Well, after twelve years of a carefree, itch-free life, I finally became a “nit-picker” last week. That’s right. My children, whose names I will not reveal in this post, had head lice. After years of hearing from other mom friends about the horrors of picking nits out of their children’s hair, I finally joined the ranks. And it wasn’t any fun.
Our lice story goes like this. About one week and ten days ago, both of my sons complained to me of “itchy heads”. Dutifully, I inspected their hair and found nothing more a few flaky, white fluffs that, owing to my self-taught medical training, I concluded to be “dandruff.” I bought dandruff shampoo for them and promptly forgot about it.
Following a ten-day gestation period, the son I will refer to as “B2” came into my bedroom near tears because he had “bugs in his head.” Now this is the sort of comment that no matter how slack you may be as a parent, will stop you in your tracks. You will not say, as my husband did, “Let your mom look at it.” (He will, for purposes of this post, simply be referred to as “Husband”). You will breathe in deeply and move the child into the light. With a delicate touch of fine-tooth comb, I uplifted the short strands of his blond hair. And there they were.
“Well, you have lice,” I declared. This immediately made him cry.
I rousted my other son, whom I will call for purposes of this post “B1”, out of bed for an inspection. With B2 crying in his pajamas, B1 rubbing his sleepy eyes and wondering what the fuss was about, and Husband jumping to action, I performed the next inspection. It seems that B1 and B2 both had head lice. I made a desperate late night call to my best friend and expert nit-picker for advice. May I never be the parent that other parents call because I have the most experience with this problem. She’s a trouper though. She orchestrated a battle plan: Husband to the drug store for lice-exterminating shampoo, combs, furniture spray, laundry detergent, olive oil, mayonnaise, scissors and buzz saw.
First, plan of attack. Cut off the hair. Now, Husband is a man of action. And take charge he did. But he is not, as history proved, much of a barber. He did perform emergency buzz haircuts. But as our stylist later determined, he started and “then panicked in the middle.” This is why B1 has a rather lopsided set of front bangs. Then the batteries on the clippers died in the middle of B2’s haircut, and Husband opted for a short scissor cut instead. B2’s hair looked like a lawn mowed by Edward Scissorhands.
Despite the cosmetic injury, the shampoo worked as intended. The bugs were immediately dispensed down the drain. From that point, we went from bed to bed stripping the sheets and pillowcases and stray stuffed animals for a scalding treatment in the washing machine. We all finally got to bed, deloused and defeated.
The next day, I did nine hundred loads of laundry. Then I made a nice Italian dressing and tossed it in their hair. They were forbidden from sitting on the furniture, and spent the morning on the floor playing card games and watching television. And I gather feeling lucky to be free from school for the day.
Admittedly, B2 was obsessed about who had given him the lice. Over and over, he listed the likely suspects. No matter how many times I explained that lice did not come with tags indicating their last known address, he accused different classmates of being the source. Frankly, he was a bit of an Eliot Spitzer about ratting out the culprit. (Without the hotel shenanigans, of course). Nothing I could say was going to stop him from returning to school and demanding that the criminal turn himself in. My best guess is that he got it from trading catcher’s helmets at the ballpark; but he couldn’t be dissuaded from his own theory: a girl had given it to him.
For a respite, we went to play laser tag. For those of you unfamiliar with laser tag, it involves going into a dark chamber, strapping on a pistol suit, and shooting infrared raybeams at unsuspecting participants. Inside the swirling fog and light maze, specialty lighting illuminates any white object. Any other day that might have been fine. But if you happen to carry a few nits in your head from a lice infestation, you won’t need Eliot Spitzer to rat you out.
While standing in the foyer waiting our turn, I spotted their two heads, freckled with white headlights. The nits were glowing like ceiling stars at Fernbank. I uttered some expletive under my breath, and eased toward them. Subtly, I tried to pluck the nits off their heads. At the same time, I acknowledged this was an excellent place for nit-picking if the birthday crowd would just back off.
Lice are easy, but nits are a problem. Over the last seven days, we’ve combed, we’ve picked, we’ve oiled, and we’ve cut hair. B2 has taken statements from all the students in his class. There are no leads and his investigation has gone cold. The good news is that one week later, I think we are finally nit free. And thank goodness for buzz cuts because if I had daughters, I think I might lose my mind. What’s left of it anyway.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Joey's Bar Mitzvah: It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time
JOEY’S BAR MITZVAH: IT’S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME
Joey at twelve is a mythical creature, half man – half boy. He has begun studying for his bar mitzvah – and I cannot believe that he is almost thirteen. A part of me cannot picture him on the bima reading from the Torah before a whole congregation. This is, after all, a child who still cannot sit through a service.
During a Saturday morning service, he slips out for a bathroom break, and fifteen minutes later I spy him through the glass windows behind the bima, racing through the courtyard with his friends. He is an elfin sprite leaping the shrubbery and diving for cover. He makes me laugh.
Yet, this same boy is studying to chant – not just read- long passages in Hebrew. The Torah is a handwritten scroll with no vowels. He must also learn the Haftorah, which is the Hebrew commentary. When you read from the Torah before the congregation, an expert follows along to ensure that you do it right. There is no room for “almost good enough.” There is no self-indulgent backslapping for “trying.” Then once completed, the bar mitzvah candidate must give the congregation some thoughts and his own interpretation of the Torah portion.
It is in this exercise of serious intellectual study and rote learning that the man he will become emerges before me. I imagine the moment when the congregation of his friends and family will count my adolescent son as an adult before them. And isn’t that what every teenage male wants? Treat him like a man and he will become one?
Yet, a paradox exists here. What thirteen-year-old boy could possibly be called mature? Surely, puberty does not equal manhood. The bar mitzvah ceremony tells me otherwise. It is time for him to step away from his parents – to become a man in his own right.
And he is becoming that man. Amidst all his boyish energy, a delightful young man is emerging. He is developing such sensitivity to others. “How was your trip?” he asks Michael when he comes home from a long business trip, looking haggard. He questions me about my parents, whose health has not been good over the last few years. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he will say as if he alone can save the world. Every night, he calls out to brother from his bedroom down the hallway, “Are you asleep? Are you asleep?” -- unable to bear the thought of being the last to fall asleep.
A bar mitzvah is more than a ritual. At its best it is a sacred ritual. The ritual propels change and growth. His community of friends and loved ones expect this of him. Dare I say, we demand it of him? And as he prepares, I think he experiences his own change. Maybe even at a deeper level as well – a relationship with God. The bar mitzvah, as it is meant to be, both centers him in his relationships and propels him forward.
Lest I wax too poetical, the joy is mostly his. The burden of planning the party is mine. Meeting with caterers, the DJ, the decorator, the guest lists. Over and over I tell myself “It’s not about the party. It’s not about the party.” And yet everything on my to-do list is about “the party.” I am starting my own bar mitzvah chant. It goes: It’s not about the budget. It’s not about the budget.
Over indulgence on the bar mitzvah is the stuff of legend. Here are a few just for context:
The infamous Harvey Cohen bar mitzvah was held at Miami’s Orange Bowl. The spectacle featured a 64-piece band, waiters dressed as referees, the rabbi attired as Howard Cosell and the electric scoreboard spelled out “Happy Birthday, Harvey”.
At a high-end bar mitzvah in Universal Studios, the USC marching band led guests from the reception room to the dining room. The bar mitzvah boy made his entrance to the background accompaniment of a 15-piece gospel choir. At the end of the party, guests received album covers emblazoned with the boy’s face.
And yet, just last week I was meeting with a decorator discussing how I envisioned an entrance draped like a circus tent. Throw in a few mimes strolling through the pre-event area pretending to sip champagne. I’ve had my moments, trust me.
I have been pouring over menus, torn between the stuffed flounder or the pinwheel chicken or the beef medallions for a child who only eats peanut butter. And if I didn’t think about that occasionally, I would completely lose myself in the idea of “the party.”
On Sunday mornings he trots off to study his bar mitzvah lesson with his tutor. When he returns, the quiet of our house breaks wide open when he enters. He swings through the kitchen door, rattling a paper bag steaming with hot biscuits. “It’s Mickey Donald’s biscuit time! It’s Mickey Donald’s biscuit time!” he sings in rap parody. He has cajoled out of Michael a trip to his favorite restaurant.
Joey does a little dance, twisting his yellow and red Echo sneakers in a gyration on the hard wood floor. His jeans stop just above his ankles, revealing white socks. He hops and slides, bumping his boyish hips into me at the refrigerator door. His collision perfected, he suddenly dives for his biscuit and crams it into his mouth. He eats standing by the counter, too riff with energy to sit on the stool.
As he chews, the rubber bands of his braces pull taut at the back of his mouth. Quickly, he gulps, swallows and then extracts the bands. In his haste to eat, he has forgotten them. He swipes the glass of milk from me before I can put it down. Then he upends the glass to his mouth, draining it. A loud belch follows.
“Come on, Ben, he yells to his younger brother who is still mid-bite. Flinging the door open, he starts to sing, “It’s peanut butter jelly time! Peanut butter jelly time!”
The thing I really want to say is this: How blessed I am for all this “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.”
Joey at twelve is a mythical creature, half man – half boy. He has begun studying for his bar mitzvah – and I cannot believe that he is almost thirteen. A part of me cannot picture him on the bima reading from the Torah before a whole congregation. This is, after all, a child who still cannot sit through a service.
During a Saturday morning service, he slips out for a bathroom break, and fifteen minutes later I spy him through the glass windows behind the bima, racing through the courtyard with his friends. He is an elfin sprite leaping the shrubbery and diving for cover. He makes me laugh.
Yet, this same boy is studying to chant – not just read- long passages in Hebrew. The Torah is a handwritten scroll with no vowels. He must also learn the Haftorah, which is the Hebrew commentary. When you read from the Torah before the congregation, an expert follows along to ensure that you do it right. There is no room for “almost good enough.” There is no self-indulgent backslapping for “trying.” Then once completed, the bar mitzvah candidate must give the congregation some thoughts and his own interpretation of the Torah portion.
It is in this exercise of serious intellectual study and rote learning that the man he will become emerges before me. I imagine the moment when the congregation of his friends and family will count my adolescent son as an adult before them. And isn’t that what every teenage male wants? Treat him like a man and he will become one?
Yet, a paradox exists here. What thirteen-year-old boy could possibly be called mature? Surely, puberty does not equal manhood. The bar mitzvah ceremony tells me otherwise. It is time for him to step away from his parents – to become a man in his own right.
And he is becoming that man. Amidst all his boyish energy, a delightful young man is emerging. He is developing such sensitivity to others. “How was your trip?” he asks Michael when he comes home from a long business trip, looking haggard. He questions me about my parents, whose health has not been good over the last few years. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he will say as if he alone can save the world. Every night, he calls out to brother from his bedroom down the hallway, “Are you asleep? Are you asleep?” -- unable to bear the thought of being the last to fall asleep.
A bar mitzvah is more than a ritual. At its best it is a sacred ritual. The ritual propels change and growth. His community of friends and loved ones expect this of him. Dare I say, we demand it of him? And as he prepares, I think he experiences his own change. Maybe even at a deeper level as well – a relationship with God. The bar mitzvah, as it is meant to be, both centers him in his relationships and propels him forward.
Lest I wax too poetical, the joy is mostly his. The burden of planning the party is mine. Meeting with caterers, the DJ, the decorator, the guest lists. Over and over I tell myself “It’s not about the party. It’s not about the party.” And yet everything on my to-do list is about “the party.” I am starting my own bar mitzvah chant. It goes: It’s not about the budget. It’s not about the budget.
Over indulgence on the bar mitzvah is the stuff of legend. Here are a few just for context:
The infamous Harvey Cohen bar mitzvah was held at Miami’s Orange Bowl. The spectacle featured a 64-piece band, waiters dressed as referees, the rabbi attired as Howard Cosell and the electric scoreboard spelled out “Happy Birthday, Harvey”.
At a high-end bar mitzvah in Universal Studios, the USC marching band led guests from the reception room to the dining room. The bar mitzvah boy made his entrance to the background accompaniment of a 15-piece gospel choir. At the end of the party, guests received album covers emblazoned with the boy’s face.
And yet, just last week I was meeting with a decorator discussing how I envisioned an entrance draped like a circus tent. Throw in a few mimes strolling through the pre-event area pretending to sip champagne. I’ve had my moments, trust me.
I have been pouring over menus, torn between the stuffed flounder or the pinwheel chicken or the beef medallions for a child who only eats peanut butter. And if I didn’t think about that occasionally, I would completely lose myself in the idea of “the party.”
On Sunday mornings he trots off to study his bar mitzvah lesson with his tutor. When he returns, the quiet of our house breaks wide open when he enters. He swings through the kitchen door, rattling a paper bag steaming with hot biscuits. “It’s Mickey Donald’s biscuit time! It’s Mickey Donald’s biscuit time!” he sings in rap parody. He has cajoled out of Michael a trip to his favorite restaurant.
Joey does a little dance, twisting his yellow and red Echo sneakers in a gyration on the hard wood floor. His jeans stop just above his ankles, revealing white socks. He hops and slides, bumping his boyish hips into me at the refrigerator door. His collision perfected, he suddenly dives for his biscuit and crams it into his mouth. He eats standing by the counter, too riff with energy to sit on the stool.
As he chews, the rubber bands of his braces pull taut at the back of his mouth. Quickly, he gulps, swallows and then extracts the bands. In his haste to eat, he has forgotten them. He swipes the glass of milk from me before I can put it down. Then he upends the glass to his mouth, draining it. A loud belch follows.
“Come on, Ben, he yells to his younger brother who is still mid-bite. Flinging the door open, he starts to sing, “It’s peanut butter jelly time! Peanut butter jelly time!”
The thing I really want to say is this: How blessed I am for all this “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.”
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
TRYING TO BE GREEN IN A BLUE GREEN WORLD
On quiet mornings I walk my two dogs across the two-mile nature trail that encircles our neighborhood lake. And in these rare moments of solitude I marvel at Mallard ducks riding on the backs of each other, geese flying in a v-shaped arc overhead in the fog-drenched morning cold, and a Blue Heron lifting off from the wetland bog and flying low and solo over the water’s mist. The dogs pull on their leads and drag me forcefully over the wetlands path, carved out with bridges and a woodchip-strewn embankment encircling the bog. The noise of the interstate dissipates there, and I can hear the screech of an owl, the playful chirps of Bobwhites calling one another, and the underbrush rustle of squirrels and chipmunks.
Overhanging vines and low trees frame a canopy over me and inside the woodlands I feel that I’ve entered a sanctuary, a quiet place where the lark sings, the sand softens and meets the stream, and leaves fall like petals off the trees. Once inside the forest’s cover, I find the mental clarity I crave, and my heart beats slower and calms me. Daily I find myself longing for the morning walk, attributing the need to the dogs’ needs, when instead it is my own calling.
Stepping off the path and back onto the road, I meet the determined asphalt of my daily life. The highway grinds in the background, and I can hear the pulse of tractor-trailer engines shifting gears. Cars pass me, and drivers wave, gulping coffee and switching stations on the radio. Garbage cans bulge at the waist after being dragged to the street to await the county truck where, upended, they will purge their contents. The hair lifts on the backs of my dogs as we cross the road and they yelp and tug on their leads. I look at my watch and think of the day ahead.
Before we leave for the morning the landscape truck arrives. My flowerbeds are choking with bristling, jagged weeds. We have engaged our landscapers to pick weeds and lay pine straw. The crew of men clusters in the driveway, blowing on their hands. I gather my jacket and meet them outside.
“This is much worse than we thought,” says the foreman, a Caucasian man sent to communicate with the homeowner and then convey those ideas to the workers.
“We’ll never be able to pick all these weeds. We’re going to have to spray and cover with pine straw. In the future, you need to spray with pre-emergent,” he advises.
“Can’t we do something more organic?” I implore.
“No, ma’am. Not unless you want to pick all these by hand. And we do not have the manpower to do that today,” he insists.
I am caught between the pesticide and the labor. He sees my indecision and continues, “Besides you could never pick all these weeds. They’ll just spread and come back two-fold.” I acquiesce.
The foreman straps on a huge plastic tank filled with a blue-green liquid that swishes back and forth in a kind of frothy stew. A hose and a nozzle wind around in front of him. He wears a surgical mask and gardening gloves. He begins his march across my yard, spraying the flowerbeds. Spots of blue-green dye dot the yard and sweep down in streams, a neon painted river of alien blue.
The glaring dye marks the driveway where apparently some pesky dandelion tried to poke its way out of a tiny crack in the concrete. The backyard children’s play area is dusted with blue-green streaks. Painted weeds crumble under their outlandish costume.
I go back inside and ignore the blue-green jungle. This morning we dawdle over book bags and permission slips, missing breakfast. Thus, the ride to school requires a detour to our favorite donut shop. I purchase four glazed donuts and one chocolate frosted with sprinkles. I also purchase coffee, juice and milk. I now have two bags, three Styrofoam cups and a plastic bottle.
Because the children go to a private school there is no bus service. We drive a Honda SUV. I get in the drop-off line behind another minivan, a Suburban and an SUV.
I am on my way home when I remember that I need to stop by the pharmacy and pick up Joey’s prescription for his allergies. I run in the drugstore, but I linger in the aisle as I notice some anti-bacterial soap, some non-slippery soap for kids, and a jar of Noxzema with new packaging. I am opposed to germs so I buy the anti-bacterial soap. I like the kids’ soap idea so I buy that too. I do not need any more facial cleansers, but I like the new packaging of Noxzema. With the prescription medication, I am out of the door after spending $60.00.
Driving through our neighborhood I pass three different chemical trucks – All-Chem, Chem-Green, and Chem-Lawn. Everyone’s lawn is lush and immaculate. Dogwoods and azaleas are beginning to bloom. There are no weeds and no one is out picking weeds either.
A few years ago the county lake was drained and dredged. An influx of silt from the highways and grading projects saturated much of the lakebed and wetlands. After the county siphoned out the murky water, the lake bottom was dry and cracked like a broken tooth. The red clay at the bottom was littered with tree stumps, branches, abandoned tires and barrels.
Surprisingly, most of the ducks and geese stayed. Swimming in river inlets and pockets of rainwater at the deepest section of the lake, they survived and even bore offspring. They pecked the parched soil for earthworms and other sustenance. The Blue Heron made a home in the back corner of the wetlands where the water came through an old underground pipe.
I circle through the neighborhood and travel down Harts Mill Road. Two new subdivisions are being built. Earth-moving machines are clearing the path of trees and other shrubbery. Previously there were two single-family homes, brick ranch styles with grassy front lawns and hardwood oaks and elms towering over the roof line. Now a cul-de-sac street has been cut and paved. The asphalt winds s-shaped over the old front lawn and then draws a tight fist at the edge of the property. The brick from the house lies in a heap next to the construction dumpsters and the yellow monster digs and scraps at the remaining brown patch of earth. I make my way back home.
Time eludes me. I must race to check Joey out for a doctor’s appointment, then take him back to school, and then back to school again for the end of the day. I have no time for lunch so I swing into the drive-through lane of Arby’s.
Last night in bed, I read a scathing article on the meat industry and how the cattle population is “beefed up” with an unnatural diet of hormones, protein, and corn. Then cattle are fed antibiotics to combat their bodies’ natural tendency to disease after exposure to this unhealthy eating system. After reading the article, I vow to never eat hamburger again. As I wait behind the sputtering car in front of me, I wonder whether roast beef comes from cattle. Cars move ahead, and a decision has to be made.
I wanted the roast beef, but I contemplate the chicken. I order the chicken and it arrives steamy in foil; the smell is hard and saturating. I drive off while unwrapping the sandwich in my lap. The meat is pressed and the crust of the chicken is a hard batter of indeterminable ingredients. When I bite into it, it tastes of flavored spices, but the texture is coarse and rubbery. The mayonnaise is thick and slathered on the bun and a wilted piece of green lettuce balances on the sopping bun. I toss the chicken back into the paper bag, and vow off both red meat and chicken.
After picking up Joey, I take him to the doctor. While waiting, I peruse the magazine rack. Each cover announces this month’s articles: “Six Ways to Make a Child Feel Special”, “How to Make Money on Ebay”, “Toys We Love for $10 of Less”, “Get Rid of Clutter”, “Boost Your Earning Power”, “Best Toys of the Year”.
I recognize a circular pattern of thought here consistent with our own household behavior patterns. Earn, spend and throw away. Just when you think you have the best of something, something better comes along. Thus, last year’s great toy is now clutter. I feel caught in the whirling dervish of a consumer tornado.
We leave the doctor’s office and head northward to return Joey to school. After dropping him off, I run an errand to the vet where I pick up a prescription for our dog, Bugsy, who has been lethargic and limping. After administering the medicine to the dog, I return to school.
Once in the car Joey and Ben spy the soccer snacks in the back and are intent on them. I deny, and then relent. They open two bags of Chee-toes. Within a few minutes their fingers are covered in a thick, shiny orange sludge, the color of a new crayon. The dust from the snack covers the corners of their lips and falls on their clothes. They shovel more and more of the crunchy snacks into their mouths, finally upturning the bag and shaking the remnants onto their tongues.
I have been in the car for five hours. I have driven twenty-three miles. We consumed one and a quarter gallons of fossil fuel. Once at home, Ben watches television while I spend the next hour picking up clutter around the house. I start the first of five loads of laundry. I take out two bags of trash. I estimate that I take out two bags of trash on a daily basis. I spend thirty-five minutes picking up toys in my children’s rooms. I step over and around books, crayons, plastic tanks, metal cars, and twenty or so new gadgets. Most of their toys have not been played with in several months.
I pick up books and magazines cluttering our bedroom. We subscribe to Time, Newsweek, US News World Report, the New York Times, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Southern Living, Family Fun, Oprah, People’s In Style, Real Simple, Vanity Fair, Golf Digest, Money, Smart Money, and Business Week. These pile up around our bedside tables. We hardly ever read them all. Sometimes I just flip through them and then toss them out.
Catalogs also take up a lot of space. We get two to three catalogs a day in the mail. This reminds me to check the mail. We have two actual bills, a birthday party invitation, an invitation to a charity fundraiser, two flyers from local stores, an invitation to apply for a credit card, miscellaneous envelopes of junk mail, and two more catalogs. I throw out everything, but the bills, the invitations and the catalogs.
I go upstairs to answer my email. I have not checked my email in a few days. I have 312 email messages. I scroll down the page and begin deleting without reading them. Out of the 312 emails, I had two from friends and one from Joey’s coach. I spend twenty minutes deleting all the unwanted email.
I check our messages on the home voicemail, and vow to return calls when I get home. I have done nothing about dinner, and realize that I will have to stop by the grocery store for the second time today and pick up something already cooked and ready.
The children are tired and cranky. Neither wants to navigate the aisles of the store. I vow to eat something healthier even if already prepared. I pick out a spinach quiche and an organic salad mixture from the deli section. My husband will hate this and the children will not eat it either. I pick up a few more things we need at home. I leave after spending twenty-three dollars.
We have had three visits from UPS today. My husband ordered two bicycles for us with points he earned on his American Express card. With his extensive business travel, we accumulate points rapidly.
The children are watching television. I hear the sound of the Disney channel in the background. A commercial for Disney is encouraging them to visit all their favorite Disney characters on ZooDisney.org.
Now we are all tired and cranky. Nobody wants to eat spinach quiche for dinner. I hear them prowling in the pantry for snacks long after I have cleaned up the kitchen.
While they play in their rooms, I brush my teeth in the bathroom. The bathroom window is centered over our front porch. Four white columns hold up the portico. I hear an odd chirping sound, tiny squeaks from outside, and then upon looking, I see a brown wren dash in front of the window. I move to the window and look out.
The wren is perched at the top of the far west column, head bent towards the triangular mouths that stretch open from the nest wedged between the column’s flat base and the underside corner of the portico roof. Moving to my bedroom window, I have a perfect view of this bird’s nest, tightly wound with sticks and straw and a pinecone.
The soft wet head of a baby bird pokes out, bobbing and stretching over the rim of the nest. I call out to my sons and they scamper in, climbing onto the bed and squeezing their faces into the edge of the windowpane. We raise the blinds slowly to look more closely at the tiny bird.
Frightened by the sound, the wren flies off showing the underside of its bright red belly. The boys and I marvel at the feat of this tiny bird, and its tenacity in building its nest on a column on our front porch. The wrens’ tiny world exists neat and bundled amidst the jumble of our home.
I do not know where to begin to undo the nest that we have built. Underneath the five-dollar bales of pine straw is a blue-green lawn. The food we eat is injected with chemicals, preshrunk and pre-packaged in order to appeal to us. Our house is filled with toys and playthings that we have accumulated and no longer need. Yet, purchases come in on a daily basis. Magazines and catalogs pile up around our feet beckoning us to buy just one more thing.
Much of my time is spent driving around on errands, spending money, decluttering the house and taking out trash. My husband leaves the house every morning before the sun cracks through the night sky, heading to the airport to conduct some business meeting in another time zone. I talk to him on cell phones lines, satellites beaming our voices back and forth. My son cannot breath the air because it is clogged with exhaust pipe fumes from lines of unmoving cars.
Can I unbuild this nest one stick at a time? My sadness crawls up beside me, looking for a warm home. I pat its head. Not because I have given into despair, but because I still have hope.
We close the window shades and wish the bird goodnight. My children crawl into their beds and I tuck the covers around them. They are full of questions.
“How do birds fly?”
“What does it eat?”
“How does it find food?”
“What keeps it from falling out of the nest?”
“I don’t know,” I confess and then add, “But I’ll find out.”
Their questions inspire me, and I vow to build a different nest tomorrow.
Overhanging vines and low trees frame a canopy over me and inside the woodlands I feel that I’ve entered a sanctuary, a quiet place where the lark sings, the sand softens and meets the stream, and leaves fall like petals off the trees. Once inside the forest’s cover, I find the mental clarity I crave, and my heart beats slower and calms me. Daily I find myself longing for the morning walk, attributing the need to the dogs’ needs, when instead it is my own calling.
Stepping off the path and back onto the road, I meet the determined asphalt of my daily life. The highway grinds in the background, and I can hear the pulse of tractor-trailer engines shifting gears. Cars pass me, and drivers wave, gulping coffee and switching stations on the radio. Garbage cans bulge at the waist after being dragged to the street to await the county truck where, upended, they will purge their contents. The hair lifts on the backs of my dogs as we cross the road and they yelp and tug on their leads. I look at my watch and think of the day ahead.
Before we leave for the morning the landscape truck arrives. My flowerbeds are choking with bristling, jagged weeds. We have engaged our landscapers to pick weeds and lay pine straw. The crew of men clusters in the driveway, blowing on their hands. I gather my jacket and meet them outside.
“This is much worse than we thought,” says the foreman, a Caucasian man sent to communicate with the homeowner and then convey those ideas to the workers.
“We’ll never be able to pick all these weeds. We’re going to have to spray and cover with pine straw. In the future, you need to spray with pre-emergent,” he advises.
“Can’t we do something more organic?” I implore.
“No, ma’am. Not unless you want to pick all these by hand. And we do not have the manpower to do that today,” he insists.
I am caught between the pesticide and the labor. He sees my indecision and continues, “Besides you could never pick all these weeds. They’ll just spread and come back two-fold.” I acquiesce.
The foreman straps on a huge plastic tank filled with a blue-green liquid that swishes back and forth in a kind of frothy stew. A hose and a nozzle wind around in front of him. He wears a surgical mask and gardening gloves. He begins his march across my yard, spraying the flowerbeds. Spots of blue-green dye dot the yard and sweep down in streams, a neon painted river of alien blue.
The glaring dye marks the driveway where apparently some pesky dandelion tried to poke its way out of a tiny crack in the concrete. The backyard children’s play area is dusted with blue-green streaks. Painted weeds crumble under their outlandish costume.
I go back inside and ignore the blue-green jungle. This morning we dawdle over book bags and permission slips, missing breakfast. Thus, the ride to school requires a detour to our favorite donut shop. I purchase four glazed donuts and one chocolate frosted with sprinkles. I also purchase coffee, juice and milk. I now have two bags, three Styrofoam cups and a plastic bottle.
Because the children go to a private school there is no bus service. We drive a Honda SUV. I get in the drop-off line behind another minivan, a Suburban and an SUV.
I am on my way home when I remember that I need to stop by the pharmacy and pick up Joey’s prescription for his allergies. I run in the drugstore, but I linger in the aisle as I notice some anti-bacterial soap, some non-slippery soap for kids, and a jar of Noxzema with new packaging. I am opposed to germs so I buy the anti-bacterial soap. I like the kids’ soap idea so I buy that too. I do not need any more facial cleansers, but I like the new packaging of Noxzema. With the prescription medication, I am out of the door after spending $60.00.
Driving through our neighborhood I pass three different chemical trucks – All-Chem, Chem-Green, and Chem-Lawn. Everyone’s lawn is lush and immaculate. Dogwoods and azaleas are beginning to bloom. There are no weeds and no one is out picking weeds either.
A few years ago the county lake was drained and dredged. An influx of silt from the highways and grading projects saturated much of the lakebed and wetlands. After the county siphoned out the murky water, the lake bottom was dry and cracked like a broken tooth. The red clay at the bottom was littered with tree stumps, branches, abandoned tires and barrels.
Surprisingly, most of the ducks and geese stayed. Swimming in river inlets and pockets of rainwater at the deepest section of the lake, they survived and even bore offspring. They pecked the parched soil for earthworms and other sustenance. The Blue Heron made a home in the back corner of the wetlands where the water came through an old underground pipe.
I circle through the neighborhood and travel down Harts Mill Road. Two new subdivisions are being built. Earth-moving machines are clearing the path of trees and other shrubbery. Previously there were two single-family homes, brick ranch styles with grassy front lawns and hardwood oaks and elms towering over the roof line. Now a cul-de-sac street has been cut and paved. The asphalt winds s-shaped over the old front lawn and then draws a tight fist at the edge of the property. The brick from the house lies in a heap next to the construction dumpsters and the yellow monster digs and scraps at the remaining brown patch of earth. I make my way back home.
Time eludes me. I must race to check Joey out for a doctor’s appointment, then take him back to school, and then back to school again for the end of the day. I have no time for lunch so I swing into the drive-through lane of Arby’s.
Last night in bed, I read a scathing article on the meat industry and how the cattle population is “beefed up” with an unnatural diet of hormones, protein, and corn. Then cattle are fed antibiotics to combat their bodies’ natural tendency to disease after exposure to this unhealthy eating system. After reading the article, I vow to never eat hamburger again. As I wait behind the sputtering car in front of me, I wonder whether roast beef comes from cattle. Cars move ahead, and a decision has to be made.
I wanted the roast beef, but I contemplate the chicken. I order the chicken and it arrives steamy in foil; the smell is hard and saturating. I drive off while unwrapping the sandwich in my lap. The meat is pressed and the crust of the chicken is a hard batter of indeterminable ingredients. When I bite into it, it tastes of flavored spices, but the texture is coarse and rubbery. The mayonnaise is thick and slathered on the bun and a wilted piece of green lettuce balances on the sopping bun. I toss the chicken back into the paper bag, and vow off both red meat and chicken.
After picking up Joey, I take him to the doctor. While waiting, I peruse the magazine rack. Each cover announces this month’s articles: “Six Ways to Make a Child Feel Special”, “How to Make Money on Ebay”, “Toys We Love for $10 of Less”, “Get Rid of Clutter”, “Boost Your Earning Power”, “Best Toys of the Year”.
I recognize a circular pattern of thought here consistent with our own household behavior patterns. Earn, spend and throw away. Just when you think you have the best of something, something better comes along. Thus, last year’s great toy is now clutter. I feel caught in the whirling dervish of a consumer tornado.
We leave the doctor’s office and head northward to return Joey to school. After dropping him off, I run an errand to the vet where I pick up a prescription for our dog, Bugsy, who has been lethargic and limping. After administering the medicine to the dog, I return to school.
Once in the car Joey and Ben spy the soccer snacks in the back and are intent on them. I deny, and then relent. They open two bags of Chee-toes. Within a few minutes their fingers are covered in a thick, shiny orange sludge, the color of a new crayon. The dust from the snack covers the corners of their lips and falls on their clothes. They shovel more and more of the crunchy snacks into their mouths, finally upturning the bag and shaking the remnants onto their tongues.
I have been in the car for five hours. I have driven twenty-three miles. We consumed one and a quarter gallons of fossil fuel. Once at home, Ben watches television while I spend the next hour picking up clutter around the house. I start the first of five loads of laundry. I take out two bags of trash. I estimate that I take out two bags of trash on a daily basis. I spend thirty-five minutes picking up toys in my children’s rooms. I step over and around books, crayons, plastic tanks, metal cars, and twenty or so new gadgets. Most of their toys have not been played with in several months.
I pick up books and magazines cluttering our bedroom. We subscribe to Time, Newsweek, US News World Report, the New York Times, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Southern Living, Family Fun, Oprah, People’s In Style, Real Simple, Vanity Fair, Golf Digest, Money, Smart Money, and Business Week. These pile up around our bedside tables. We hardly ever read them all. Sometimes I just flip through them and then toss them out.
Catalogs also take up a lot of space. We get two to three catalogs a day in the mail. This reminds me to check the mail. We have two actual bills, a birthday party invitation, an invitation to a charity fundraiser, two flyers from local stores, an invitation to apply for a credit card, miscellaneous envelopes of junk mail, and two more catalogs. I throw out everything, but the bills, the invitations and the catalogs.
I go upstairs to answer my email. I have not checked my email in a few days. I have 312 email messages. I scroll down the page and begin deleting without reading them. Out of the 312 emails, I had two from friends and one from Joey’s coach. I spend twenty minutes deleting all the unwanted email.
I check our messages on the home voicemail, and vow to return calls when I get home. I have done nothing about dinner, and realize that I will have to stop by the grocery store for the second time today and pick up something already cooked and ready.
The children are tired and cranky. Neither wants to navigate the aisles of the store. I vow to eat something healthier even if already prepared. I pick out a spinach quiche and an organic salad mixture from the deli section. My husband will hate this and the children will not eat it either. I pick up a few more things we need at home. I leave after spending twenty-three dollars.
We have had three visits from UPS today. My husband ordered two bicycles for us with points he earned on his American Express card. With his extensive business travel, we accumulate points rapidly.
The children are watching television. I hear the sound of the Disney channel in the background. A commercial for Disney is encouraging them to visit all their favorite Disney characters on ZooDisney.org.
Now we are all tired and cranky. Nobody wants to eat spinach quiche for dinner. I hear them prowling in the pantry for snacks long after I have cleaned up the kitchen.
While they play in their rooms, I brush my teeth in the bathroom. The bathroom window is centered over our front porch. Four white columns hold up the portico. I hear an odd chirping sound, tiny squeaks from outside, and then upon looking, I see a brown wren dash in front of the window. I move to the window and look out.
The wren is perched at the top of the far west column, head bent towards the triangular mouths that stretch open from the nest wedged between the column’s flat base and the underside corner of the portico roof. Moving to my bedroom window, I have a perfect view of this bird’s nest, tightly wound with sticks and straw and a pinecone.
The soft wet head of a baby bird pokes out, bobbing and stretching over the rim of the nest. I call out to my sons and they scamper in, climbing onto the bed and squeezing their faces into the edge of the windowpane. We raise the blinds slowly to look more closely at the tiny bird.
Frightened by the sound, the wren flies off showing the underside of its bright red belly. The boys and I marvel at the feat of this tiny bird, and its tenacity in building its nest on a column on our front porch. The wrens’ tiny world exists neat and bundled amidst the jumble of our home.
I do not know where to begin to undo the nest that we have built. Underneath the five-dollar bales of pine straw is a blue-green lawn. The food we eat is injected with chemicals, preshrunk and pre-packaged in order to appeal to us. Our house is filled with toys and playthings that we have accumulated and no longer need. Yet, purchases come in on a daily basis. Magazines and catalogs pile up around our feet beckoning us to buy just one more thing.
Much of my time is spent driving around on errands, spending money, decluttering the house and taking out trash. My husband leaves the house every morning before the sun cracks through the night sky, heading to the airport to conduct some business meeting in another time zone. I talk to him on cell phones lines, satellites beaming our voices back and forth. My son cannot breath the air because it is clogged with exhaust pipe fumes from lines of unmoving cars.
Can I unbuild this nest one stick at a time? My sadness crawls up beside me, looking for a warm home. I pat its head. Not because I have given into despair, but because I still have hope.
We close the window shades and wish the bird goodnight. My children crawl into their beds and I tuck the covers around them. They are full of questions.
“How do birds fly?”
“What does it eat?”
“How does it find food?”
“What keeps it from falling out of the nest?”
“I don’t know,” I confess and then add, “But I’ll find out.”
Their questions inspire me, and I vow to build a different nest tomorrow.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Felled by Flu Season
February 7, 2008
Cold and flu season has run over this household like a truck of wet cement. Last week, we went down like dominoes. First, Ben ran a fever and missed his basketball game. Then Joey began to complain he felt shaky and feverish. Given the symptoms, I surmised they both had the seasonal flu.
Yes, I admit we failed to get the recommended flu shots. Flu shots are available in the fall, and are recommended. But I let an aggressive soccer schedule prevent us from getting to the doctor. If I had it to do over again, I would do it differently.
After four days of convalescing, feeding them chicken soup, and taking temperatures, I finally sent them both back to school. No sooner had I shut the door, and then I began to feel the same symptoms.
Frankly, I secretly envisioned lying in bed and watching an unrestricted amount of true crime television, ordering pizza, and lounging at will. But I had forgotten what “shaky and feverish” felt like. All I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and get warm. And as to unlimited television, no matter how many channels you have, there is never anything on television worth watching. I have determined that the only thing worse than a made-for-tv movie is a made-for-cable movie. The acting is bad, the plot lines are ridiculous and the dialogue is cringe-worthy. Even the Forensic Files couldn’t help me last week.
We have mostly recovered, although Joey continues to cough. The pediatrician sent me to the pharmacy for an expectorant that contains an ingredient crucial to methamphetamine production. After filling out some DEA forms, I slinked away from the counter feeling like a criminal. Then again, maybe I have simply been watching too much true crime television.
Joey has always been the child who can’t seem to shake whatever illness comes around. When the rest of us have recovered and are fully back to health, he is still having coughing fits and rubbing his nose raw. I am reminded how we take good health for granted when I see him struggle.
So here’s this week’s tip. Take care of yourself. Since I failed to take better care of my own household, let me help you with some tips I gathered from the web.
How to treat Cold and Flu Symptoms:
1. Get plenty of rest
2. Avoid smoke or second hand smoke
3. Drink lots of fluids and clear soups
4. Gargle with warm salt water or use throat lozenges
5. Use saline nose drops.
6. Use a cool mist humidifier at night
Call the doctor if:
1. A fever exceeds 103 degrees or last more than three days.
2. Symptoms last more than 10 days.
3. Trouble breathing or wheezing
4. Bluish tint to the skin
5. Changes in mental awareness or seizure
6. Flu improves, but changes to fever and cough
Of course, now the FDA advises against giving any over-the-counter cold and flu medicine to children under the age of 6. The FDA found little value in the medicine and, in fact, in some cases found they caused harm. Of course, these are the same medicines that meth distributors buy in bulk, so maybe we shouldn’t give them out so freely to our young children. Just a crazy thought there.
Hug you children and keep them well.
Cold and flu season has run over this household like a truck of wet cement. Last week, we went down like dominoes. First, Ben ran a fever and missed his basketball game. Then Joey began to complain he felt shaky and feverish. Given the symptoms, I surmised they both had the seasonal flu.
Yes, I admit we failed to get the recommended flu shots. Flu shots are available in the fall, and are recommended. But I let an aggressive soccer schedule prevent us from getting to the doctor. If I had it to do over again, I would do it differently.
After four days of convalescing, feeding them chicken soup, and taking temperatures, I finally sent them both back to school. No sooner had I shut the door, and then I began to feel the same symptoms.
Frankly, I secretly envisioned lying in bed and watching an unrestricted amount of true crime television, ordering pizza, and lounging at will. But I had forgotten what “shaky and feverish” felt like. All I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and get warm. And as to unlimited television, no matter how many channels you have, there is never anything on television worth watching. I have determined that the only thing worse than a made-for-tv movie is a made-for-cable movie. The acting is bad, the plot lines are ridiculous and the dialogue is cringe-worthy. Even the Forensic Files couldn’t help me last week.
We have mostly recovered, although Joey continues to cough. The pediatrician sent me to the pharmacy for an expectorant that contains an ingredient crucial to methamphetamine production. After filling out some DEA forms, I slinked away from the counter feeling like a criminal. Then again, maybe I have simply been watching too much true crime television.
Joey has always been the child who can’t seem to shake whatever illness comes around. When the rest of us have recovered and are fully back to health, he is still having coughing fits and rubbing his nose raw. I am reminded how we take good health for granted when I see him struggle.
So here’s this week’s tip. Take care of yourself. Since I failed to take better care of my own household, let me help you with some tips I gathered from the web.
How to treat Cold and Flu Symptoms:
1. Get plenty of rest
2. Avoid smoke or second hand smoke
3. Drink lots of fluids and clear soups
4. Gargle with warm salt water or use throat lozenges
5. Use saline nose drops.
6. Use a cool mist humidifier at night
Call the doctor if:
1. A fever exceeds 103 degrees or last more than three days.
2. Symptoms last more than 10 days.
3. Trouble breathing or wheezing
4. Bluish tint to the skin
5. Changes in mental awareness or seizure
6. Flu improves, but changes to fever and cough
Of course, now the FDA advises against giving any over-the-counter cold and flu medicine to children under the age of 6. The FDA found little value in the medicine and, in fact, in some cases found they caused harm. Of course, these are the same medicines that meth distributors buy in bulk, so maybe we shouldn’t give them out so freely to our young children. Just a crazy thought there.
Hug you children and keep them well.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Chasing Bugle
They say that dogs and owners grow to resemble one another or that perhaps the owner in choosing the dog instinctively picks the dog most like himself in trait or appearance. I think there is some truth to that. In dog parks I’ve seen the long-haired, hip mom on her neon cell phone walking a well-manicured Giant Poodle, or the gray-haired man with a stoop to his back petting his grizzled Schnauzer.
I was not thinking of this phenomenon at the time Joey, who would soon be seven, dragged me into the pet store of a neighborhood strip mall every weekend to see the crated puppies. I had promised him his own dog on his seventh birthday, and he carried that promise into the store every Saturday when he began his search.
So we sat on the floor testing the measured patience of the employees and cuddled Bishons, Boston terriers, dachshunds, cocker spaniels, miniature schnauzers, and toy poodles.
During this time of intense dog petting, I began to wrap my mind around the idea that Joey needed a dog for reasons much deeper than the simple ones of why any child needs a dog. Certainly he needed something real to love and to be loved by, to learn responsibility and care, and to learn the intrinsic art of companionship that included wonderful afternoons of Frisbee throwing in the backyard, and also the lonely stance of a dog owner in the rain holding the leash of a pet needing to relieve itself. Yes, all these lessons would be important to Joey, but Joey was a unique and special child himself, and he was going to have a special dog.
Since entering the academic arena, Joey had made a name for himself testing the patience of all his teachers. “Circle time” was broken up by Joey rolling from one end of the room to another; “music hour” was disrupted by repetitive drum banging and window slamming; “art class” was impeded by Joey ingesting the Plaster of Paris that was to have been the planet Uranus. We conferenced repeatedly with teachers and school administrators who used words like “impulsive” “lack of self control” “inattentive” in droll voices that seemed to read out of medical textbooks. We hired child psychologists who tested Joey in little rooms resembling a school environment and who made notes on clipboard charts while he disassembled stacks of toys and stacked up the chairs until he could get a good view out the window. In one office, he encountered “sand therapy” where he built bridges and tunnels and fought wild dragons, and we were encouraged that this meant he was “looking for a safe way out” and “was fighting his own battles.”
He continued to be an impulsive, delightful child with no affinity for behavior charts or sticker reward programs or token exchanges. Instead he “changed his face” from happy to sad, lost out on recesses, sat alone at the lunchroom table, and endured his losses with the good nature of an oblivious child whose own active mind is all the company he needs. He was according to the schools administrators, pediatricians, child psychologists, and playground mothers “failing.”
“He needs a dog,” I told my husband. My mind was filled with My Dog Skip images of a lonely boy and a magic dog whose knowing companionship guides the boy through a troubled childhood and molds him into man.
“We need another dog like we need a hole in our heads,” Michael responded. “No, a boy needs a dog,” I insisted.
“He has a dog. Bugsy is a dog. A perfectly good dog.”
“He needs his own dog. A dog he can train, that will sleep at the end of his bed, that will grow up with him, and watch him get on the Trailways bus when he goes off to college,” I reiterated.
“Have you been watching My Dog Skip again?” he asked.
Bugle was at the pet store that Saturday when we went for our weekly dog window-shopping. She was a Beagle with a white stripe down a straight nose, brown sugar cinnamon eyes, a pink underbelly and long tail. She yelped and howled to see Joey when he approached the cage, and the owner’s daughter who ran the store on Saturdays let her out and placed her in Joey’s waiting arms. She wiggled free when he sat cross-legged on the floor with her, bolting in excited spurts up and down the aisles, knocking over the birdseed packets and disrupting the gerbils. As Joey and I and the two employees chased her around the aisles, I could only make out the raised tail waving at us from each round of the corner. Her fur coat was smooth and slipped through our fingers when we tried to grab her, and at each attempt, she pulled free and left us splayed on the linoleum.
“I want her! I want her! I’ve got to have her!” Joey cried. This was the dog, the one that spoke to his child’s heart, and he heard the magic call of a puppy for sale crying out amongst the pack – “Pick me! Pick me!” Somewhere in that wild chase around the pet store with the parakeets squealing and the floor displays being upturned, Bugle found her owner and Joey found his other self.
“We’re buying the Beagle,” I told Michael.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, sensing disaster.
And so Bugle came to live with us in late November tied with a ribbon. She had been marked down fifty percent since the runaway incident and she came with a free bag of dog food. But Joey was delirious at dog ownership and they nuzzled faces, and chased balls, and he tickled her belly until she fell asleep in the folds of his arms.
Joey’s school challenges continued. First grade ended with a limp to the finish line where even with the most considerate of teachers, he struggled with his reading, spent considerable time in the office of the school counselor where he played floor hockey in an effort to expel his excess energy; made friends with the school janitor Stan whom he trailed after looking for hidden places to explore; and entertained his classmates with tales of being in the circus and performing headstands in the hallways to prove it.
Meanwhile the puppy Bugle presented her own challenges. She was resistant to house training, preferring to pee wherever she might be conveniently standing or sitting even if that included the newly reupholstered sofa. She chewed constantly, gnawing on the cabinets and the baseboards and door molding until she lay surrounded in a puddle of wood shavings. She chewed a hole in the staircase carpeting, picking the Berber threads out of the matting one by one while I was in the next room on the telephone conveying my frustration to a dog trainer. She ate the heads off all the plastic dinosaurs and action figures until the playroom resembled the surgery ward of a diabolical madman. She raced around the back yard howling and yelping at every passing neighbor, deliveryman, squirrel and falling leaf. She was the consternation of Bugsy who treated her with the disdain of a miserly aunt to a passel of unrelated children. Bugle was oblivious to leashes, dog-training methodology, simple commands, and even stern looks. She was a wiggly, four-legged, fur-coated body of contained energy that desired nothing more than the pell mell race across the neighborhood to the squealing delight of all the children. I was beside myself. I had a hyperactive child who now owned a hyperactive dog.
When I contemplated out loud that Bugle might enjoy living at my sister’s farm, Joey wailed in grief that “Ohana Means Family. And that means nobody gets left behind.” Joey and Bugle had been watching Lilo and Stitch on the Disney channel. Thus, Bugle stayed and Joey went off to art camp for the summer where I hoped the daily activities with his hands would channel his energy in a positive direction.
The art camp was run by DeKalb County in its facility next to the community library. On the first day Joey wandered away from his counselors during the lunch period to explore the library painting project conducted by some county maintenance workers who were painting the library’s outside trim an industrial white. The maintenance workers were gone for the lunch hour, but had stationed their supplies behind a sawhorse and an orange cone. Somehow in Joey’s exploration he managed to step into a bucket of industrial grade white exterior paint, coating his left leg and both hands in a thick film. At the day’s end, the counselors were apologetic, admitting that his sandal was indeed “ruined” and that use of the art room paint thinner had not done much to remove the dried white paint from his hands and legs. They also encouraged me to look into some of the programs the City of Chamblee was offering next year.
The next morning when I was dropping Joey off at camp, we were running a bit late because I had an appointment to take Bugle to the vet. Bugle was in the car uncrated due to the lack of time, Ben was buckled into his car seat, and Joey was unbuckling and preparing to get out of the car with his lunch sack. As I opened the door to the minivan in the library’s parking lot, a flash of white fur went past me, and I realized too late that Bugle was out of the car. A steady rain had been coming down all morning, and as it was nearing ten o’clock, the traffic on Chamblee Dunwoody Road remained heavy. Bugle ran across the parking lot, onto the sidewalk and darted into the lanes of traffic.
Fearing the worst, I ran screaming into the northbound lane, waving at the cars to stop or slow down and to try to attract attention to the runaway dog. Joey and Ben leaped from the car and were running back and forth on the parallel sidewalk calling to Bugle and crying. The rain was starting to come down harder and the headlights of the cars skimmed around me as I ran in the same direction, sometimes in the street, and sometimes on the sidewalk, calling to Bugle, and yelling back to my children. Cars slowed and halted as Bugle ran in and out of traffic with me racing behind her, hands in the air, waving like a mad woman.
Bugle narrowly missed several screeching wheels and in fright she returned to the northbound lane that I had effectively stopped with my body and waving arms. Joey and Ben raced up the sidewalk towards the body shop and the dry cleaners on the same side of the road. Bugle crossed in front of me and ran up the hill to the dry cleaner where we then tried to block the driveway from oncoming cars.
A woman in a blue sedan who had been in the traffic congestion on Chamblee Dunwoody Road pulled into the driveway and attempted to help me catch the dog. Bugle ran in gleeful circles around the parked cars, barking and yelping. I yelled to Joey and Ben, who by now had caught up with me, to run back to our car and retrieve some food from Joey’s lunch bag with which we could catch Bugle.
A man returned to his white Ford Explorer after dropping off his cleaning, and I raced to the door and tried to get him to let me entice Bugle onto the seat of his car where once there I hoped we might shut her in. He looked at me strangely and acquiesced. By this time, my hair was wet and my tee shirt and shorts soaked. He searched his backseat for any kind of food item, but came up empty-handed. The woman in the blue sedan was trying to call out “Bugle” sweetly, walking up towards her in a crouched stance and whistling. Meanwhile I watched the returning figures of Joey and Ben running back down the sidewalk with their tiny fists balled around something. When they reached me, they each opened up their hands to reveal two or three mashed Goldfish crackers.
“GO BACK AND GET THE BALONEY!” I screamed at them. They dropped the wet crackers on the asphalt and ran crying back to the car. The woman working the dry cleaners drive- through window hung her head out and yelled something in Vietnamese. The owners came outside and tried to wave at Bugle with dishrags yelling “You Dog. Now Come!” The man in the white Explorer got in his seat behind the wheel and drove away when the rain started to come down harder. The woman in the blue sedan had already slinked back to her car and was easing it out the driveway’s entrance. Bugle and I were staring at each other in a bold face-off while the rain began to come down in sheets. I cursed at her and swore she had had her last day with me. She lifted her nose in the air, sniffing and headed inside the now open doors of the dry cleaners where the owners had spread wide the glass entrance doors and were waving white flags like linemen at NASCAR.
As Joey and Ben now ran back, out of breath, crying, and waving the lunch sack, Bugle ran directly inside the opened doors of the Dry Cleaners. “Got You Now,” the owner called out. As Joey, Ben and I crossed the threshold into the store, he closed the doors behind us. Bugle sat down on the linoleum floor and began to lick herself with deft confidence. Joey fell upon and began kissing and stroking her fur while Ben stared up at me in shock while I stood on the floor of the dry cleaners dripping wet, out of breath, and fuming. The owners of the store began to clap and laugh and shout, “Good Doggie” and Joey and Bugle smiled up at them happily, pleased with themselves.
When I finally got Bugle to the vet that morning, the cheery girl at the front desk ignored my soaked clothes, wet hair and haggard appearance and asked in a bright voice, “What is Bugle here for today?”
“Euthanasia,” I said.
She stared at me as if she had not heard me correctly. I changed the subject. “Okay, her shots then. How long can she stay?”
“We close at six,” she answered. She was beginning to observe my wet clothes and hair, and she leaned over the high counter and looked down at Bugle and Ben who were wet and bedraggled.
I handed her the leash. “She’s yours,” I announced and headed for the door.
Ben and I went to the Waffle House where he had waffles and I ordered a pot of coffee. Ben chatted to himself while I listened with one ear and stared out the window at the passing cars and falling rain. I wondered whether I had it in me to survive the boyhood of Joey and his dog Bugle. All my attempts at good mothering this child were met with obstacles and dead ends. Despite my concerted efforts to attack the problem, I was really no more than a mad woman running down the street waving my arms at the oncoming traffic. I had scorned medication, eliminated processed foods, followed book after book of researched advice in parenting this small boy with his boundless energy and endless imagination, and my one self-administered cure of dog ownership had been thrown back in my face like a cream pie. I warmed myself with coffee and felt the dismal shame of failure.
Ben smothered his waffles. “I think the next time we ride with Bugle she needs to be in a crate,” he said. I nodded in agreement, trying to imagine when I would ever let Bugle in the car again. Maybe it was just that simple. Wild dogs and wild boys need large open spaces and high fences. Lots of room to run and observable boundaries. A place to chase rabbits, both real and imagined, but with fences too high to scale. I just needed some higher fences, and they needed some bigger pastures. Ben and I headed home.
There are no magic dogs except in movies; and there are no easy answers to some boy’s difficult childhood days. I imagined that in joining our family Bugle would teach Joey those life lessons that he had not been able to learn from me. Later I realized that if Bugle had lessons to teach, they were mine to learn. And most of the time that is always the case.
I was not thinking of this phenomenon at the time Joey, who would soon be seven, dragged me into the pet store of a neighborhood strip mall every weekend to see the crated puppies. I had promised him his own dog on his seventh birthday, and he carried that promise into the store every Saturday when he began his search.
So we sat on the floor testing the measured patience of the employees and cuddled Bishons, Boston terriers, dachshunds, cocker spaniels, miniature schnauzers, and toy poodles.
During this time of intense dog petting, I began to wrap my mind around the idea that Joey needed a dog for reasons much deeper than the simple ones of why any child needs a dog. Certainly he needed something real to love and to be loved by, to learn responsibility and care, and to learn the intrinsic art of companionship that included wonderful afternoons of Frisbee throwing in the backyard, and also the lonely stance of a dog owner in the rain holding the leash of a pet needing to relieve itself. Yes, all these lessons would be important to Joey, but Joey was a unique and special child himself, and he was going to have a special dog.
Since entering the academic arena, Joey had made a name for himself testing the patience of all his teachers. “Circle time” was broken up by Joey rolling from one end of the room to another; “music hour” was disrupted by repetitive drum banging and window slamming; “art class” was impeded by Joey ingesting the Plaster of Paris that was to have been the planet Uranus. We conferenced repeatedly with teachers and school administrators who used words like “impulsive” “lack of self control” “inattentive” in droll voices that seemed to read out of medical textbooks. We hired child psychologists who tested Joey in little rooms resembling a school environment and who made notes on clipboard charts while he disassembled stacks of toys and stacked up the chairs until he could get a good view out the window. In one office, he encountered “sand therapy” where he built bridges and tunnels and fought wild dragons, and we were encouraged that this meant he was “looking for a safe way out” and “was fighting his own battles.”
He continued to be an impulsive, delightful child with no affinity for behavior charts or sticker reward programs or token exchanges. Instead he “changed his face” from happy to sad, lost out on recesses, sat alone at the lunchroom table, and endured his losses with the good nature of an oblivious child whose own active mind is all the company he needs. He was according to the schools administrators, pediatricians, child psychologists, and playground mothers “failing.”
“He needs a dog,” I told my husband. My mind was filled with My Dog Skip images of a lonely boy and a magic dog whose knowing companionship guides the boy through a troubled childhood and molds him into man.
“We need another dog like we need a hole in our heads,” Michael responded. “No, a boy needs a dog,” I insisted.
“He has a dog. Bugsy is a dog. A perfectly good dog.”
“He needs his own dog. A dog he can train, that will sleep at the end of his bed, that will grow up with him, and watch him get on the Trailways bus when he goes off to college,” I reiterated.
“Have you been watching My Dog Skip again?” he asked.
Bugle was at the pet store that Saturday when we went for our weekly dog window-shopping. She was a Beagle with a white stripe down a straight nose, brown sugar cinnamon eyes, a pink underbelly and long tail. She yelped and howled to see Joey when he approached the cage, and the owner’s daughter who ran the store on Saturdays let her out and placed her in Joey’s waiting arms. She wiggled free when he sat cross-legged on the floor with her, bolting in excited spurts up and down the aisles, knocking over the birdseed packets and disrupting the gerbils. As Joey and I and the two employees chased her around the aisles, I could only make out the raised tail waving at us from each round of the corner. Her fur coat was smooth and slipped through our fingers when we tried to grab her, and at each attempt, she pulled free and left us splayed on the linoleum.
“I want her! I want her! I’ve got to have her!” Joey cried. This was the dog, the one that spoke to his child’s heart, and he heard the magic call of a puppy for sale crying out amongst the pack – “Pick me! Pick me!” Somewhere in that wild chase around the pet store with the parakeets squealing and the floor displays being upturned, Bugle found her owner and Joey found his other self.
“We’re buying the Beagle,” I told Michael.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, sensing disaster.
And so Bugle came to live with us in late November tied with a ribbon. She had been marked down fifty percent since the runaway incident and she came with a free bag of dog food. But Joey was delirious at dog ownership and they nuzzled faces, and chased balls, and he tickled her belly until she fell asleep in the folds of his arms.
Joey’s school challenges continued. First grade ended with a limp to the finish line where even with the most considerate of teachers, he struggled with his reading, spent considerable time in the office of the school counselor where he played floor hockey in an effort to expel his excess energy; made friends with the school janitor Stan whom he trailed after looking for hidden places to explore; and entertained his classmates with tales of being in the circus and performing headstands in the hallways to prove it.
Meanwhile the puppy Bugle presented her own challenges. She was resistant to house training, preferring to pee wherever she might be conveniently standing or sitting even if that included the newly reupholstered sofa. She chewed constantly, gnawing on the cabinets and the baseboards and door molding until she lay surrounded in a puddle of wood shavings. She chewed a hole in the staircase carpeting, picking the Berber threads out of the matting one by one while I was in the next room on the telephone conveying my frustration to a dog trainer. She ate the heads off all the plastic dinosaurs and action figures until the playroom resembled the surgery ward of a diabolical madman. She raced around the back yard howling and yelping at every passing neighbor, deliveryman, squirrel and falling leaf. She was the consternation of Bugsy who treated her with the disdain of a miserly aunt to a passel of unrelated children. Bugle was oblivious to leashes, dog-training methodology, simple commands, and even stern looks. She was a wiggly, four-legged, fur-coated body of contained energy that desired nothing more than the pell mell race across the neighborhood to the squealing delight of all the children. I was beside myself. I had a hyperactive child who now owned a hyperactive dog.
When I contemplated out loud that Bugle might enjoy living at my sister’s farm, Joey wailed in grief that “Ohana Means Family. And that means nobody gets left behind.” Joey and Bugle had been watching Lilo and Stitch on the Disney channel. Thus, Bugle stayed and Joey went off to art camp for the summer where I hoped the daily activities with his hands would channel his energy in a positive direction.
The art camp was run by DeKalb County in its facility next to the community library. On the first day Joey wandered away from his counselors during the lunch period to explore the library painting project conducted by some county maintenance workers who were painting the library’s outside trim an industrial white. The maintenance workers were gone for the lunch hour, but had stationed their supplies behind a sawhorse and an orange cone. Somehow in Joey’s exploration he managed to step into a bucket of industrial grade white exterior paint, coating his left leg and both hands in a thick film. At the day’s end, the counselors were apologetic, admitting that his sandal was indeed “ruined” and that use of the art room paint thinner had not done much to remove the dried white paint from his hands and legs. They also encouraged me to look into some of the programs the City of Chamblee was offering next year.
The next morning when I was dropping Joey off at camp, we were running a bit late because I had an appointment to take Bugle to the vet. Bugle was in the car uncrated due to the lack of time, Ben was buckled into his car seat, and Joey was unbuckling and preparing to get out of the car with his lunch sack. As I opened the door to the minivan in the library’s parking lot, a flash of white fur went past me, and I realized too late that Bugle was out of the car. A steady rain had been coming down all morning, and as it was nearing ten o’clock, the traffic on Chamblee Dunwoody Road remained heavy. Bugle ran across the parking lot, onto the sidewalk and darted into the lanes of traffic.
Fearing the worst, I ran screaming into the northbound lane, waving at the cars to stop or slow down and to try to attract attention to the runaway dog. Joey and Ben leaped from the car and were running back and forth on the parallel sidewalk calling to Bugle and crying. The rain was starting to come down harder and the headlights of the cars skimmed around me as I ran in the same direction, sometimes in the street, and sometimes on the sidewalk, calling to Bugle, and yelling back to my children. Cars slowed and halted as Bugle ran in and out of traffic with me racing behind her, hands in the air, waving like a mad woman.
Bugle narrowly missed several screeching wheels and in fright she returned to the northbound lane that I had effectively stopped with my body and waving arms. Joey and Ben raced up the sidewalk towards the body shop and the dry cleaners on the same side of the road. Bugle crossed in front of me and ran up the hill to the dry cleaner where we then tried to block the driveway from oncoming cars.
A woman in a blue sedan who had been in the traffic congestion on Chamblee Dunwoody Road pulled into the driveway and attempted to help me catch the dog. Bugle ran in gleeful circles around the parked cars, barking and yelping. I yelled to Joey and Ben, who by now had caught up with me, to run back to our car and retrieve some food from Joey’s lunch bag with which we could catch Bugle.
A man returned to his white Ford Explorer after dropping off his cleaning, and I raced to the door and tried to get him to let me entice Bugle onto the seat of his car where once there I hoped we might shut her in. He looked at me strangely and acquiesced. By this time, my hair was wet and my tee shirt and shorts soaked. He searched his backseat for any kind of food item, but came up empty-handed. The woman in the blue sedan was trying to call out “Bugle” sweetly, walking up towards her in a crouched stance and whistling. Meanwhile I watched the returning figures of Joey and Ben running back down the sidewalk with their tiny fists balled around something. When they reached me, they each opened up their hands to reveal two or three mashed Goldfish crackers.
“GO BACK AND GET THE BALONEY!” I screamed at them. They dropped the wet crackers on the asphalt and ran crying back to the car. The woman working the dry cleaners drive- through window hung her head out and yelled something in Vietnamese. The owners came outside and tried to wave at Bugle with dishrags yelling “You Dog. Now Come!” The man in the white Explorer got in his seat behind the wheel and drove away when the rain started to come down harder. The woman in the blue sedan had already slinked back to her car and was easing it out the driveway’s entrance. Bugle and I were staring at each other in a bold face-off while the rain began to come down in sheets. I cursed at her and swore she had had her last day with me. She lifted her nose in the air, sniffing and headed inside the now open doors of the dry cleaners where the owners had spread wide the glass entrance doors and were waving white flags like linemen at NASCAR.
As Joey and Ben now ran back, out of breath, crying, and waving the lunch sack, Bugle ran directly inside the opened doors of the Dry Cleaners. “Got You Now,” the owner called out. As Joey, Ben and I crossed the threshold into the store, he closed the doors behind us. Bugle sat down on the linoleum floor and began to lick herself with deft confidence. Joey fell upon and began kissing and stroking her fur while Ben stared up at me in shock while I stood on the floor of the dry cleaners dripping wet, out of breath, and fuming. The owners of the store began to clap and laugh and shout, “Good Doggie” and Joey and Bugle smiled up at them happily, pleased with themselves.
When I finally got Bugle to the vet that morning, the cheery girl at the front desk ignored my soaked clothes, wet hair and haggard appearance and asked in a bright voice, “What is Bugle here for today?”
“Euthanasia,” I said.
She stared at me as if she had not heard me correctly. I changed the subject. “Okay, her shots then. How long can she stay?”
“We close at six,” she answered. She was beginning to observe my wet clothes and hair, and she leaned over the high counter and looked down at Bugle and Ben who were wet and bedraggled.
I handed her the leash. “She’s yours,” I announced and headed for the door.
Ben and I went to the Waffle House where he had waffles and I ordered a pot of coffee. Ben chatted to himself while I listened with one ear and stared out the window at the passing cars and falling rain. I wondered whether I had it in me to survive the boyhood of Joey and his dog Bugle. All my attempts at good mothering this child were met with obstacles and dead ends. Despite my concerted efforts to attack the problem, I was really no more than a mad woman running down the street waving my arms at the oncoming traffic. I had scorned medication, eliminated processed foods, followed book after book of researched advice in parenting this small boy with his boundless energy and endless imagination, and my one self-administered cure of dog ownership had been thrown back in my face like a cream pie. I warmed myself with coffee and felt the dismal shame of failure.
Ben smothered his waffles. “I think the next time we ride with Bugle she needs to be in a crate,” he said. I nodded in agreement, trying to imagine when I would ever let Bugle in the car again. Maybe it was just that simple. Wild dogs and wild boys need large open spaces and high fences. Lots of room to run and observable boundaries. A place to chase rabbits, both real and imagined, but with fences too high to scale. I just needed some higher fences, and they needed some bigger pastures. Ben and I headed home.
There are no magic dogs except in movies; and there are no easy answers to some boy’s difficult childhood days. I imagined that in joining our family Bugle would teach Joey those life lessons that he had not been able to learn from me. Later I realized that if Bugle had lessons to teach, they were mine to learn. And most of the time that is always the case.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Happy New Year, Life/Balance and Wacky Division
Happy Two Thousand and Eight blog-readers! I am energized about a new year and the chance to make good on some new year’s resolutions. I never seem to tire of promising myself I’ll lose a few pounds, stick with an exercise program, save some money, and instill some discipline in this household. I’ll let you know when fundamental change occurs.
But first, I must note, that I read my cyber-neighbor’s, Lilly’s in Bloom, blog just seconds ago and was reminded about that difficult time period when maternity leave ends and difficult day-care decisions have to be made. I realize how lucky I am to have made it through those early, difficult years. I’ve gone from full-time work to stay-at-home- mom work and now, I think, I have found a nice, happy spot with a part-time legal writing gig that offers money and flexibility.
Years ago in my other life when I was a trial lawyer in a fancy-pants firm, my friend and fellow associate, an woman who had had her children and gone back to law school later in life, advised me that I needed to have children because if I didn’t, then one day I would find myself sitting at the dinner table with a dog dressed in a sweater. No offense to dog owners of course, but she had a point.
I gave full-time work and child rearing a good faith two-year try, but several factors sent that plan up in smoke. First, a string of incompetent nannies proved that Mary Poppins was a Disney creation. Second, day-care proved dependable, but Joey’s immune system couldn’t stand up to the daily assault. He had so many ear infections, pink eyes, strep throats and stomach bugs that one month I worked a total of four days. After two years of exhaustion, stress and a lot of money down the drain, I quit to stay home full-time.
One afternoon after I had been newly employed as my son’s caregiver for about three months (and I believe I was pregnant with his brother Ben), Joey and I were lying on a blanket on a grassy hill at a nearby park. We had eaten a picnic of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and had been unsuccessful in getting a kite to fly. I lay down on the blanket and stared up at the cloudless blue sky. I realized that I been lying there not worrying about the next day, or thinking about some cross-examination, or worrying about some detail at the office or phone call that had to be returned. There were no thoughts imposing themselves between this cloudless blue day, my two-year-old, and me.
Recently, when I was putting Ben to bed, he posed this math problem. He loves math problems and always likes a puzzle.
“How can you split three in half and get the same on both sides?”
“Well, half of three is one point five,” I said.
“No it isn’t,” he said.
“Yes, Ben, one point five is the same thing as one and a half. Half of three is one and a half.”
“I’ve got a better way.”
“Ben,” I insisted, “there isn’t a better way. Half of three is one and a half.”
“No,” he said, “You can give your mommy the other one.”
So Lilly, I hope you find the right life/work balance. There are certainly no easy answers. What I thought I would do with my life didn’t exactly happen as I originally planned. We often feel like we are torn in two and can’t do justice to either area. But there are, I am happy to report, lots of ways to work and be there for your children. It may just require some creative thought. I do know this; the job I loved the most gave me time for picnics and kite flying. Mostly because every single day, when you divide three in two equal parts, I get to keep the other one.
But first, I must note, that I read my cyber-neighbor’s, Lilly’s in Bloom, blog just seconds ago and was reminded about that difficult time period when maternity leave ends and difficult day-care decisions have to be made. I realize how lucky I am to have made it through those early, difficult years. I’ve gone from full-time work to stay-at-home- mom work and now, I think, I have found a nice, happy spot with a part-time legal writing gig that offers money and flexibility.
Years ago in my other life when I was a trial lawyer in a fancy-pants firm, my friend and fellow associate, an woman who had had her children and gone back to law school later in life, advised me that I needed to have children because if I didn’t, then one day I would find myself sitting at the dinner table with a dog dressed in a sweater. No offense to dog owners of course, but she had a point.
I gave full-time work and child rearing a good faith two-year try, but several factors sent that plan up in smoke. First, a string of incompetent nannies proved that Mary Poppins was a Disney creation. Second, day-care proved dependable, but Joey’s immune system couldn’t stand up to the daily assault. He had so many ear infections, pink eyes, strep throats and stomach bugs that one month I worked a total of four days. After two years of exhaustion, stress and a lot of money down the drain, I quit to stay home full-time.
One afternoon after I had been newly employed as my son’s caregiver for about three months (and I believe I was pregnant with his brother Ben), Joey and I were lying on a blanket on a grassy hill at a nearby park. We had eaten a picnic of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and had been unsuccessful in getting a kite to fly. I lay down on the blanket and stared up at the cloudless blue sky. I realized that I been lying there not worrying about the next day, or thinking about some cross-examination, or worrying about some detail at the office or phone call that had to be returned. There were no thoughts imposing themselves between this cloudless blue day, my two-year-old, and me.
Recently, when I was putting Ben to bed, he posed this math problem. He loves math problems and always likes a puzzle.
“How can you split three in half and get the same on both sides?”
“Well, half of three is one point five,” I said.
“No it isn’t,” he said.
“Yes, Ben, one point five is the same thing as one and a half. Half of three is one and a half.”
“I’ve got a better way.”
“Ben,” I insisted, “there isn’t a better way. Half of three is one and a half.”
“No,” he said, “You can give your mommy the other one.”
So Lilly, I hope you find the right life/work balance. There are certainly no easy answers. What I thought I would do with my life didn’t exactly happen as I originally planned. We often feel like we are torn in two and can’t do justice to either area. But there are, I am happy to report, lots of ways to work and be there for your children. It may just require some creative thought. I do know this; the job I loved the most gave me time for picnics and kite flying. Mostly because every single day, when you divide three in two equal parts, I get to keep the other one.
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