the matter at all… yet. I will of course explain it as simply and frankly as possible when I need to. But not before. (The baby seems to be doing well, 19 weeks now. Lots of kicking and also a noticeable acceleration of growth…. is it a bad sign that I already feel inclined to waddle?)

5) For beach reading I read “Wake Up, Sir!” by my former schoolmate and casual acquaintance Jonathan Ames. He’s hilarious. If you want a light and very funny something to read this summer, please pick it up. The 2-page description of meeting Dr. Hibben at this very fancy (insane) writing colony is worth the price of the hardcover. I can’t repeat it all here, of course, but I can tell you that it begins, “He was a seven-footer, if you can imagine a pear that big.” Also, as someone says on the jacket blurb “a great gift for anyone considering getting a manservant.” If you’re a fan of P.G. Wodehouse, you will especially enjoy it. After that I sobered up with the new Michael Pollan book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which is all about our national food/eating system. (My new mantra is EAT LOCAL.) I also highly recommend it, although in some ways it’s sort of a current Upton Sinclair. You won’t look at corn-fed beef or chicken mcnuggets (32 ingredients, many of which come from Big Corn) the same way again.

Photos are available, as well as short films of Isaac doing “hat moves” (summersaults) on the sand, for those with high-speed connections. Drop me a note if you want to see ’em.

We haven’t told Isaac that a new baby may be coming along the pike this fall. This because speaking to him about “the fall” is pretty abstract, like for us talking about the 22nd century. Also, of course, there’s still a risk that this whole thing might not happen as planned. It would be much better, if I were in the hospital, to just say “mommy is sick” or something like that, rather than grappling with the idea that “the baby is not coming after all.” But that being said, I’ve been talking with him about it in the vague general sense. The sort of remarks that an adult would easily see through. Along the lines of “would it be nice if a baby came to live with us someday?”

Isaac says yes, he’d like a baby. It would be a girl and he would give her some milk.

But what is so striking is that these days, often, repeatedly, he wants to “play baby.” This simple game (entirely conceived by Isaac) is one in which he puts his head under my shirt. The rest of his now three-foot-tall self extends over my lap. I have to pat his head (pretending that it’s my pregnant stomach) and say wistfully, “Oh I have a sweet little baby in my stomach. I wonder who it is… I wonder when it will be born. I can’t wait to give it some kisses.” And things along these lines. Sometimes sotto voce Isaac will give me a hint in a high-pitched “baby” voice, “It’s a girl… named Sappy.” (Other common baby names he chooses are “Brooklyn” and “Poopy Shnoopy.”) Then he suddenly decides to be born– he’ll reveal himself from under my shirt to an enthusiastic welcome. I’ll say, “Sappy! My sweet little girl baby! I’m so happy to have you in my arms!” And he’ll wallow in the attention. Sometimes he’ll carry it out, and begin crawling around on the floor explaining, “The baby can crawl” or he’ll recline in my arms and say, “The baby wants some milk.” Other times he’ll just insist that we play baby again and again and again.

Now, can I tell you how strange it is for me to play this game with him sitting on top of a real baby, hidden away in my real stomach?

Yesterday we went to the Cleveland Children’s Museum. They have a new exhibit there, about the hospital. This features a nursery, complete with isolette (incubator) and a row of little baby dolls in little Plexiglas bassinets. The babies are ethnically diverse and anatomically correct. Although they were all clothed, Isaac took great pains to investigate each one and sort out only the girls. These he cared for tenderly, bathing them, offering them toys, wrapping them in blankets, and tucking them safely in the isolette. He occasionally asked me to make a baby cry, and then he would soothe it. At one point he took a little girl baby to the x-ray area and x-rayed her, while trying to calm her frightened wails. He worked quickly and then reassured her that it was all done. (Obviously processing his own experience.)

A few days ago we were visiting friends who have a new baby boy, their third. I held the baby for a while (very chubby and smiley) and then Isaac had a turn. He did a good job of holding the baby tenderly and with great concern. Then he said, totally out of the blue, “I’m the big brother! I’ll tell this baby how to do things!”

Yes– he’s prepping for the role, there’s no question.

At the same time, I think he needs a little extra babying right now for a couple other reasons. He’s still dealing with the intense experience of being in the hospital– how scary it was and how important it was for me to be there to help make him feel as safe as possible. Also, he’s really making great strides in terms of potty training. I think he can feel himself on the brink of losing the last vestige of his babyhood (diapers) and making the leap to being a real big boy. It has to be a scary and threatening prospect to him in some ways, although he also is quite pleased with himself and all his big boy capabilities. But it’s hard to let go of all that safety and security. I’ve been paying attention to this and tucking in phrases like, “Mama loves her big boy,” along with all the babying. I worry that he thinks that if he’s a big boy he’ll never get cuddled again.

I’ve talked to several moms of more than one child to see how they prepared the elder sibling. Most seem to say that it was a really hard transition for all concerned, and that no matter what or how you tell the first child, he or she will not really understand the implications of this huge life change until it happens.

I got Isaac this book from the library about this big brother who helps his baby brother all the time (after Isaac referred to himself as the big brother– maybe he’s thinking of Caillou?). It’s called, “I used to be the baby.” I was reading it to him last night. I read it once, and then he asked that I read it two times. So I was reading it the second time and Isaac stopped me, held up all his fingers and said, “I want you to read it this many times!” I tried to bargain down from ten to just eight more, seeing as we had already read it twice, but Isaac wouldn’t have it. “This many times! This many!” he insisted. But as it turned out, Daddy came in to say good night and we turned out the light then. Isaac insisted vehemently that he wasn’t tired at all, yawned, and went to sleep.

There are dueling schools of thought on the matter of when to notify the world that you are pregnant. Some devil-may-care types tell everyone right away. Others find that this carries a risk of jinxing the whole thing, and wait until it’s “safe” after 12 weeks. Others harbor their secret until they simply can’t lie about it anymore, unless they want to pretend they have some terrible abdominal tumor. I’ve tried most of them. They all have flaws.

For one thing, as I learned when I delivered a preemie at 22 1/2 weeks (Jacob, 4/17/01, who lived for just 38 minutes) there’s nothing all that “safe” about twelve weeks. There’s nothing magical about crossing that line. Statistics say that 97% of babies who make it to the second trimester make it to the third. But… there is that nagging three percent.

So, last time around, although this may seem counterintuitive, I went the route of telling anyone and everyone when I was five weeks pregnant. My point was that there is no “safe” time to announce it. The whole concept of safety is an illusion. You can’t do your victory lap until you actually have delivered the babe, and that is really frankly too late to mention that you’re expecting. My other thought was, having had a few miscarriages by then, that there’s no shame in miscarriages. It’s a very outdated concept that a woman should bear her loss in stoic silence. (I tried it a few times just to be sure… wasn’t all that great.) So I figured, well, whatever. … If I tell everyone with caveats and then have to tell them about my miscarriage or premature birth and loss, so be it. As it happened, my pregnancy with Isaac (except for the ceaseless terror part, and the Chinese-water-torture slowness of it) went pretty well. He was born only a month early and has done great.

So this time around I’ve tried the waiting method, by and large. My thinking has been basically that it’s easier for me to just pretend that this is not happening and not all that real. It’s easier to keep it in a distant and hazy sort of place in my head, way WAY behind the scenes. Isaac helps in that I can’t really think a complete thought, anyway, as I chase him through the day. He’s very good a creating a diversion! If he notices me daydreaming he’s likely to dump a full cup of milk on the rug just to snap me out of it. At times the swooning nausea or overwhelming tiredness made this fantasy difficult to maintain. But through Isaac’s hospitalization, through weeks of my own hacking bronchitis, through lots of rodent-related travails, I did my best to take my vitamins and pretend that my jeans still fit just GREAT. (Note: I wanted to mention that poor Ben was saddled with all the gruesome mouse-related duties, not just due to sexism, not just due to wimphood on my part, although those are also true, but really because we both feared that exposing a small developing fetus to the Hanta virus would not be a good idea…)

Now that I’m breaking out the maternity wear, and the little one on the ultrasound is looking more and more adorable with each passing scan (kicking its little feet! Tiny fingers complete with knuckles!), I feel it’s time to come out of the closet and tell all.

Answers to your immediate questions:

1) The due date is October 13. Isaac was a month early. My uterus (bicornuate=”two horns”) is such that the baby can really only use half of it, so earliness is to be expected here. But… who knows. Some say that this kind of uterus gets better and better with repeated use. I’m thinking in my head “Sometime in September or October” but in my heart I’m hoping for a big fat 9-pound full-term baby who eats like a hog and sleeps like a sloth (i.e., the exact opposite of Isaac who as a tiny baby only slept in two-hour increments at best and ate with a painful inefficiency due to his tight frenulum and overall frail smallness.)

2) We are not planning to find out the sex. The reason is not at all that we harbor romantic visions of a delirious “it’s a ______!” delivery room moment, but that we are still gun-shy after our loss in 2001 and have no interest in making this whole project anymore concrete than it has to be. It always makes me nervous when a woman who is 5 months pregnant comes along pointing to her barely protruding stomach and says, “And this is little Anthony James…” Talk about counting your chickens! I’ll admit that it would be convenient to amass pink baby blankets, etc., if they will be needed, and to rid myself of the boxes of blue baby wear, but whatever. (If it’s a girl Isaac will have lots of pink items to hand down anyway– just bought him pink sandals at his urgent request!)

3) The pregnancy has gone pretty well so far… but not perfect. My weeks of hacking cough and Victorian-era respiratory condition, as well as the stress and strain of very ill Isaac, did put something of a dent it. I’ve had some very minor bleeding off and on and there are a few sort of unnerving-looking clots visible on the ultrasound. I said to the doctor, “But at least it’s not abrupting…” (chronic abruption– tearing loose of the placenta– being the cause of our loss before) and he said, “Well I would say this IS abrupting. It’s enough to worry you a little bit. But not too much.” He then went on to listen to my chest (the third doctor to do so) and to prescribe a very hard-core antibiotic (my second in recent weeks) which seems to have worked out just great. It seems the cough was actually creating an issue with my uterus, all the concussion all the time. Perhaps it caused the bleeding? We’ll see. You know things are getting weird when the obstetrician forsakes his interest in your uterus and focuses on your lungs. Then just a few days ago we had a small fire drill regarding unexplained (Braxton-Hicks?) contractions– not common at 16 weeks, and the way my pre-term labor started two pregnancies ago. So we spent the evening and over night Wednesday in a state of acute gripping worry, until an ultrasound the next morning showed that all was well! Phew. I am eager for this deal to settle down and become dull.
3a) the baby is nestled in the right half of my two-horned uterus. This is my lucky side, where Isaac spent all his time, and so this is a good sign.
3b) With my uterus such as it is, I’ve never carried a baby that wasn’t impossibly breech. So I’m looking at another c-section unless there’s a miracle somewhere along the way.
3c) We’re not doing an amnio or any other invasive genetic testing, because we just can’t justify the risk– even the test-enthusiast doctor says it makes no sense. But we did this new test where they measure the tiny amount of tissue behind the neck bones of the fetus at 11 weeks (by ultrasound) and then combine that information with a test of maternal blood. Doing this they now can find 88% of Down’s. They recalculated our risk of Down’s with this baby– based on my age alone (39) it was 1/58. But when they folded in the new information it dropped all the way to 1/150, less than one percent. We can certainly live with that, especially because the risk of premature birth here is way higher than that. (If you want to worry and/or pray about something, just focus on premature labor and do what you can to mentally fend that off. That’s what I do.) Then the other day the ultrasound technician pointed out this cute little nose bone on the baby’s profile. Apparently Down’s babies don’t have that, so it’s further reassurance. They also checked for some other serious genetic defects and they all came back at 1/2000 or better. Also just as a lay person looking at these ultrasounds, the baby looks great. All the parts are there, symmetrical, and in the right places.

4) We are not talking about the name negotiations while they are underway, and will likely keep mum until after the birth certificate is filed. It took months to agree upon Isaac Jonathan and I don’t expect that this time around it will be any easier. Ben is difficult in that the rules he sets narrow the options greatly: 1) it must be Biblical; 2) he must like the story. For me, I must like the NAME, and trying to choose between Job, Enoch, and Nebuchadnezzar just gives me a headache. (Here’s a tip for general living: whatever someone names their baby, up to and including Doodle and Moxie, you must say “What a wonderful name!” Remember this: no matter what!)

So that’s the situation. 16 weeks as of Friday. I feel the pall of the first trimester is lifting, and it’s helping that it’s spring. I’m going forth with normal life. Going to spend Wednesday out in a marsh looking at birds, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, Isaac has unfortunately bonded to the movie “Toy Story 2.” If the guys at Gitmo ever get bored trying to think up ways to harass their inmates, I suggest making them watch Toy Story 2 in a continuous loop day and night. The tricky part is that if you just see once, or even twice, or even three times, it’s really not a bad film. It’s just the repetition that makes it so grating. Also the other day we were visiting some toy-intensive friends who were well stocked with Buzz Lightyears in various sizes. They kindly (?) allowed Isaac to borrow/keep one especially wonderful, large, beeping, blinking, talking model of Buzz Lightyear. I never thought that the simple words “To infinity and beyond!” would begin to drive me over the edge, but so it is. The only benefit of this fad (and I hope it’s a fad) is that Isaac will watch it for the full 92 minutes. Meaning– I can write a blog entry, for instance. I can fold laundry! I can have a phone conversation! So… I guess it’s a fair trade off… sort of.

Well, I won’t go around claiming that the Great Mouse Invasion ’06 is “over.” But I can say that the herds and packs of mice, and the constant snapping of traps in the background, are gone. We haven’t trapped a mouse in at least four days, and we haven’t heard or seen a live one in that time either. A few days ago, Critter Control came again, long after the siege, and the man was stunned– STUNNED– by my story. He was appalled and even (I’m upset to report) disgusted. Our situation DISGUSTED the exterminator! He said that the sheer quantity of poison that he put in the basement, and the fact that it had been entirely devoured, “doesn’t add up.” And that we ALSO captured — we estimate– about 40 (!!) mice ourselves in the preceding hell week, it all points to his conclusion: “Let’s just say you have a LOT of mice!” Okay, the professional verdict. I could have told you that!

He spread around more of a more lethal poison in the basement. And says that the mice appear to be burrowing through the dirt/loose mortar in our handmade, 120-some-year-old basement walls. He recommends that we have the whole basement power washed and then lined with concrete. Probably that would do it, but … sounds pricy. I need to gather yet more bids to see if that’s feasible.

But the skittishness still remains, by in large. I’m no longer terrified of the kitchen, and I even got bold enough to take the big repeating trap away from the counter yesterday. We’ve been cooking in there again (during the siege we couldn’t bear it and ate out night after night, which gets to be no fun after a while). (People do that in New York, but it seems funner there.) Do I still jump at my own shadow? At seeing the cat out of the corner of my eye? do I still persistently listen for the scuffling? Yes.

One thing I’ve learned in all this is that mice are not cute. No– the ones you see in the pet store should be fed to snakes as soon as possible. You see, Beatrix Potter omitted some important details about the real life of mice. For instance, did she mention that they are ruthless CANNIBALS? For example? Did she tell us that if one mouse is killed in a trap, some other mice may come and gnaw on its dead body, or even DRAG AWAY their fallen brethren and eat them in their entirety?

I told this to the Critter Control guy, expecting a jaded, “Yeah, they’ll do that.” But what did he say instead? “EEEEEUW.” I didn’t find this comforting at all!

At least it’s not rats. That’s the only thing I’ve found at all consoling during this ordeal. Since this has been going on, people have been coming forth and telling me their vermin stories and I can tell you the RAT ones are the most chilling, revolting and unbearable of all.

Also, I’m starting to believe that it could be… almost over. At least this round. Today I caught myself in sock feet- IN THE KITCHEN! I’d forgotten my protective footwear. I was leaning on the counter (which we’ve taken to compulsively disinfecting) and reading the paper. Just like a normal person without mice on the brain.

Also I wanted to mention that our cat, Zane Grey, may well have eaten a lot more mice in her free time (she has a busy schedule of nearly 18 hours a day of sleep to work around) than I realized. I don’t want to wrongfully besmirch her reputation. The evidence: I saw her catch one in the living room. I saw her duck under an easy chair (the kind with a skirt hiding its feet). I saw the mouse escape and I saw her very skillfully chase it down and return with it in her Jaws. I expected that later, when Ben came home, he would find half the little carcass under the chair. (I wasn’t about to look.) But then, amazingly, he looked and there was nothing. Not a trace. Seems she devoured the entire thing nose to tail. Or maybe it escaped…? But I don’t think so. She seemed to have the situation completely under control. Also there’s the thing about her food dish. Once it was obvious that the mice were pouring into the laundry room and eating the pet food (they hid inside Lena’s treat-dispensing toy, making loud crunching sounds; they ran to and fro the cat’s bowl), I stopped putting food in there. I figured that the cat would come and beg to be fed, which she does whenever I forget, and that I would feed her on the spot. But then I noticed something. Hm. Is she starving to death? I haven’t fed her in DAYS? And yet… she’s not hungry, not at all. This led me to an aha moment. Aha! She’s fat and happy eating mice like they’re going out of style.

I’m still very proud of Lena dog for catching two and chasing many.

Ben’s life was miserable there for a while, constantly emptying crushed mice from blood-soaked snap traps, and then also taking live-trapped mice on long scenic drives to release them someplace where they would be more likely to be eaten by hawks than to invade someone else’s home. Since we live smack in the middle of dense housing, this is a far away thing. (Stripped of sentimentality, I suggested drowning them– just immersing the whole trap in a bucket– but Ben couldn’t deal with that either.) Also he was frantically trying to keep the house free from hanta virus. I read an article that mentioned helpfully that everywhere mice go “they leave a microscopic trail of urine drops.” This appalled us both and we’ve been using disinfecting wipes all over everything.

Isaac was incredibly brave and instinctively took it upon himself to protect me. I really didn’t raise him to be macho– he has a doll, in fact he has three!– but he acted like Rambo through all this. “I’m not afraid of mice!” he told me repeatedly. He lined up fierce creatures to scare the mice in the stove. For example, I came in one afternoon and found quite a crowd standing there looking at the oven, including a ferocious T-Rex and a large green plastic snake. During the seige I got a new Pilates ball with a new pump. Isaac took to the pump, and began to call it “my gun.” Although he said this in something of a cowboy accent, “m’GUN!” He carried it around with him and fired it– a hiss of air– whenever needed. Sometimes he poked it under the stove or under the piano (when we knew a mouse was in there) and puffed air under there. I’m sure it DID scare the hell out of the mice, actually. Around the same time, one evening some drunk idiot came alongside our house apparently looking for a place to take a piss. But he saw us in the dining room, saw that PEOPLE were here and that it was not at all private. He stumbled away. Isaac was holding his gun at the time and believed that that warded off the pisser. He said, “Maybe he saw m’GUN! Maybe he said, ‘I don’t want to mess with that kid! That kid is pretty tough!'” (Maybe so. Or maybe he didn’t want me calling the cops.) And he very cutely misinterpreted my use of the word “drunk.” I guess I said, “He’s drunk…” because later I heard Isaac explaining, “There was this man, named DRUNK…”

I appreciated Isaac’s bravado so much. I was glad on the one hand that he was not at all put off or disturbed by the mice– more interested and excited by all the goings-on. I also honestly appreciated that he was here in the house with me during the long hours of no Ben, and would escort me to the kitchen, scaring mice away left and right.

But it’s better now– I won’t say over, because I’m sure a few more will pop up. I’ve gotten a contractor lined up to fix the fascia (the whole squirrel problem seems so quaint now…) and he will also patch the basement foundation where it has the largest most gaping holes. That work will be done in about two weeks. Also– SPRING is helping I think. It’s all of 35 degrees today, with a bitter wind, but the daffodils are up in all but the shadiest locations. The forsythia is bursting out, and the dogwoods are all covered with fat buds. Maybe, as Isaac says, “the mice said ‘I don’t like this place. They keep killing us all the time!'” and have gone away? And while they’re gone for the summer (hopefully being killed by stray cats as they exit) we will devote ourselves to making this house as tight as humanly possible. A vermin-proof fortress. A rodent-free zone.

The good news is that Isaac is himself again. Now he’s doing his nightly nude laps around the house and claiming to be… the flash! It’s been sort of a slog getting us both back into our blooming good health, but we’re both doing well. Other than an occasional hacking fit I’m feeling fine. So glad I brought in the big pharmaceuticals this time. Nothing like antibiotics and the really hard ass cough medicine when the going gets tough. Actually this whole two-week period has been one big celebration of the drug industry. When we were in the hospital and they were dosing Isaac with so many different types of asthma medication and various different ways of opening up his breathing passages, I was incredibly grateful and glad for all that R&D and all those massive costs that made it possible to get his lungs up and running again. Now he’s still got a fair amount of inhaled medication, and probably will for a while, and I think it’s really helping him get life back to normal.

Today we went to the zoo, which was our first outing of a normal kind since he’s been sick. I did worry , of course, about all those sneezy little children and their slimy little hands touching the same glass that he was also touching. But he can’t live in a plastic bubble. We just live by hand washing and hand sanitizer and prayer. He seems so much less frail though. ANd he’s eating like crazy and in huge quantities. He dropped from 30 lbs to 28 during his illness and now is at work to regain it all and then some.

OKAY… MEANWHILE, the bad news is that our house is being overrun by herds of mice. They are running in packs. It’s like some sort of horror movie. A couple weeks ago I was living in fear of actually SEEING one, in real life! I was wearing my shoes and feeling skittish all the time. ANd now, after a few days of intense immersion therapy, I can’t say I feel that much better about it. But I AM used to it. Mice on the counter. Mice in the laundry room, running the perimiter in groups, as if practicing for the track team. Mice in the stove, peeking out around the burners, climbing in the utensils beside the stove, under the piano in the living room, strolling around upstairs in the office, visiting (today) the new guest bed (thankfully the guests have departed). Under the fridge. In the toy shelf. Basically… no sanctuary remains anywhere in the house. It’s FILLED WITH MICE. We’re clearly bothering them… we’ve messed up their normal supply routes and apparently flushed them out into the open. Why did we do that? Life was much easier when they lived in the basement eating birdseed and we didn’t even know about it.

So the counter attack. … Well, three and a half weeks ago we had a Critter Control professional out here who spread poison around the attic and basement. Ben went out and vacuumed up the birdseed that may have started it all. Then we had a dead mouse in the wall, of course, stenching up the place, but luckily I didn’t have to endure that for long because we went to the hospital for most of that week and also I completely lost my sense of smell to this horrible virus. So, that was a plus! But then we had the house guests (my dad and step-mom here for the weekend), and just a day or two before they came we noticed that the guest room was a mouse super highway. So my dad and I packed this large gaping space between the baseboard and the floor with fiber glass and steel wool and taped the whole thing down with duct tape. Just so as to allow them to sleep without constant mice flowing around them. But this just caused some sort of huge relocation project to the laundry room. I mean– a flood of mice. After messing around with little traps and a low-tech bucket approach (which did drown a mouse today, actually, the mouse just walks up a ramp and falls in and drowns, not the brightest), we went out last night (in desparation) and got five snap traps. Since then we’ve caught… hm…? fifteen mice? Something like that. My dad (bless him!!!) was baiting and unloading traps all evening. Ben emptied three traps before dinner and then set them again and caught three more mice within an hour. Nothing more appetizing than the sound of snapping traps!! I ordered these two repeating mouse traps that will live trap up to fifteen mice at a time, and they will be here tomorrow. Also I called Critter Control again and said “HEEEEELLLLLP!!! Come here now!” They are coming tomorrow. I also just met with a guy who could repair some of the mouse holes in the basement, but not all, because they can get through the tiniest thing and that’s impossible. For $600. Well, I would pay anything if it would actually work.

Lena dog has been working hard to keep this situation in hand. She has actually personally caught and killed two mice, and scared the be-jesus out of many another. The cat Zane Grey has shown little interest, mostly because she spends most of her life upstairs hiding from Lena and from strangers. But last night she did spend some serious time hunting a mouse in the office closet. I don’t think she succeeded, but I appreciated her effort. We realized that this mouse explosion coincides with our first winter since the death of Mr. Cat. We were thinking wistfully– “If only he were here! He would have this all solved before you know it.” ANd then we started to wonder — hm. Maybe the mice were not here all those other winters because Mr. Cat was always on the job.

(We need a new cat, I think. An additional cat. With extra bona fide killing credentials. A truly lethal cat who can’t be trusted with anything smaller than a guinea pig.)

So, it’s a multipronged approach– poison, trapping, relocation, and sealing up the house. And yet, things are getting still worse. We hope that this is something of the last hurrah of the mouse ordeal of 2006. That we’re making a difference, and that SPRING will come soon and help, and that this too shall pass.

Meanwhile– it’s hellish. I’m wearing clogs 24/7. I’m always watching out of the corners of my eyes, and trying to be braced for the next little whiskery nose or little blur of dark fur, and yet still always being startled and appalled when it happens.

Will it get better?? It has to!

I’m too tired to tell much of what has been happening. We just got home a couple hours ago. Talk about a good time for a lap top. yesterday I would have posted but the hike through miles of uncharted tunnels and skyways was too much for me. (They had a hook-up right in the room, but if you needed a computer had to go the space-station looking medical research library part of the complex.) I’m sick and coughing up green slime, weary to the very marrow.

Isaac is pale and weak and looking like he shrank about two clothing sizes. He looks quite the Dickensian waif, hallow cheeks and dark circles. One of the BEST aspects of being home (and everything about being home is sheer wonder and glory) is the freedom to SLEEP. Hospitals are horrible at letting people sleep. It’s not just that they check your vital signs all the time, or that they come to give medication at all hours, it’s that they all do it separately, each person on his/her own path. So while each separate thing may be on a reasonable schedule, from the patient’s perspective your room is Grand Central Station. My worst moment of this kind: On Weds morning after a truly hellish night, isaac had his 6 a.m. breathing treatment (AKA torture by mist for 20 minutes) and was hysterically screaming throughout. Then, I finally got him calmed down. The room was dark and quiet and he slipped into sleep. I started nodding off. Then suddenly the room was flooded with light. Someone marched in and announced loudly: “I NEED BLOOD!” (no “my name is so and so and I’m sorry to wake you but…”) I said, “What?? Now??” She said, “Yeah.” I said, “Just a finger stick? Or can you take it from his IV?” She said (dismissively), “No– I need the arm.” So I had to unwind the once calm and peaceful boy, expose his tender inner elbow to this vampire and let her stick him, as he screamed so much that his eyes rolled back into his head. In normal life a blood draw would leave him a nervous wreck for the rest of the day.

This sort of thing goes on all the time there. Last night I BEGGED them to just do his vitals when the RT was already there doing his breathing treatment. Just please do it at the same time! They seemed to think this was a novel idea, but they did do it. So at 2:00 a.m. there was an ambush, totally alarming, but at least then there also was a lull for a couple hours before the next person came and did the next thing. (Isaac, too, pleaded with them: “I just want to sleep!”)

He slept all night without oxygen supplementation. The first few hours his numbers dropped such that Ben and I (Ben stayed until 10 or so and they didn’t kick him out) sat there watching this little blue screen with alert intensity of interest. 91. 91. 89. 88. 87. 89. etc. You would think it was the most rivetting program ever created. We really didn’t want the little tube thing back in his nose. Although his numbers weren’t great, though, he himself looked good, calm, not retracting, breathing slowly and well. So they decided to let him try it on his own and after a while they levels came back up where they should be.

Today when we were being checked out Ben asked at what number would a kid actually pass out from oxygen deprivation. The doctor said he didn’t have a number like that, but that 80 was incredibly low. He said, ‘Basically that means there was no air being exchanged at all. It means that carbon dioxide was building up in his body and there was no way for much oxygen to get in. It means that he was this close to being admitted directly to intensive care– and intubated– and he almost ended up there anyway. 80 is a real scary number– let’s put it that way.”

It’s sort of hard to conceptualize because 80% on a test or something isn’t all that horrible. It’s a low B, maybe, but not an F. I think what they’re saying is that in terms of breathing it’s a D-.

In the hospital room the alarm went off when he hit 88 or less, although last night they accepted 85 because they were trying to let him get his sea legs with no oxygen in his nose.

You know, the whole weekend and days leading up to this ordeal my fear was pneumonia. For me, it was all about pneumonia. Since we didn’t know he had asthma (and still there’s this nuance about the reactive airway disease, but I think as laypeople we should just understand it as asthma and leave it at that for now– also whatever you wanna call it we can all agree it’s f—ing dangerous stuff). I read this article recently (like an idiot) about this woman who had a little three-and-a-half-year-old boy who died of pneumonia. And no, it wasn’t in 1910. And no, she didn’t live in a third world country. I mean, now. Like a year ago, in an American city brimming with modern medicine. When Isaac was sick around Christmastime, the threat then was pneumonia. And the way you react to pneumonia and the way you think about pneumonia is a totally different mindset than asthma. With pneumonia, progression is counted in days. With asthma it can be about minutes. Asthma just wasn’t on my radar screen, and when they said he had it at the ER the other night, I just thought they were wrong, and they didn’t know my kid, and that he needed to see his own doctor. Also, of course, they said that he had asthma in the same breath as saying, “he’s fine– go home.” They didn’t add an air of urgency or concern to the situation at all. I wish they had– I wish they had given me a lecture of some kind about, “IF thus and so happens, or if you see this, you need to get this kid in here immediately.” They just said, “Okay– have a nice night!”

I keep thinking about all this, of course, because I keep asking myself why we didn’t go the ER sooner and how in fact it got to be such a a crisis. (Ben tells me to stop doing this, and that we got great care, and that hindsight is 20/20, etc.) I guess on Sunday we were just at the ER the night before, and then on Monday we had an appt with his regular doctor the next day. It seemed so reasonable that he would be sick as a dog and sleeping his way through it. Also the ER is so horrible, and it’s sort of weirdly humbling to go there when it’s not really an emergency. I was chastened by being so worried and being sent home so perfunctorily (is that a word?). It made me feel like an overreacting ninny and I suppose some part of me was afraid of being in that position again.

However… now all bets are off. I can’t take the kid to the ER every time he has a sniffle, but now I do know how serious it can get. My friend tells me also that asthma doesn’t have to wait long at the ER. Asthma gets to the front of the line, which is good to know.

Anyway– what a week.

Our e-mail (conveniently) has chosen this moment to crash. I think it has a virus, ugh. I also think that I may be able to access it another way. But if you’ve been sending me e-mails I haven’t gotten them yet.

Can we review how good it is to be home? Isaac is wrapped in a towel (how sad it was to take off his clothes and find all the electrodes still glued on his little chest and all the band-aids here and there from all the needles sticks), under a blanket, asleep in his favorite spot on the couch. I think I’m going to go join him!

I’m writing from the glitziest possible sunniest most high-tech library I’ve ever seen. I was able to get here simply by walking through miles of tunnels and skyways in the Cleveland Clinic Complex.

It’s been a very intense couple days.

A brief overview of Isaac’s illness this past week:

Last Tuesday (was it only one week ago? Seems a bit longer than that!): he got a fever in the evening.

Weds. :sick all day– fever and cough

Thursday: sick all day– same

Friday: better. Still hacking, but no more fever and seemingly up and around. We went out did things fairly normally.

Saturday: huge relapse: suddenly sicker than ever. On Saturday afternoon while he lay limp and asleep and smoldering, I noticed that he had the signs his doctor told me to watch for when pneumonia is developing. He had a higher fever after a brief cool down; he had labored breathing with some retraction (his little ribs showing with each breath); he had rapid, shallow breathing. I had that horrible "this is not a drill" feeling. I called Nurse on Call and consulted. She said he needed to go to the ER within four hours. As is so often the case, we had dinner plans and tickets to a play, but the evening was rewritten to instead be in the ER with a sick little boy who did not want to be there. "It’s just a little cough!" he kept exclaiming en route, in the hopes of derailing the whole project. At the ER, long story short, they said that he was okay. They said that he has asthma– which our pediatrician had been on the fence about– and a virus, but his blood oxygen was clocking in a 95-96%, meaning quite fine, and after a breathing treatment and some rigamarole they sent us on home.

Sunday: sicker? He didn’t look good to me, but then again since we had been sent home from the ER the night before I had to think that basically– he has a virus, as they say, and it’s just running its course.

Monday: sometimes seemingly okay, up sitting on the couch and eating a popsicle. Other times seemingly really SCARY sick. One point post-Motrin I came in to find him absolutely wringing wet with sweat. At times coughing so much and so continuously that he was having trouble catching his breath. We had an inhaler (he has a history of breathing issues, although the whole asthma piece is still being debated as we speak), which would help these situations. Also at one point we tried the old hot shower trick, which seemed to help a lot. By then we had an appoint the next day (Tuesday– don’t tell me that was yesterday!) with his regular pediatrician, so I figured it would be smart to wait and let him see his own doctor rather than go back to the ER again. Also… I HATE the ER. Who doesn’t. And sitting in the ER for hours (after having gone out in the cold) with all those other sick people, and of course the gunshot wound contingent, is always so miserable. Even for grown-ups. I mention this because it retrospect I should have taken him to the ER on Monday.

Tuesday: (seems a full week ago in my distorted world). His breathing seemed much more labored. His puffer seemed to make less of dent in it. Another thing: over the weekend he was cooking with fever, but firey red in color. Now cooking with fever and WHITE. HIs retraction seemed much worse, not only ribs showing and belly pooching out, but little divet in his collar bone sucking in with each breath. All morning I spent in the calculus of "is it better to go to his doctor at 1:45 or should we go to the ER now?" Wondering where we would get the best care and wondering… wondering… whether this was really getting out of hand. Ben agreed to come with us to the appointment. I described for him my worst-case scenario: we go in, and he needs to be admitted to the hospital. We need to go by ambulance. Of course, I had to add, maybe the doctor would just say "here’s some stronger medication and it will run its course." (Joining us for a routine appointment makes no sense for Ben because his work is probably two hours away from the doctor, and this appt was in the middle of the day.) But in this case– not a routine appt– he came along. THANK GOD.

As we drove out there, I sat in the back seat with Isaac, who was sitting there half-asleep or… should I say semi-concious? In his heavy coat I kept needing to reassure myself that he WAS in fact breathing. Each time one of those blue hospital signs went by I thought, "we should turn here." When we arrived at the doctor’s, his breathing was so constricted that his voice was high-pitched. He sat up and looked around in the waiting room, placidly noticing the toys, but didn’t budge from my lap.

When they brought him into the little room (luckily they were on time that day and we didn’t wait at all!), they did this routine little blood oxygen test. The number– 80– was so low that they thought at first that the machine was malfunctioning. Then they got another machine. Then they tested several of his fingers and toes. 80. 80. 80. When it was clear that this was a real number, people and machines started crowding the room. I started crying and trying haphazardly to explain why we didn’t go to the ER the day before, or earlier that day, or… SOMETHING. His doctor was of course very competent and clear. He didn’t confirm or deny that I should have done something sooner. He just said, "We’re going to treat him very aggressively here, but there’s no way that his numbers are going to get good enough that he can go home today. He needs to be in the hospital. Also, we’re going to have to transport him by ambulance." I called it! But… somehow being right about this was really a hollow victory. I said, "None of this surprises me. I could see that he was really sick."

For these breathing treatments, they put a little oxygen mask on the kid (who screams) and a smoky mist pours out and around and in it. They did four of them (10-15 minutes each) back to back to back to back, while also pumping in oxygen on the full-blast adult setting. His numbers came up, thank god, to a wonderful rosy 92-93. Just where it should be! For a minute I thought "now he’s better and we can go!" Right, but what they need for him to truly "go" is to be able to do that sort of oxygen exchange without it being pumped into him from a tank, or being medicated out of his gourd. He needs to do it with regular air!

So– we got to ride in a real ambulance. It wasn’t as fun, I think, as Isaac had imagined it would be. His transportation team arrived and hooked him up to many monitors and gadgets, as he sat in the center of this web of wires and chords, looking very tiny and very pale, catatonic, shirtless in his jeans. To load him up they swaddled him in blankets and towels.

I got to ride in the ambulance too– but in the front seat. Isaac had to ride the way back with three members of his transporation team, who tinkered with him off and on. Ben followed in the car, impressing the ambulance driver with his close-following skills. ("I can see him back there on the phone, but whatever I do, he does. He’s always right on my tush!")

When we arrived the room was all set up for us, down to the detail of his exact size and brand of pull-ups. Many, many people started working on him, while Ben and I tried to provide some measure of comfort between horrible ordeals. The placing of the IV was especially brutal. He had a triple albuterol dose and started to shake like a leaf– it’s a strong stimulant. Meanwhile, cortizone poured in his IV. Many, many meds… oh… that little body and what’s been put into it.

Last night was not about sleeping. (This is a wonderful hospital in many ways– they let me stay in his room, pushing my twin bed up against his.) It was about breathing. The treatments were supposed to be every two hours, but at that rate, whenever he fell asleep, his blood oxygen would drop down too low and this alarm would start shrieking, and people would scurry in to investigate. At times there was a continuous stream of treatments and people in the room. And at some point, probably around three in the morning, I was told that if he couldn’t get back to every two hours they would have to move him Upstairs to the PICU. The "PICU"– pediatric intensive care– just sent chills through me. I didn’t want him in the PICU! I didn’t want him in the hospital at all, but at least … not the PICU. The doctors tried a last-ditch effort to keep him in regular Peds, and I spent a few miserable hours, holding this miserable, terrified, hyper-stimulated jittery child through double-triple treatments in the hopes of staying out of the PICU.

And it worked. He got so that he wouldn’t set off the alarms between his two hour treatments. He didn’t have to go UPSTAIRS.

Isaac and I got maybe two hours of sleep last night, in 15 minute increments. (In addition to the emotional and physical exhaustion of this experience, I’m also now, of course, quite sick with the very virus that started it all.)

Today has gone better. They’ve been able to gradually space out the treatments to every three hours, and they’ve been able to reduce his oxygen input, while still keeping him in the black on his blood oxygen levels. He’s had some rough moments, but it’s been easier to cope with. He started sleeping, mercifully, this afternoon. Except for being woken up and ambushed frequently, he seems to plan to sleep for a looooong time. (Hence I’m able to come over here to this swanky new library building while Ben minds the sickroom.)

Meanwhile– along with dealing with simply Getting Enough Oxygen Into This Kid, they’ve been working on What Is Causing It?

There’s been some debate. At this moment, pneumonia has been ruled out. Many of the doctor parade say he has asthma and that it’s been triggered (in a big way) by this horrible respiratory virus that Ben had two weeks ago and that has been felling many at his office. However, one very knowledgeable-seeming doctor today (seemingly the team leader) said that he didn’t think it’s technically asthma. He thinks it’s this other thing, very like asthma, called "Reactive Airway Syndrome." We’ll explore this later… maybe for a LONG time to come, as we figure out how to manage it going forward.

It would be a wonderful — and very surprising– thing if we could go home tomorrow. Friday is more like it, but again it all depends on Isaac. He needs to be able to keep good numbers without any oxygen flowing into his little nose (and how many times has he tried to tear that thing off?), and with breathing treatments, just a puffer, that we can do at home. He’s a far cry from being able to do this now, although clearly headed in the right direction and fully out of danger.

A few times today he perked up enough briefly to talk. He dreads anyone coming into the room, of course, and now (when awake) makes a habit of glaring at any newcomer (even just the lady here to pick up our dinner tray) and demanding, "What are YOU here to do?" He’s eaten half an orange popsicle today. He’s watched a few iterations of construction videos and such, familiar territory to focus on in these trying circumstances.

I can’t call people– I’m too exhausted and just thinking about calling any of you to explain this makes me verge on crying. I’ll come over and post when I can and thus spread the word about how he’s doing.

Thoughts and prayers of course are welcome, but there’s not really much else you can do at this point. We’re hanging tough and we hope to have our normal lives back– and our normal BOY back– really soon.

It’s been sort of a strange month around here. Our babysitter Zimbabwean Sheila had to move to Canada abruptly for immigration reasons in early feb. This left me with no writing time (errand time, mental health time) whatsoever and it’s taken a full month to find a replacement. I had no idea how very much my 8 hours a week mean to me! How I rely on them! Now the new babysitter, cheerful and sweet violist Bonnie, is established and all is well again. Well, she started on Tuesday. She was supposed to come today but I had to cancel her because Isaac is sick with the flu, has a fever, and is in ultra-cling mode. I’m only getting a moment now because he’s conked out on the couch, cheeks asmoulder.

Meanwhile, after the great squirrel siege of 1999-2001, our varmint problem is back. A few months ago—after a five-year lull!—the squirrels moved back in uninvited to our upstairs bathroom wall. I called Critter Control immediately (we got to know each other well during those dark times) and they came out and expertly trapped the varmints, taking them, I’m told, to a nice country home. However, the squirrel-catching professional had a bad report about our gutters and fascia (the wood behind the gutters). He said, “Whoever fixed those for you didn’t do you any favors. There are holes all along this side of the house, and it’s just a welcome mat. You have to get those fixed or I will be back.”

I listened to him, but then I didn’t really take action. The squirrels were gone and all was silent in that intra-wall space. I went on with my busy life and forgot about it. UNTIL one evening when I was sitting here and there was the most uncanny little sound in the office wall. A scuffle? A squeak? I chalked it up to the wind and forgot about it again, until one afternoon when it really sounded for all the world like something fell down the chimney. Oh well, whatever. But over a short time the persistent scuffling and squeaking here and there in the house seemed to get more and more noticeable and less and less easily dismissed as audio hallucinations. One morning I was drinking my tea and Lena dog sat staring fixedly at a blank area of the dining room wall, hackles up, slight growl on her lips. For at least a half-hour. I listened, I checked up and down, in and out, but I couldn’t see anything and figured she was just making a big deal about nothing.

Denial? You could say so.

So then the other night the squeaking SQUEAKING business was just totally impossible to ignore. I started to fixate on the idea that the house, walls and chimney especially, had become a major bat colony. Now, I should add that bats creep me out way more than squirrels and once I had this idea in my head it was impossible not to take action. I called Critter Control again and shortly the man was on my porch again. “Hello, again,” he said sardonically.

“Hello,” I said sheepishly.

I showed him around the areas where I’d heard things and described what I’d heard. He explored the attic and the basement fully and then rendered his verdict. “It’s not bats. It’s mice.”

This reminded me that a couple weeks ago when I was in a flurry to leave for Pittsburgh (too bad I didn’t have time to write about the weekend Isaac and I spent in vacationland Pittsburgh, giving Ben the weekend off while we had a big adventure, it was pretty fun) Isaac suddenly wanted to fill the birdfeeder. Right as we were packing up the car. So, okay, it would only take a second, so I opened up the tool shed and found that our bag of birdseed had been completely ransacked by… mice? Perhaps? Totally ripped open and most of the sunflower seeds devoured. Groan. Anyway, I rushed off to Pittsburgh, had a busy weekend, came home to houseguests, then a sick husband, then a sick child and no babysitter all the while and then just run-run-run all the time. I forgot about the birdseed! Of course!

So I mentioned this and the man went and looked around outside and at the birdseed mess. He said, “You’re offering them food. You’re offering them warmth. Your foundation is full of easy holes for them to get in. In fact I’m surprised you haven’t had a skunk up in here.”

I said, “Skunk!?”

He said, “They eat mice. This hole [indicating a chunk of missing concrete at the soil line about an inch tall by six inches long] is certainly big enough for a skunk. And these are skunk tracks right here in the snow.”

I said, “Are you sure they aren’t cat tracks? We have a lot of cats around here.”

He laughed and said, “No.”

So reluctantly I agreed to let him lay poison all over the place where these critters frequent in our basement and attic. I pointed out my fears about the poison: that my cat would eat a poisoned mouse and get sick (he said she’d have to eat ten of them), and that they would then crawl up in the wall and die there and stench up the whole place (he said mice have too little moisture to stench much, not sure I buy that).

So a few hours after he left Isaac and I were hanging around the house. He was upstairs and I was tidying up the kitchen. Then I heard the loudest squeaking—beyond anything a natural creature could possibly make. I called up the stairs, “Isaac, are you playing with a squeaky toy?” He called back down, “No.” I said, “Is Lena playing with a squeaky toy up there?” He said, “No, she’s sitting right here and not playing with anything. She’s asleep.”

The squeaking was emanating from the dining room wall, piercingly loud, desperate and hysterical. Then the chewing started in. My neck hair began to rise. I scampered upstairs to cower on the couch with Isaac. In a few moments we heard the critter, huge, furry, fur audibly rushing against the other side of the painfully thin drywall, as he made his way across a duct and then up into the floor space of the room where we sat. We could hear its movements exactly. He walked the perimeter. I can tell you it was no mouse.

I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Isaac was right with me, suddenly more cooperative about getting his shoes on than ever before. We fled and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Science Center, having fun but also killing time until Ben came home from work. He walked through he house before us and there was nothing there. I hoped that the whole thing had blown over, and that whatever it was had gone away. But then the pets began a vigil. They took turns staring at a certain heating vent in that room. Occasionally I would hear a rustle, but mostly it was just things that they could hear. The vigil went on for three days or so, and then ended.

Now I’m convinced that what happened was that a big huge RAT took some chomps of the mouse poison. Freaked out, squealing its head off, climbed up the dining room wall, over the top, and up into the TV room, where it struggled for three days (during the vigil) and then finally died. So, yes, I think there’s an enormous dead rat in the floor. But I can’t prove it. Having the Critter Control guy come and look for a dead rat that might not even be there (maybe he did leave?) is expensive and perhaps futile. But if or when I smell the slightest whiff, the slightest suggestion of a hint of eau de dead rat I will be on the phone requesting immediate attention!

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to scare up bids and get someone here to fix this house. I mean FIX the Swiss cheese style fascia, which means taking off the gutters, which need to be replaced anyway. And I mean someone going over this foundation with a fine toothed comb and filling every hole possible with concrete. The Critter Control man says we need to fill every hole around the outside of the house that’s bigger than a ball-point pen and lower than eye level. (Did I mention that this is a 120-year-old house?)

I’ve been quite jumpy. I’ve been leaving lights on at night. And when I have to approach a dark room, I turn on the light by reaching into the room, and then I wait a few moments in case I startle something. (I haven’t.) I’ve been checking my shoes before I put them on. Lena has been patrolling at night, god bless her. Occasionally I hear her down there, seemingly chasing something, but I can assure you that I do not make a practice of going down to see. If I find something dead in the morning (and I haven’t) okay. But I don’t want to know what she does with her free time, I really don’t!

Isaac said, “How do you cook a mouse?”

I said, “Well, we don’t cook mice, because we don’t eat mice.”

He said, “I know how you cook them.”

“Um, how?”

“First: you take off the fur. Then you boil it and eat it!”

[Repressing the visual images that this conjures] “Hm. I suppose that would work, but we really don’t eat mice.”

“Why we don’t eat mice?”

Oh—god—I’ve had enough trouble explaining why we DO eat cows/chickens/turkeys/fish/pigs lately. It just all makes me wish I could just say that we’re herbivores like triceratops. Why did I ever stop being a vegetarian back in the 90s?

On another note, Isaac said recently, “I want to be a firefighter.”
“That’s great,” I said.
He paused and then added an important detail: “A LADY firefighter.”
Gulp.
With inward apologies to the transgendered community, I explained, “Well, you can’t be a LADY firefighter, because when you grow up you will be a man, and so you will never BE a lady, and so you will just have to be a fireman instead.”

“Okay,” he said with a shrug.

I guess the good news is that a few generations of feminism have been successful in breaking down those gender-based career roles. It’s like recently I got “Free to Be You and Me” out of the library because I used to love it so. But I turned it off shortly because what I realized right away was that it was no longer debunking these gender rules (like the teasing kids in “William Wants a Doll”) but for Isaac INTRODUCING the concepts in the first place. I guess that’s good. There’s been progress.

But still, if I see a rodent of any kind—I mean even just a tiny mouse or a harmless vole—you can expect me to shriek and leap directly up onto the nearest chair. It must be some kind of reflex.

Our new heroes are Maurice and Katia Krafft, French Volcanologists who filmed and photographed more erupting volcanoes than anyone before or since. A few clips of their incredible footage appeared in the first volcano video we got from the library (Volcano, By D.K.). They stood in space suits right in front of a towering wall of molten lava. Then we got another volcano video (Volcanoes! by National Geographic) and it turned out it was all about the Kraffts and their volcano-chasing lifestyle and the insane danger level they lived with. (past tense.) In one scene Maurice takes a little rubber dingy out into a lake of sulfuric acid to take samples. Katia mentions that the lava is flowing under the rock bridge she’s standing on, and that if she steps wrong she could fall through and be cooked. She smiles. They are charismatic and wonderful– and they were killed together on a volcano in Japan in 1991. So now Isaac wants to be a volcanologist. Which, okay. Sounds very interesting, but be careful!

He likes to talk about lava and magma and especially likes explaining things to some smaller creature. Like his doll Nils. Or a tiny plastic knight. Or, most recently his imaginary friend, the dragon named Ralphie, who appeared in corporeal form recently at a gift shop and has since been Isaac’s constant companion. A conversation between Ralphie and Isaac:

Isaac: You see, the Earth is a Big Ball. And we live right on the side of it.
Ralphie (me): No. The Earth is flat like a book or else we’d fall off.
Isaac (stooping down to Ralphie’s height to make eye contact, gesturing emphatically): No. It’s round, Ralphie. And we’re moving through space right now. We’re going around the sun. (aside to mom: are we going around the sun? mom: yes.)
Ralphie: But why don’t we fly off then?
Isaac: Because we’re in our house and it’s a very strong house.
Ralphie: But why doesn’t our whole house fly off?
Isaac: the GRAVITY, Ralphie! Gravity! It holds us down. And we drop things and they fall. It’s gravity. And volcanoes come up from the center of the Earth, where it’s very HOT! The magma and the lava come right out! And they can burn you! You better stay far away. Except that volcanologists can go close by to look.

We made a volcano in the kitchen recently, using a funnel (upside down), a pile of baking soda and a whole lot of vinegar. We tinkered with the recipe (proportions and quantity) and tried out adding food coloring to make the lava red. Isaac didn’t care about anything but the eruptions. I would pour in a little vinegar and he would say, “Let’s do it again!” I would do it again and he would say, “Let’s do it again!” So on, and so forth until we ran through our entire store of baking soda and vinegar– one new box and two half bottles. (Red wine vinegar works well because it colors the whole thing a lovely pink. The cider vinegar is okay, but the the lava is sort of an ugly brown. I stayed away from the $18 balsamic.)

He really, really wanted to have the fancy official volcano model they were selling for $35 at the Science Center. But I got us out of there without buying it (distracted him with a little pink thing that farted for only $3). It said ages ten and up and looked way too complicated for us. At its heart it is just an upside down funnel with baking soda and vinegar, just that it has a big styrofoam faux mountain and better, more, the right amounts, of lava fixins. Maybe for a special occasion.

Meanwhile, he’s been catching me off-guard with obscure points of American history. Such as, “Mommy, what are the Hessians?” (you know, those German mercenaries hired by the British to fight us during the Revolutionary War…) and “Mommy, what did Von Steuben did?” (You know, that Prussian baron who came over and helped George Washington create a disciplined fighting force…) Ben has been reading to him. I need to read these things, too, I realize, so that I can field the questions. Not the first time I’ve been learning things at the same time as my three-year-old. But it is rather humbling.

An amusing misunderstanding:

Isaac: Is that Washington? (gesturing to the TV, an interview show, when we still had TV)
Me: No, honey. That’s another guy. His name is Ted Nugent.

(Well, he did have a pony tail.)

Also, the pink is fully launched. Yes! Wear it proud! The brown and pink hightops are a complete hit. In fact he won’t wear any other shoe, ever. He also has been sporting his pink golf shirt, layered over a gray long-sleeved t-shirt for warmth. (Vassar colors– the gray of ignorance and the pink dawn of insight, or something like that. …Sam?) He also has a new ultra-short haircut that was something of a mistake, but we’re getting used to it. He is developing a sort of retro-chic look that smacks of the 50s or the 80s. The pink and brown motif adds to the mid-century modern feel of his new fashion. Also, his skin tone looks great in pink, it turns out. Maybe he’s a “spring”? The other day I took him to the planetarium and the other mothers couldn’t help notice his high style. “He likes pink a lot,” I explained. “I can see that!” said another mother, admiringly. “He looks great. When we were selling our house, the realtor was wearing a pink shirt and my daughter kept asking, ‘why is he wearing pink?’ and I told her, ‘well, anyone can wear pink, you know…'” Hm. Can they? I guess they can. I noticed that people looked at him a little bit, well, questioningly,– is he a boy who loves pink, or a girl with an ultra-short buzz cut?– but people understand that preschoolers have strong opinions about their outfits. You have to go with it. It’s much more important that he develop a sense of his own power over his personhood. Ben took him out for lunch dressed like that, lunch with a buddy and his kids. Ben said, as he was leaving, “I’m going to have to tell him that you dressed him.” I just said okay. But of course it wasn’t really me who dressed Isaac. He dressed himself– and he loves the way he looks.

After the pink-shoe question of fall, 2005, (See blog entry “The Boy Who Likes Pink,” 10/3/05) it seemed the Pink Problem had gone away. Isaac started picking out things that were orange. I let him decide what color of sweatshirt to buy for the fall, and pink was right there in the choices. He picked orange. New jacket? Also orange. The shoes I ordered (navy with red trim) came in the mail. He put them on and pranced around without incident. It seemed that the whole Pink Issue was a thing of the past.

Not so. His fondness for the only pink towel in the house remained noticeable. Then one day I was offering him a choice of two shirts to wear. I think one was navy and the other heather gray. He suddenly started to cry. “Why I don’t have a pink one?” he demanded. Hm. Good question.

Then of course there was his imaginary pink gun.

He also developed an attraction to Brown. Okay. Great! Let’s get brown things! I can work with this. But… what he really wanted was pink AND brown, in combination. Brown alone seemed to only make him all the sadder, because its friend Pink was not there with it.

Meanwhile I read an article by a dad whose 4-year-old son insisted not just on wearing a pink shirt or pink shoes now and then, but a full-length pink velvet gown!! To play trucks in! Then I didn’t feel so bad about Isaac’s aesthetic sensibilities. I could put them in perspective. We’re getting off easy, it seems.

I mentioned to Ben, “Isaac wants a pink shirt.” And this time, instead of immediately rejecting the whole concept, Ben simply groaned and said, “Okay, whatever.” I could see that there was no more fight left in him on the topic. Through his long-term tenacity, Isaac had won out. Since I’ve never really had that much of a problem with the pink thing, this was all the green light I needed to get some pink items into the wardrobe. (He needs new clothes and shoes all the time, due to growth.) I searched around and then found them: converse hightops, in Isaac’s size, brown and pink combined!! Brown on the sides with a pink stripe up the back and a pink tongue. Now, back in the day, Ben himself used to wear converse hightops, and they as a brand have a certain grunge/punk mystique that I knew would work in my favor. I bought them. In fact, I bought two pairs (they’re cheap), one for now and one to grow into. (And since I’m buying them online, too, there’s no telling how they will fit. I can always send one back.)

I mentioned this to Ben and he smiled, “That’s great!” he said. The nostalgia thing seemed to work just perfectly. I mentioned this to Isaac, saying, “I ordered some new shoes for you from the computer. They’re brown and pink together!”

“Thank you!” he yelled, and began running joyful laps.

Thus emboldened I went to L.L.Bean and bought him a pink shirt. It’s a nice light pink golf shirt. Hey, he’s preppy on his dad’s side, right? Preppy guys wear these pastel colored golf/Izod shirts all the time. Isaac’s just starting a little young. I also, while I was at it, ordered him a t-shirt with pink and lavender stripes. What I noticed is that when it comes time to choose “boys’ clothing” or “girls’ clothing” at these sites, I had to click “girls'” to get the items in question. I felt like there was something… subversive about it. I was going undercover in the girls’ department, shopping for my son. (I remember David Sedaris writing hilariously about buying his own clothes in the petite women’s department, because he’s small in stature. Then one day he found himself standing at a urinal wearing pants that zipped up the back…)

All this is yet to arrive, coming today or tomorrow probably.

The good news is that we’ve made peace with Pink.

Will people think Isaac is a girl? Maybe. But sometimes they do anyway, and he’s about the boyest looking boy ever. People are like that. Whenever that has happened, it has not bothered Isaac in the least.

I think he’ll look smashing in his pink togs. He’ll wear them with pride, oblivious to the controversy, shouting from the rooftops “Pink is my best!”