The other day I was visiting a young mom who has three kids under the age of six. Her youngest, an adorable bulldozer of a child, did a face-plant on the back patio and came up howling, blood spurting from his punctured lip. The mom scooped him up, checked him out for damage, didn't find anything too serious, gave him a hug and a quick cuddle, and sent him on his way. The kid's sobs by now had died down--other than the shock of the fall, and a wee split in his lip, there was no real damage, so he toddled back into the yard, intent on finding whatever it is that two-year-olds hunt so assiduously. Meanwhile, the mom calmly went to the kitchen sink, piled high with the dishes of two meals she hadn't had time to deal with yet, and scrubbed the blood off her arms with the dishrag.
I told her I loved her parenting style. And I meant it--she was so calm, so unflappable. Now mind you, some of that calmness was, no doubt, due to exhaustion. But, in an age of helicoptering parents who freak out at the slightest adventure their children might try to embark on, I was cheered at this display of down-to-earthedness. May there be much more of it.
It also made me think back to our adventures with three kids. Tercero's arrival meant that I had three kids under the age of five--Primero was four, Segundo two, and baby Tercero made three. What's more, they were all at home--all day, every day. There were no pre-schools in Herbert. I was hanging on until the next year when Primero would go to kindergarten--all day every second day. Salvation!
In the meantime, I would have to tough out a year with the three of them. Looking back, I miss that year with a longing that is so fierce it makes me dizzy at times. For when they are at home, and while they might drive you nuts with the incessant activity, they are, for the time being, safe in your care. And you get to watch them do their stuff, which, from my vantage point of a clean and tidy house and a couple of decades perspective, was often highly entertaining.
Tercero had two brothers to out-do, so as a baby and a toddler, he had to pull out all the stops to get noticed. He did a good job, developing some interesting and eccentric behaviours that are still topics for family conversations.
For instance, he was a sleeper--he would sleep eighteen hours a day--a long nap in the morning, another in the afternoon, and bedtime at 7:30, where the cycle would start all over again. He also refused to talk for months--he would point and gesture, and make noises. His brothers knew exactly what he wanted, and usually complied. When they didn't, he'd shriek. That got them moving fast. Actually, his shriek became his mode of defense when he got old enough to become a target for their various power-plays. Tercero would shriek so loud that Primero and Segundo would clap their hands over their ears, allowing him to escape whatever situation wasn't to his liking.
I remember becoming alarmed at his hibernating tendencies and his speechlessness, and took him to Doctor Heather, worried that something was dreadfully wrong. She assured me that I was lucky my third kid was so accommodating of my busy days, and to relax and enjoy it before he woke up and all hell would break loose.
That Doctor Heather--she knew her stuff.
Tercero decided to start talking at about two years, and then it was complete sentences that came out of his mouth--he never bothered with the single word phase. My friend Stacy (she's been my friend since high school) said he was just booting up for those first couple of years. And the morning nap disappeared, although the afternoon one hung around until kindergarten. And to this day, Tercero is the one who can sleep through anything.
He also developed some interesting qualities. His crawling, for instance. He insisted on crawling upside down--his head on the floor, arms and legs scuttling like a crab. He wore all the hair off the top of his head before he decided to walk. Jack and I often speculated that this encouraged blood-flow to his brain, because it quickly became apparent that we were dealing with a kid who was likely smarter than we were.
Tercero rounded out the combination of talents and faculties of the three sibs quite nicely, although there were times when Primero wanted to kill him. Tercero had quickly figured out what buttons to push and how to do so with the greatest effect almost as soon as he could talk. Segundo, never one to respond to button-pushing, would sit back and enjoy the show.
What the addition of a third kid showed us was how different they all were from one another. When there were two, we just assumed that they would be opposites in everything, which they were, to a large extent. But add a third, and the binary model breaks down. Three is a whole different matter--it is a wildly uneven number, impossible to evenly balance.
And there's the being outnumbered by the kids thing. Because while there's two of them, there's also two of you, and a modicum of control can be exercised. But a third addition throws a monkey wrench into the machinery. Some pretty wild lurching and sputtering and veering can result. Like any fun-ride at the fair, it's hell while you're on it, but once you're safely on the ground and enough time has gone by to settle your stomach, you think you actually had fun.
While I would never describe life with two small boys as dull, the addition of a third kicked us up several notches in the activity zone. After all, circuses are three-ring, not two.
Life became, if not exciting, then at least highly distracting. Jack and I were never bored. We might have wished for some opportunity for boredom, but it was not to be. Come to think of it, boredom still has not arrived, even after all these many years. Perhaps we've lost the ability to be bored. Perhaps it was burned out of us by running after all those kids for so long. It's an interesting thought.
Three kids meant the car's back seat was full of child-vehicular safey containers of various sorts. Back then, the two-kid stroller was unknown, unless you hitched together two umbrella strollers, like Natalie had done for her twins. Trips to the store took forever--the two ambulatory kids had to check out every squashed frog, bird, bug and snake on the roads, poking at them with sticks and the toes of their sneakers. The containerized kid would want to get out and stagger to where his brothers were autopsy-ing the road kill. And while I gritted my teeth at the time it took to do anything while walking the three of them anywhere, I realize now that it helped to slow me down. Literally, I smelled the coffee, because we usually went past Dee's house and she always had coffee on.
When I think back on living with three small children under school age, I realize how precious that short time was, and how lucky I was that I got to savour it. Even though I realized that being a full-time mom at home was stultifying my brain, I was able to experience it to find out for myself. And in the experiencing of it, I now realize that if feminism has done anything useful, it should at least present women with the choice of staying home or going to work, because both opportunities ought to be available to those who desire them.
I was lucky--I got to be a stay-at-home mom for a good while. Then I got to do other things, but I would not have missed those years at home with the three musketeers for anything. After all, it removed my boredom bone forever, it seems.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Strange Days
I've been in a strange mood lately. I've been reading Carolyn Heilbrun's The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty. In this lovely memoir, she reflects back on her sixties, seeing them as full of rich and insightful experiences. This is all the more remarkable on her part, as she had decided when much younger to end her life at seventy, thinking that her life would be intolerable by then.
As I zero in on my sixties, I find this memoir immensely cheering. Although it did get me to thinking about decades--I seem to remember Gail Sheehy's book Passages looking at the decades of our lives and linking them to certain life-lessons that we're supposed to internalize or learn from or pass through or some such thing.
Which also got me to thinking (I seem to be doing a lot of that these days) about my life decades past and this blogging project that I've taken on. When Heilbrun wrote her memoir from the vantage of her seventies, she was looking back only ten years or so. My writing adventure starts in my twenties and continues through my thirties and forties and meanders into the present fifties decade. My memory lane is longer than Heilbrun's, although she is such a compelling writer that she makes walking the dog an epic adventure.
And so I've been thinking about decades--in our individual lives and in our history and culture. Why do we ascribe such talismanic properties to chunks of ten years? We talk in terms of decades--the Roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, the Warring Forties, the Complacent Fifties, the Sixties (no adjective required for that one!), the Me-Seventies, the Eighties, Nineties. No one has come up with a satisfying term for the decade just past, however. The Double-Oughts, Noughts, Oh-Oh's--these all sound cheesy and contrived--perhaps that's simply because we live in a contrived culture.
But back to decades--do we label these spans to impose order on a chaotic world? Does it satisfy some organizational compulsion on our parts? Or is it because we happen to have ten fingers? I don't really know, but I've been musing on stupid stuff like this for the last several weeks, to the point where I'm not writing because my musing is taking up all my time. Strange days for me, these last several weeks.
As you can see from the last post's date, I've had trouble writing the latest installment. I'm thinking (again with the thinking--will this madness never end?) that perhaps, just perhaps, at this mid-point in the fifty-sixth summer I've been careening around the universe on this nice planet, that the weight of years gone by is precariously balanced by the spectre of years to come. Not in chronological or mathematical terms, unless I live to be one hundred and twelve, God forbid. If that happens, I hope my kids will have shoved me off on an ice floe well before then (although it should be a nice ice-floe).
No, it is the emotional weight of past and future that I am considering. Perhaps because it is mid-summer, this has somehow fixed the balance between these temporal partners. I see the past, contemplate the future, and I am frozen in time. I realize that this writing project has necessitated much remembering--and in that practice of conjuring up the past, I am paralyzed by it at times. Its weight, its implacable immutability. And I wonder if this is the beginning of dementia, this living in the long-ago while furiously searching for my keys or trying to remember the name of the movie I saw last week. Perhaps it's because the future is unclear. Being the control freak that I am, I dislike immensely the looming uncertainty. And then I remember--when I was younger, uncertainty was possibility. When did the two change? When did I become such a chicken?
Then I recall the magic of writing--that even a memoir is an invented narrative. It need not be a strict rendition of what has happened. It is, above all, a story. And the nice thing about a story is that you can edit to your heart's content, selecting the choice scenes, the ones in which you emerge as heroic, kind, understanding, noble, etc., leaving tantrums, bitchy remarks, cruel words and deeds on the cutting room floor. You can weigh the past with enough good stuff to shift the balance, and perhaps, just perhaps, the good stuff will spill into the uncertain future.
So I perk up. I'm not just telling the past or predicting the future. I'm being creative--in the now, the tao of now, the wow of now, I'm kow-towing to the now, saying ciao to the now (such are the dangers of an online rhyming dictionary and a strange mood). So much "now" is bound to shift the balance between past and future, freeing me from my paralysis. I can mine the past for its story elements without getting stuck in it (at least for another installment!).
And so I think back to my thirties--the decade that began with three kids--a four-year-old, a two-year-old and an infant. These were my "tired years", as friend Claire called them. The decade continued with another kid (not expected at all!), my return to university, our house growing by about two thousand square feet, our coagulation (icky word but apt) as a family unit, kids starting school, big hair, mullets, shoulder pads, long lapels, skinny pants, ankle boots, and a LOT of bad music. The decade also saw us embrace camping as the holiday of choice for one income and four children.
Perhaps it's because it's mid-summer right now, that delicious time when July isn't quite over, when there's still August and a few extra days to tip the balance of freedom and sun into the black for a few days more. At any rate, my thoughts have been turning to those gone-by summers when we discovered family camping. Jack and I had camped a lot before we had kids. Jack had a two-person (if you happened to be from Lilliput) pup-tent that was state-of-the-art for the nineteen-seventies. It could be set up in minutes, if you happened to hold an advanced engineering degree from MIT. But it was woefully inadequate to the task of sheltering five (later six) people from the elements.
By the time Tercero came along, we were desperate for an actual holiday that could include the kids. Jack's parents gave us their old canvas tent--the one he camped in as a child. We were on our way. The canvas tent lasted one season--it had a centre pole that I was always banging into, and smelled like canvas that had been folded away for years. If you've ever sniffed that particular aroma, you will understand why we ditched the tent. But that old tent helped us rediscover the joys of camping, which the boys took to like ducks to water. We were lucky enough to live within driving distance of stunning lakes and superb campsites, and family camping was born.
We started when Tercero was a baby. He slept in a car bed at the foot of the tent. He was our baby camper, as was Cuarto when he came along. Primero and Segundo were a bit older, but immediately got into the outdoor life. Primero discovered the joys of playing in the fire-pit, experimenting with various combustibles. This turned into a life-long preoccupation that amuses him yet. Segundo started hanging around the fish-cleaning pits, mooching fish-heads so he could gouge out the eyes. He's still poking at eyes as a second-year ophthalmology resident--who knew? Tercero apprenticed at the feet of his siblings. By the time Cuarto came along, we had a gigantic dome tent, a canoe, fifteen thousand fishing rods and lures (or so it seemed), and enough sleeping bags to accommodate the entire standing Chinese Army.
The boys learned how to build fires (not that they needed encouragement in that direction--more about this later). They learned that the J-stroke is not a pornographic act, but an efficient means of propelling a canoe. They learned how to catch a fish, take it off the bazillion-barbed lure, clean it and cook it over a fire. They learned that coming down a tree is much harder than going up, and can lead to nasty contusions in places where contusions are nasty. They learned to pull leeches off with salt or lit cigarettes (it was the eighties--we all smoked back then, yes, even in front of the kids) and that leeches cooked in a coffee can over the fire are inedible.
They learned many things, most of all the sweetness of nature, to be gratified by its embrace, to walk through woods and glide over water, to breathe clean air and sleep under starts, to be comfortable where there are no people, no cars, no houses, no roads, no electricity, no modern conveniences. In an increasingly urban and electronic world, these are precious experiences and quickly-disappearing skills.
Every summer we'd cram ourselves into the car. The canoe, overturned on the roof, functioned nicely as a car-top carrier into which we stuffed sleeping bags, pillows, life-jackets, tents, backpacks, etc. We had our favourite sites--Nemekus in Prince Albert National Park was one--no motorboats were allowed on this round little lake. Because of this, mostly families camped there--the partiers stayed in Waskesiu. The best sites were right on the beach. We would send in a kid to claim the picnic table until we unloaded the car. Once the tent was set up and arguments over who was sleeping where settled with sweet reasonableness ("you sleep here, you sleep here, you sleep here and you sleep here--now cut it out!"), we'd build a fire, fill the sooty coffee pot with water, and hoick it onto the fire-pit's bent and rusty grill. For those who have never experienced cowboy coffee brewed over an open flame, you are to be pitied. It is one of the finer things in life, and you should put it on your bucket list.
Then wiener sticks had to be cut--this is where the coveted Swiss Army knife came into play. As the boys grew, getting their first Swiss Army knife became a rite of passage (as did the inevitable cuts and gouges in flesh and furniture). They used them to carve fish clubs out of driftwood and whittle hot-dog sticks that quickly morphed into lethal weapons. They were no longer just little kids. They had become tool-makers, heirs to the paleolithic heritage of homo habilis. It was all so primal--fire, food, fish bonking, hot-dog roasting, brother-bashing--it didn't get much better than that.
Last week, Jack and I camped for the first time in ages. We were returning from visiting Walt and Nancy in Radium Hot Springs, and were taking our time driving home through the Kootenays and along the southern Crow's Nest highway along the U.S. border. We broke the journey with a night's stay in a pretty little provincial park just north of Oliver. Because we'd planned to only stay the night, we hadn't packed any pots or dishes or food. So we had no fire, no cowboy coffee and also no kids. It seemed very strange to pull into the campsite and not have a horde of boys boil out of the car to pee in the bushes. No boys heading to the river or lake to push each other in. No boys to lug firewood from the big pile down the road. No boys cutting hot-dog sticks or looking for drift wood to make fish-clubs out of. No arguing, hollering, running, shrieking (although I did my best!). No one falling down, skinning knees, cutting themselves on their Swiss Army blades ("hold it with the blade UP before you open it!"). No boys gazing raptly the cliff looming over the campsite ("Can we climb that? Why not? Aw c'mon. Please? Can we, huh? Please? Aw, NUTS! Can we climb it tomorrow? Whay not? Aw c'mon. Please? Can we, huh? Huh? Awww NUTS!").
It felt strange, camping with just the two of us. Don't get me wrong--it was okay. But it was strange, nonetheless. In the morning, it took us no time at all to pack up. We headed into Oliver for breakfast. Very civilized. Someone else made us coffee, and it was pretty good. But it wasn't cowboy coffee.
My mind was stuck on those camping trips of yore, how dirty, noisy, messy, chaotic and fun they were. It always seemed to take forever to pack everything, especially with Jack unpacking and re-packing everything that I put in the car. This propensity for re-organization (an anal-retentive quality that Jack shares with his brother Walt, if the weekend in Radium was any indication, and Nancy has shared certain information that supports this). Then it took forever to set up the camp and get it organized (tarping is where Jack's anal-retentive qualities actually come in handy--he can string tarps to keep us dry in the hardest rainstorm). Then we'd have to strike camp, pack everything away and shove it all back into the car. Then we'd get home, have to unpack everything, dry it off and put it away. There were times when the amount of work involved almost overbalanced the fun.
Almost but not quite, because the fun part always won out. It was never so much work that we didn't do it. Because that first cup of cowboy coffee, the first fish-club to exclaim over, the first bite of fresh-caught northern pike, the first hiss of the paddle in calm water, the first night of hearing four sets of soft breathing from the tent as Jack and I sat outside waiting for the Big Dipper to appear as the cool night seeped into deep blue to the north made it worthwhile.
Camping this time, just the two of us, in the hot evening air of the southern Okanagan, felt strange. It was okay, but it felt strange. Much like my mood lately.
As I zero in on my sixties, I find this memoir immensely cheering. Although it did get me to thinking about decades--I seem to remember Gail Sheehy's book Passages looking at the decades of our lives and linking them to certain life-lessons that we're supposed to internalize or learn from or pass through or some such thing.
Which also got me to thinking (I seem to be doing a lot of that these days) about my life decades past and this blogging project that I've taken on. When Heilbrun wrote her memoir from the vantage of her seventies, she was looking back only ten years or so. My writing adventure starts in my twenties and continues through my thirties and forties and meanders into the present fifties decade. My memory lane is longer than Heilbrun's, although she is such a compelling writer that she makes walking the dog an epic adventure.
And so I've been thinking about decades--in our individual lives and in our history and culture. Why do we ascribe such talismanic properties to chunks of ten years? We talk in terms of decades--the Roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, the Warring Forties, the Complacent Fifties, the Sixties (no adjective required for that one!), the Me-Seventies, the Eighties, Nineties. No one has come up with a satisfying term for the decade just past, however. The Double-Oughts, Noughts, Oh-Oh's--these all sound cheesy and contrived--perhaps that's simply because we live in a contrived culture.
But back to decades--do we label these spans to impose order on a chaotic world? Does it satisfy some organizational compulsion on our parts? Or is it because we happen to have ten fingers? I don't really know, but I've been musing on stupid stuff like this for the last several weeks, to the point where I'm not writing because my musing is taking up all my time. Strange days for me, these last several weeks.
As you can see from the last post's date, I've had trouble writing the latest installment. I'm thinking (again with the thinking--will this madness never end?) that perhaps, just perhaps, at this mid-point in the fifty-sixth summer I've been careening around the universe on this nice planet, that the weight of years gone by is precariously balanced by the spectre of years to come. Not in chronological or mathematical terms, unless I live to be one hundred and twelve, God forbid. If that happens, I hope my kids will have shoved me off on an ice floe well before then (although it should be a nice ice-floe).
No, it is the emotional weight of past and future that I am considering. Perhaps because it is mid-summer, this has somehow fixed the balance between these temporal partners. I see the past, contemplate the future, and I am frozen in time. I realize that this writing project has necessitated much remembering--and in that practice of conjuring up the past, I am paralyzed by it at times. Its weight, its implacable immutability. And I wonder if this is the beginning of dementia, this living in the long-ago while furiously searching for my keys or trying to remember the name of the movie I saw last week. Perhaps it's because the future is unclear. Being the control freak that I am, I dislike immensely the looming uncertainty. And then I remember--when I was younger, uncertainty was possibility. When did the two change? When did I become such a chicken?
Then I recall the magic of writing--that even a memoir is an invented narrative. It need not be a strict rendition of what has happened. It is, above all, a story. And the nice thing about a story is that you can edit to your heart's content, selecting the choice scenes, the ones in which you emerge as heroic, kind, understanding, noble, etc., leaving tantrums, bitchy remarks, cruel words and deeds on the cutting room floor. You can weigh the past with enough good stuff to shift the balance, and perhaps, just perhaps, the good stuff will spill into the uncertain future.
So I perk up. I'm not just telling the past or predicting the future. I'm being creative--in the now, the tao of now, the wow of now, I'm kow-towing to the now, saying ciao to the now (such are the dangers of an online rhyming dictionary and a strange mood). So much "now" is bound to shift the balance between past and future, freeing me from my paralysis. I can mine the past for its story elements without getting stuck in it (at least for another installment!).
And so I think back to my thirties--the decade that began with three kids--a four-year-old, a two-year-old and an infant. These were my "tired years", as friend Claire called them. The decade continued with another kid (not expected at all!), my return to university, our house growing by about two thousand square feet, our coagulation (icky word but apt) as a family unit, kids starting school, big hair, mullets, shoulder pads, long lapels, skinny pants, ankle boots, and a LOT of bad music. The decade also saw us embrace camping as the holiday of choice for one income and four children.
Perhaps it's because it's mid-summer right now, that delicious time when July isn't quite over, when there's still August and a few extra days to tip the balance of freedom and sun into the black for a few days more. At any rate, my thoughts have been turning to those gone-by summers when we discovered family camping. Jack and I had camped a lot before we had kids. Jack had a two-person (if you happened to be from Lilliput) pup-tent that was state-of-the-art for the nineteen-seventies. It could be set up in minutes, if you happened to hold an advanced engineering degree from MIT. But it was woefully inadequate to the task of sheltering five (later six) people from the elements.
By the time Tercero came along, we were desperate for an actual holiday that could include the kids. Jack's parents gave us their old canvas tent--the one he camped in as a child. We were on our way. The canvas tent lasted one season--it had a centre pole that I was always banging into, and smelled like canvas that had been folded away for years. If you've ever sniffed that particular aroma, you will understand why we ditched the tent. But that old tent helped us rediscover the joys of camping, which the boys took to like ducks to water. We were lucky enough to live within driving distance of stunning lakes and superb campsites, and family camping was born.
We started when Tercero was a baby. He slept in a car bed at the foot of the tent. He was our baby camper, as was Cuarto when he came along. Primero and Segundo were a bit older, but immediately got into the outdoor life. Primero discovered the joys of playing in the fire-pit, experimenting with various combustibles. This turned into a life-long preoccupation that amuses him yet. Segundo started hanging around the fish-cleaning pits, mooching fish-heads so he could gouge out the eyes. He's still poking at eyes as a second-year ophthalmology resident--who knew? Tercero apprenticed at the feet of his siblings. By the time Cuarto came along, we had a gigantic dome tent, a canoe, fifteen thousand fishing rods and lures (or so it seemed), and enough sleeping bags to accommodate the entire standing Chinese Army.
The boys learned how to build fires (not that they needed encouragement in that direction--more about this later). They learned that the J-stroke is not a pornographic act, but an efficient means of propelling a canoe. They learned how to catch a fish, take it off the bazillion-barbed lure, clean it and cook it over a fire. They learned that coming down a tree is much harder than going up, and can lead to nasty contusions in places where contusions are nasty. They learned to pull leeches off with salt or lit cigarettes (it was the eighties--we all smoked back then, yes, even in front of the kids) and that leeches cooked in a coffee can over the fire are inedible.
They learned many things, most of all the sweetness of nature, to be gratified by its embrace, to walk through woods and glide over water, to breathe clean air and sleep under starts, to be comfortable where there are no people, no cars, no houses, no roads, no electricity, no modern conveniences. In an increasingly urban and electronic world, these are precious experiences and quickly-disappearing skills.
Every summer we'd cram ourselves into the car. The canoe, overturned on the roof, functioned nicely as a car-top carrier into which we stuffed sleeping bags, pillows, life-jackets, tents, backpacks, etc. We had our favourite sites--Nemekus in Prince Albert National Park was one--no motorboats were allowed on this round little lake. Because of this, mostly families camped there--the partiers stayed in Waskesiu. The best sites were right on the beach. We would send in a kid to claim the picnic table until we unloaded the car. Once the tent was set up and arguments over who was sleeping where settled with sweet reasonableness ("you sleep here, you sleep here, you sleep here and you sleep here--now cut it out!"), we'd build a fire, fill the sooty coffee pot with water, and hoick it onto the fire-pit's bent and rusty grill. For those who have never experienced cowboy coffee brewed over an open flame, you are to be pitied. It is one of the finer things in life, and you should put it on your bucket list.
Then wiener sticks had to be cut--this is where the coveted Swiss Army knife came into play. As the boys grew, getting their first Swiss Army knife became a rite of passage (as did the inevitable cuts and gouges in flesh and furniture). They used them to carve fish clubs out of driftwood and whittle hot-dog sticks that quickly morphed into lethal weapons. They were no longer just little kids. They had become tool-makers, heirs to the paleolithic heritage of homo habilis. It was all so primal--fire, food, fish bonking, hot-dog roasting, brother-bashing--it didn't get much better than that.
Last week, Jack and I camped for the first time in ages. We were returning from visiting Walt and Nancy in Radium Hot Springs, and were taking our time driving home through the Kootenays and along the southern Crow's Nest highway along the U.S. border. We broke the journey with a night's stay in a pretty little provincial park just north of Oliver. Because we'd planned to only stay the night, we hadn't packed any pots or dishes or food. So we had no fire, no cowboy coffee and also no kids. It seemed very strange to pull into the campsite and not have a horde of boys boil out of the car to pee in the bushes. No boys heading to the river or lake to push each other in. No boys to lug firewood from the big pile down the road. No boys cutting hot-dog sticks or looking for drift wood to make fish-clubs out of. No arguing, hollering, running, shrieking (although I did my best!). No one falling down, skinning knees, cutting themselves on their Swiss Army blades ("hold it with the blade UP before you open it!"). No boys gazing raptly the cliff looming over the campsite ("Can we climb that? Why not? Aw c'mon. Please? Can we, huh? Please? Aw, NUTS! Can we climb it tomorrow? Whay not? Aw c'mon. Please? Can we, huh? Huh? Awww NUTS!").
It felt strange, camping with just the two of us. Don't get me wrong--it was okay. But it was strange, nonetheless. In the morning, it took us no time at all to pack up. We headed into Oliver for breakfast. Very civilized. Someone else made us coffee, and it was pretty good. But it wasn't cowboy coffee.
My mind was stuck on those camping trips of yore, how dirty, noisy, messy, chaotic and fun they were. It always seemed to take forever to pack everything, especially with Jack unpacking and re-packing everything that I put in the car. This propensity for re-organization (an anal-retentive quality that Jack shares with his brother Walt, if the weekend in Radium was any indication, and Nancy has shared certain information that supports this). Then it took forever to set up the camp and get it organized (tarping is where Jack's anal-retentive qualities actually come in handy--he can string tarps to keep us dry in the hardest rainstorm). Then we'd have to strike camp, pack everything away and shove it all back into the car. Then we'd get home, have to unpack everything, dry it off and put it away. There were times when the amount of work involved almost overbalanced the fun.
Almost but not quite, because the fun part always won out. It was never so much work that we didn't do it. Because that first cup of cowboy coffee, the first fish-club to exclaim over, the first bite of fresh-caught northern pike, the first hiss of the paddle in calm water, the first night of hearing four sets of soft breathing from the tent as Jack and I sat outside waiting for the Big Dipper to appear as the cool night seeped into deep blue to the north made it worthwhile.
Camping this time, just the two of us, in the hot evening air of the southern Okanagan, felt strange. It was okay, but it felt strange. Much like my mood lately.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Father's Day
Last Sunday was Father's Day. Apparently FD was invented a couple of years after Mother's Day, an interesting bit of affirmative gender action at work. In the newspaper, an article stated that today's dads are far more likely to be closely involved in raising their children--they change diapers, push strollers, chauffeur kids around, sing lullabies, and want more time off from work to spend with the family.
This is a great thing, and I like to think that our generation of dads had something to do with moving this whole daddy enterprise forward. Having had the benefit of living with an involved dad, I know that this is no small feat. If you will recall, when we left off, I was returning from the hospital with a third kid, so life with three little boys under the age of four was no picnic, believe me. In fact, it would have been unbearable without the complete involvement of Jack--while he may have had some eccentric notions about things like bacon, he was the most committed of pops. I cannot imagine raising any number of kids on my own--I am gobsmacked by the everyday heroism of single parents everywhere, and worry about the lack of support that they must struggle with on so many fronts.
So I count myself one of the lucky ones--who knows what trouble I would have gotten myself into without Jack's help? As it was, I was usually two hairs away from a complete melt-down. It takes a lot of energy to get through the day with your sanity (not to mention the kids) intact. As the once-domestic-goddess Roseanne declared, "When my husband comes home from work at the end of the day and the kids are still alive, I figure I've done my job!"
The scenario at Chez-us was fairly unchanging--once dinner had been consumed (getting those boys to eat was never a problem--they were remarkably tidy--food spilled meant food not eaten), the dishes done and Tercero plopped into his crib for the night, I would head for the door, announcing that I was going for coffee (to Dee's, or Natalie's, or Allie's, or Claire's, or Barb's) and not to wait up. I needed time away from the house and all that kid energy. Vampires have nothing on children when it comes to sucking up life forces--vampires are only hoovering up blood, after all.
Once I left, Jack would bathe Primero and Segundo, inserting his six-foot-three inch frame into the tub along with the boys and all the toys. He usually fell asleep within minutes until the boys, tired of playing, would wake him up ("Water's cold, dad!"). There is a story about a toy boat, its little plastic chain attached to a large ring, which the boys attempted to latch onto the only thing resembling a pole in the tub, which also happened to be attached to Jack, who woke up to little fingers determinedly attempting to cram the ring onto the moorage post. The story, while true, has assumed apocryphal status in the family--'nuff said.
After the bath, Jack would pop the boys into bed (they shared a room), settle down with them and read a story until he fell asleep, usually within the first three pages. I, returning from getting buzzed on coffee (Natalie's espresso was particularly deadly) would find him unconscious, book open on his chest, while Primero and Segundo, having fallen asleep out of boredom, were draped over him in interesting configurations. This is the picture of an involved dad.
I would wake him up and he'd stagger off to bed. I would stay up reading, jazzed on coffee, fiercely protective of my alone time. Then, morning and its barely-controlled chaos beckoning, I would reluctantly leave the blessed silence of the living room and go to bed myself.
But back to the business of dads--when I think back (as I have been doing a lot of lately--must be age) to all the dads whose kids comprised The Little Moron Club, I see men changing diapers; coaxing goo into baby's mouths; lugging infants and toddlers in arms, on shoulders, in various devices and vehicles; reading bedtime stories, putting band-aids on skinned knees, patiently explaining that cats don't always land on their feet and therefore should not be dropped from heights, and many other tender actions. My mind's eye is filled with pictures of the dads--Rollie, Jack, Duane, Joe and the rest--showing patience, love and tenderness to the kids. Just as The Little Moron Club had a lot of moms, it also had many dads looking out for the various members. And I like to think that the dads were furthering the evolution of fatherhood by their prosaic yet profound interactions with the children. So when I see those Little Morons who are themselves now dads, I see guys who cried when their daughters were born, who go all mushy at the sight of a newborn, who moon over the smell of clean baby, who--like pack-mules--lug all the paraphernalia the modern child seems to require from house to car to park to car to street to car to store to car to house again, if not with complete good cheer, then at least with a minimum of swearing.
This memory business is, of course, fraught with the danger of glossing over the negative. While this is true for most frolics down memory lane, as we tend to remember only the good (who wants to remember the bad?), nevertheless, for the most part, the dads were great. Jack's few lapses from his usual good nature loom so large in the boys' collective consciousness that they have assumed legendary status. Smashing a small chair to show how stupid wrecking toys is (the logic still eludes us), kicking a hole in the wall (which the boys then brought all their friends over to proudly show it off) out of frustration at some other inane act of wanton destruction, losing it over trivial items such as Primero filling the truck's gas tank with gravel (the tamping stick poking out of the tank was a dead giveaway) or Segundo peeling all the bark off a recently-planted willow tree (again, the murder weapon--a butter knife--was left at the scene of the crime) have become the fondly-remembered litany of Dad losing it. Primero especially has a knack for embellishment--every year the stories get more and more lurid. Sometimes strangers new to the stories are alarmed, and eye Jack nervously, ready to call Social Services for his retroactive crimes. However, as we know Primero's proclivities in this area, we remain calm--like fish, the fits grow with the telling.
The dads, as mentioned, were great. They worked, but retained the ability to play--boomers have always been good at playing. But they played with their kids in a way that taught them the value of responsible play, and how essential it is to young and old alike.
Traditions of play took hold--The Great Green Tomato Fight, for instance, instigated by Rollie, went on for some years. As a nod to Dee's dismay at wastage, it quickly morphed into The Great Green ROTTEN Tomato Fight--only those rotting orbs left after the harvest were allowable ammunition. Of course, the decomposing tomatoes added a delicious disgust factor to the enterprise, a wonderful example of necessity becoming the mother of a truly gross (and therefore greatly improved) invention.
Camping was also de rigueur as a pastime. And camping usually meant group camping--it was affordable, and the enticing lakes of northern Saskatchewan were an easy drive away. All manner of kids learned valuable skills on these outings--how to avoid drowning each other, now NOT to open a Swiss Army Knife, how sliding down pine trees in shorts is dangerous, how burning marshmallows flying through the night air are to be dodged at all costs, how fire--while our friend--must be respected, which means not throwing various substances into it to see what will happen.
The dads were also up for rescues of various kinds--driving down to the creek to pick up bikes and kids too tired to pedal home, heading up search parties for yard-runners who'd made a break for the school playground, and of course the always-needed ambulance service to the hospital's emergency room. Sometimes the victims were dads themselves--I recall one particular evening when Duane, side-swiped on his bike by one of The Little Morons who was a bit too exuberant in his recent mastery of "no hands" cycling, came into our kitchen, jacket clutched to a face pumping blood, hollering for Natalie to drive him to the hospital. Because Duane was a farmer who eschewed medical treatment for pretty much everything ("Just slap a band-aid on it--I'll be fine!"), this caught our attention. It must be bad if Duane actually WANTED to go to the hospital. It was--I remember his eyes, enormous with growing shock above the bloody jacket, and his muffled cries of "Natalie! NATALIE!" I believe a broken nose, dislocated jaw, various lacerations and other injuries were involved. Duane, once he was splinted and stitched, dismissed it, maintaining that these things happened--no biggie--he now had a couple of new scars to add to the old ones (see future blog post on "Male Ow-ies and Scar Hierarchies").
The dads, for the most part, did their jobs well. They were good models. And given their increasing eccentricities (see previous blog post "We're All Married to the Same *@#$%&* Guy"), it is inviting to think that perhaps moving male culture forward consumed so much emotional energy that their various dormant weirdnesses finally have a chance to frolic unencumbered. It's an interesting theory that warrants further exploration at some later date. I await input from all interested parties.
In the meantime, let's celebrate dads--after all, a dad is a male who has had the courage to procreate and stick around to help herd the kids to adulthood (and beyond). They're the ultimate cowboys--staying in the saddle until the end, for being a dad (or a mom for that matter) is a never ending story--dads become grand-dads. Hopefully this generation of grampies, grandpas, pader-buzorgs, zeydas, abuelos, nonnos, babus, bobos, papouses (and my personal favourite--"it"--grandpa in ancient Egyptian!) will change a diaper or two--my dad and Jack's dad managed to get through many grandkids without stooping to handling poopy diapers. Sons become dads and dads become grand-dads and, in the deathless words of Father Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes, so it goes.
I, however, like to think that this circle is really a spiral. Circles don't really go anywhere--they wind up where they started. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again even though it doesn't really work, then let us move away from the circle model of parental development into the spiral, for the spiral moves. It may be up (hopefully) or down (yikes!), but it moves. The spiral is also the pattern of the universe. Galaxies are spirals. The DNA's double-helix is a tandem spiral. Some of the oldest carvings on the planet are spirals cut into rock. The earth's coriolis effect which spins off hurricanes and tornados and sends water down drains (counter-clockwise if you're Australian!) partakes of the spiral. So let us embrace all the dads who, in their efforts to tenderly herd the kids into a better world, are spiraling upwards and outwards, moving the children towards new ways of seeing and being.
Thanks, dads. You know who you are.
This is a great thing, and I like to think that our generation of dads had something to do with moving this whole daddy enterprise forward. Having had the benefit of living with an involved dad, I know that this is no small feat. If you will recall, when we left off, I was returning from the hospital with a third kid, so life with three little boys under the age of four was no picnic, believe me. In fact, it would have been unbearable without the complete involvement of Jack--while he may have had some eccentric notions about things like bacon, he was the most committed of pops. I cannot imagine raising any number of kids on my own--I am gobsmacked by the everyday heroism of single parents everywhere, and worry about the lack of support that they must struggle with on so many fronts.
So I count myself one of the lucky ones--who knows what trouble I would have gotten myself into without Jack's help? As it was, I was usually two hairs away from a complete melt-down. It takes a lot of energy to get through the day with your sanity (not to mention the kids) intact. As the once-domestic-goddess Roseanne declared, "When my husband comes home from work at the end of the day and the kids are still alive, I figure I've done my job!"
The scenario at Chez-us was fairly unchanging--once dinner had been consumed (getting those boys to eat was never a problem--they were remarkably tidy--food spilled meant food not eaten), the dishes done and Tercero plopped into his crib for the night, I would head for the door, announcing that I was going for coffee (to Dee's, or Natalie's, or Allie's, or Claire's, or Barb's) and not to wait up. I needed time away from the house and all that kid energy. Vampires have nothing on children when it comes to sucking up life forces--vampires are only hoovering up blood, after all.
Once I left, Jack would bathe Primero and Segundo, inserting his six-foot-three inch frame into the tub along with the boys and all the toys. He usually fell asleep within minutes until the boys, tired of playing, would wake him up ("Water's cold, dad!"). There is a story about a toy boat, its little plastic chain attached to a large ring, which the boys attempted to latch onto the only thing resembling a pole in the tub, which also happened to be attached to Jack, who woke up to little fingers determinedly attempting to cram the ring onto the moorage post. The story, while true, has assumed apocryphal status in the family--'nuff said.
After the bath, Jack would pop the boys into bed (they shared a room), settle down with them and read a story until he fell asleep, usually within the first three pages. I, returning from getting buzzed on coffee (Natalie's espresso was particularly deadly) would find him unconscious, book open on his chest, while Primero and Segundo, having fallen asleep out of boredom, were draped over him in interesting configurations. This is the picture of an involved dad.
I would wake him up and he'd stagger off to bed. I would stay up reading, jazzed on coffee, fiercely protective of my alone time. Then, morning and its barely-controlled chaos beckoning, I would reluctantly leave the blessed silence of the living room and go to bed myself.
But back to the business of dads--when I think back (as I have been doing a lot of lately--must be age) to all the dads whose kids comprised The Little Moron Club, I see men changing diapers; coaxing goo into baby's mouths; lugging infants and toddlers in arms, on shoulders, in various devices and vehicles; reading bedtime stories, putting band-aids on skinned knees, patiently explaining that cats don't always land on their feet and therefore should not be dropped from heights, and many other tender actions. My mind's eye is filled with pictures of the dads--Rollie, Jack, Duane, Joe and the rest--showing patience, love and tenderness to the kids. Just as The Little Moron Club had a lot of moms, it also had many dads looking out for the various members. And I like to think that the dads were furthering the evolution of fatherhood by their prosaic yet profound interactions with the children. So when I see those Little Morons who are themselves now dads, I see guys who cried when their daughters were born, who go all mushy at the sight of a newborn, who moon over the smell of clean baby, who--like pack-mules--lug all the paraphernalia the modern child seems to require from house to car to park to car to street to car to store to car to house again, if not with complete good cheer, then at least with a minimum of swearing.
This memory business is, of course, fraught with the danger of glossing over the negative. While this is true for most frolics down memory lane, as we tend to remember only the good (who wants to remember the bad?), nevertheless, for the most part, the dads were great. Jack's few lapses from his usual good nature loom so large in the boys' collective consciousness that they have assumed legendary status. Smashing a small chair to show how stupid wrecking toys is (the logic still eludes us), kicking a hole in the wall (which the boys then brought all their friends over to proudly show it off) out of frustration at some other inane act of wanton destruction, losing it over trivial items such as Primero filling the truck's gas tank with gravel (the tamping stick poking out of the tank was a dead giveaway) or Segundo peeling all the bark off a recently-planted willow tree (again, the murder weapon--a butter knife--was left at the scene of the crime) have become the fondly-remembered litany of Dad losing it. Primero especially has a knack for embellishment--every year the stories get more and more lurid. Sometimes strangers new to the stories are alarmed, and eye Jack nervously, ready to call Social Services for his retroactive crimes. However, as we know Primero's proclivities in this area, we remain calm--like fish, the fits grow with the telling.
The dads, as mentioned, were great. They worked, but retained the ability to play--boomers have always been good at playing. But they played with their kids in a way that taught them the value of responsible play, and how essential it is to young and old alike.
Traditions of play took hold--The Great Green Tomato Fight, for instance, instigated by Rollie, went on for some years. As a nod to Dee's dismay at wastage, it quickly morphed into The Great Green ROTTEN Tomato Fight--only those rotting orbs left after the harvest were allowable ammunition. Of course, the decomposing tomatoes added a delicious disgust factor to the enterprise, a wonderful example of necessity becoming the mother of a truly gross (and therefore greatly improved) invention.
Camping was also de rigueur as a pastime. And camping usually meant group camping--it was affordable, and the enticing lakes of northern Saskatchewan were an easy drive away. All manner of kids learned valuable skills on these outings--how to avoid drowning each other, now NOT to open a Swiss Army Knife, how sliding down pine trees in shorts is dangerous, how burning marshmallows flying through the night air are to be dodged at all costs, how fire--while our friend--must be respected, which means not throwing various substances into it to see what will happen.
The dads were also up for rescues of various kinds--driving down to the creek to pick up bikes and kids too tired to pedal home, heading up search parties for yard-runners who'd made a break for the school playground, and of course the always-needed ambulance service to the hospital's emergency room. Sometimes the victims were dads themselves--I recall one particular evening when Duane, side-swiped on his bike by one of The Little Morons who was a bit too exuberant in his recent mastery of "no hands" cycling, came into our kitchen, jacket clutched to a face pumping blood, hollering for Natalie to drive him to the hospital. Because Duane was a farmer who eschewed medical treatment for pretty much everything ("Just slap a band-aid on it--I'll be fine!"), this caught our attention. It must be bad if Duane actually WANTED to go to the hospital. It was--I remember his eyes, enormous with growing shock above the bloody jacket, and his muffled cries of "Natalie! NATALIE!" I believe a broken nose, dislocated jaw, various lacerations and other injuries were involved. Duane, once he was splinted and stitched, dismissed it, maintaining that these things happened--no biggie--he now had a couple of new scars to add to the old ones (see future blog post on "Male Ow-ies and Scar Hierarchies").
The dads, for the most part, did their jobs well. They were good models. And given their increasing eccentricities (see previous blog post "We're All Married to the Same *@#$%&* Guy"), it is inviting to think that perhaps moving male culture forward consumed so much emotional energy that their various dormant weirdnesses finally have a chance to frolic unencumbered. It's an interesting theory that warrants further exploration at some later date. I await input from all interested parties.
In the meantime, let's celebrate dads--after all, a dad is a male who has had the courage to procreate and stick around to help herd the kids to adulthood (and beyond). They're the ultimate cowboys--staying in the saddle until the end, for being a dad (or a mom for that matter) is a never ending story--dads become grand-dads. Hopefully this generation of grampies, grandpas, pader-buzorgs, zeydas, abuelos, nonnos, babus, bobos, papouses (and my personal favourite--"it"--grandpa in ancient Egyptian!) will change a diaper or two--my dad and Jack's dad managed to get through many grandkids without stooping to handling poopy diapers. Sons become dads and dads become grand-dads and, in the deathless words of Father Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes, so it goes.
I, however, like to think that this circle is really a spiral. Circles don't really go anywhere--they wind up where they started. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again even though it doesn't really work, then let us move away from the circle model of parental development into the spiral, for the spiral moves. It may be up (hopefully) or down (yikes!), but it moves. The spiral is also the pattern of the universe. Galaxies are spirals. The DNA's double-helix is a tandem spiral. Some of the oldest carvings on the planet are spirals cut into rock. The earth's coriolis effect which spins off hurricanes and tornados and sends water down drains (counter-clockwise if you're Australian!) partakes of the spiral. So let us embrace all the dads who, in their efforts to tenderly herd the kids into a better world, are spiraling upwards and outwards, moving the children towards new ways of seeing and being.
Thanks, dads. You know who you are.
Friday, June 4, 2010
We're All Married To The Same *#$%&!* Guy
Last weekend I was visiting an old friend in Vancouver. As we sat up late into the night, gabbing and drinking tea, we exchanged news about our ever-advancing adventures as halves of long-married couples. Years ago, some members of the old Herbert gang gathered for a wee reunion--this was after most of us had moved away. Someone observed that from among the friends her kids hung out with, most had divorced parents. We looked around the circle--no one was divorced (yet). It made us reflect. It still does for me. Not that I think we had anything necessarily stellar to work with. Perhaps we were just lucky, or maybe we were unadventurous and felt it was just too much work to start over from scratch. Or perhaps we were able to hang onto our senses of humour.
Back to my weekend with Stephanie. We regaled ourselves with husband tales. Steph has been married to Brian for more years than Jack and I have been together. As we roared with laughter at their spousal antics, during one of our more lucid moments between gasping guffaws, we realized that our narratives were ominously similar. Brian and Jack might have been clones of one another, so great were the similarities in the stories.
As we cast our minds to the long-married couples we knew well, many of whom had lived in Herbert at one time or another (Steph and Brian are honorary Herbertians--they've been friends with certain former inmates and extended families thereof for years), we realized that the men shared many characteristics--and those were the ones informing the stories we were sharing--stories of how these guys drove us nuts with their bizarre behaviors and quirks and how, by laughing at these, we could avoid killing them and going to prison for the rest of our lives.
Back when Roseanne was surnamed Barr, was a stand-up comedian, and was funny, she famously quipped, "Well, we're all married to the same *#$%&!* guy!" As Steph and I exchanged stories about husbands, we realized that this, in our observation at least, is a truism. And, just as women of a certain age (menopausal and post-) display certain characteristics, men of the same certain age appear to intensify their previous and quirky ways. In short, while women get better with age, men (long-married ones, at any rate) just get weirder. And more similar. Steph insists that this strange congruity among older married males means they are morphing into the Borg, and our resistance maybe futile (although that won't stop any post-menopausal women we know).
Instead of sobering us with its looming Trekkie homogeneity, we once more burst into laughter at the absurdity of married men as the Borg. After all, who would find their synthetic components when they misplaced them? Who would ask for and then give them directions back to the Delta Quadrant? Who would tidy up the Unicomplex? (All those cubes!). Back to our laughter at this loonie (but perhaps a wee bit real?) proposition--because maybe it is laughter that keeps people married. While I am sure there are many more factors in such a complex issue, for me, it comes back to a sense of humour. The ability to laugh at one's partner (and perhaps, just perhaps at ourselves, although we all know that partners are far more laugh-worthy) includes the capacity to put things into perspective: Don't sweat the little stuff--just see what bits are funny. Don't yell--laugh instead. Don't act like the world is about to fall apart--even if it is, what good can you do by running around flapping your arms in the air like a chicken? (Or like Joe at the sight of blood?)
No, far better to mine the situation for comedic gems. After all, most of us would rather laugh than cry. For laughter is the purview of children--or should be, at any rate. Children laugh at just about anything. Think about what your kids found hilarious when they were younger--all those elephant jokes and "Mother! Mother!" chestnuts. The dumber (and grosser in the case of boys), the funnier. So, as my febrile mind darts about for connections, I think, perhaps we are drawn to laughter as a way to touch base with our inner child (the good one--not that tiresome little new-age brat that whines incessantly about past slights). The good inner child is the one who splashes in puddles, chases beetles, stops to watch the worms wriggle on the rain-soaked sidewalk, runs because it's fun, sees adventure around every corner. THAT is the inner child we all need to become from time to time. And perhaps, just perhaps seeing the whimsy in a situation helps us get there. Which, in turn, refreshes us for the daunting task of living adult lives.
Woody Allen once said, "When you do comedy, you are not sitting at the grownups' table." While Woody's inner child (and outer adult) has taken him down some questionable roads over the years, here he has a point. Think about all those extended family dinners--which table was having more fun? Where would we have rather been sitting?
Finding the funny also helps us stay in touch with our young children (and now grandchildren) so we can share the odd, absurd, goofy, bizarre things kids relate to so viscerally. Perhaps, just perhaps we adults have lost some of our facility in this area, just as we've lost hearing, flexibility, hair, net worth, or lightheartedness. Perhaps the burden of years has worn this away. If so, all the more reason to pick it up, dust it off, and take it out for a walk from time to time.
I remember, years ago, a group of young moms gathered at someone's house. We were discussing marriage, intimacy, men and women--all that relationship stuff that ladies love to talk about. Dee, balancing a cup on her knee, spoke. "You know," she said, stirring the coffee, "Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look over at Rollie, I think to myself, `Gee, I'm so lucky to have such a fantastic, wonderful husband.' And sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look over at him, I just want to smash his face in." Smiling, she sipped her coffee.
There was a moment of silence, and the we all roared with laughter, for we knew exactly what she meant. Not that we'd ever smash in our spouse's face (no matter how tempted we might be), or maybe even that we thought he was so great in the first place (although we did marry the guy). But those wildly veering sentiments of extravagant love and the dismay of "Oh my God--who is this doofus I married anyway?" were those we all shared. And Dee had spoken them.
But back to my weekend with Steph. Over our days together, we covered a variety of areas that appeared to form a primer for living with the aging male, specifically the aging male boomer, for our generation has inserted its own particular spins on everything, including getting old. While in some ways we are distressingly (to us AND them) like our parents' and grandparents' generations, we do display idiosyncrasies of our own. And while we may have to trust people over thirty at this point in our lives (after all, we've got KIDS over thirty), we still have problems with those in authority and anyone thirty years OLDER than we are. (Jerry Rubin may be dead, but his aphorism lives on).
Steph and I narrowed the primer down to a few main themes--after all, we had only a weekend. Our primer, as it has emerged, is a work in progress, like life, and doubtless many more themes will materialise, like those worms that litter the sidewalk after a hard rain. And, no doubt readers will think of more themes--and I encourage you to share them--after all, this is also a collective work as well as progressive. Just like living with men has always worked better as a collective enterprise (women sharing stories) and progressive (jury's still out on that one!) process.
Here are some of the themes we came up with--these will be discussed in more detail later (see future blog entry):
1) Male hair migrates 2) Control (or the illusion of it) must be maintained 3) Who'll get Dad if Mom goes first? 4) The aging male brain [also know as "The Fog of Ignore"] 5) You're not getting better--you're getting weirder.
As I said, these are merely the few we touched upon during our very fun weekend. We had a great time, and are now refreshed and ready to keep living with these guys. There are certainly other themes we didn't get to--again, those of you who have more, please suggest them, along with illustrative examples.
What has all this to do with raising four boys, you ask? Well, in a nutshell, it's about survival. I'm still alive, Jack's still alive, the boys are still alive, and we're all relatively sane (except for maybe Jack). Humour played a big role in dragging us through some pretty dense thickets and fairly mucky ditches over the years. Humour parodied Scarlett O'Hara's maxim of "After all, tomorrow is another day!" in a way so as to take the terror out of it. It was humour shared with others that helped us realize we were all living in the same world, suffering similar difficulties, experiencing parallel triumphs, raising collateral kids, and married to the same *#$%&!* guy.
Mordecai Richler said that "Humor, after all, is a very serious business." That's good, because it has a big job, and has to do it while appearing not to, for once the underpinnings of humour are examined, it's no longer funny. Try explaining a joke, and you will understand this.
So cherish your inner comedian, your interior gag-writer, your hidden humorist. Trot her or him out regularly. By this time in our lives, those intrinsic funny guys need as much air as they can get. Some of them may be gasping for breath as we speak. Your children (and grandchildren) will thank you.
Or they will think you are just being lame. In either case, as long as someone gets a laugh, meagre though it may be, it's better than crying. As the Bible says (sort of), "Instead of cursing the darkness, or even lighting a candle (after all, you may not have a match!), just tell a joke!"
(The above is a rather free translation...)
(Note to all men reading this: As you roll your eyes and snort to yourselves, "Well, we could say a thing or two about living with WOMEN!", I suggest you get your own blog...)
Back to my weekend with Stephanie. We regaled ourselves with husband tales. Steph has been married to Brian for more years than Jack and I have been together. As we roared with laughter at their spousal antics, during one of our more lucid moments between gasping guffaws, we realized that our narratives were ominously similar. Brian and Jack might have been clones of one another, so great were the similarities in the stories.
As we cast our minds to the long-married couples we knew well, many of whom had lived in Herbert at one time or another (Steph and Brian are honorary Herbertians--they've been friends with certain former inmates and extended families thereof for years), we realized that the men shared many characteristics--and those were the ones informing the stories we were sharing--stories of how these guys drove us nuts with their bizarre behaviors and quirks and how, by laughing at these, we could avoid killing them and going to prison for the rest of our lives.
Back when Roseanne was surnamed Barr, was a stand-up comedian, and was funny, she famously quipped, "Well, we're all married to the same *#$%&!* guy!" As Steph and I exchanged stories about husbands, we realized that this, in our observation at least, is a truism. And, just as women of a certain age (menopausal and post-) display certain characteristics, men of the same certain age appear to intensify their previous and quirky ways. In short, while women get better with age, men (long-married ones, at any rate) just get weirder. And more similar. Steph insists that this strange congruity among older married males means they are morphing into the Borg, and our resistance maybe futile (although that won't stop any post-menopausal women we know).
Instead of sobering us with its looming Trekkie homogeneity, we once more burst into laughter at the absurdity of married men as the Borg. After all, who would find their synthetic components when they misplaced them? Who would ask for and then give them directions back to the Delta Quadrant? Who would tidy up the Unicomplex? (All those cubes!). Back to our laughter at this loonie (but perhaps a wee bit real?) proposition--because maybe it is laughter that keeps people married. While I am sure there are many more factors in such a complex issue, for me, it comes back to a sense of humour. The ability to laugh at one's partner (and perhaps, just perhaps at ourselves, although we all know that partners are far more laugh-worthy) includes the capacity to put things into perspective: Don't sweat the little stuff--just see what bits are funny. Don't yell--laugh instead. Don't act like the world is about to fall apart--even if it is, what good can you do by running around flapping your arms in the air like a chicken? (Or like Joe at the sight of blood?)
No, far better to mine the situation for comedic gems. After all, most of us would rather laugh than cry. For laughter is the purview of children--or should be, at any rate. Children laugh at just about anything. Think about what your kids found hilarious when they were younger--all those elephant jokes and "Mother! Mother!" chestnuts. The dumber (and grosser in the case of boys), the funnier. So, as my febrile mind darts about for connections, I think, perhaps we are drawn to laughter as a way to touch base with our inner child (the good one--not that tiresome little new-age brat that whines incessantly about past slights). The good inner child is the one who splashes in puddles, chases beetles, stops to watch the worms wriggle on the rain-soaked sidewalk, runs because it's fun, sees adventure around every corner. THAT is the inner child we all need to become from time to time. And perhaps, just perhaps seeing the whimsy in a situation helps us get there. Which, in turn, refreshes us for the daunting task of living adult lives.
Woody Allen once said, "When you do comedy, you are not sitting at the grownups' table." While Woody's inner child (and outer adult) has taken him down some questionable roads over the years, here he has a point. Think about all those extended family dinners--which table was having more fun? Where would we have rather been sitting?
Finding the funny also helps us stay in touch with our young children (and now grandchildren) so we can share the odd, absurd, goofy, bizarre things kids relate to so viscerally. Perhaps, just perhaps we adults have lost some of our facility in this area, just as we've lost hearing, flexibility, hair, net worth, or lightheartedness. Perhaps the burden of years has worn this away. If so, all the more reason to pick it up, dust it off, and take it out for a walk from time to time.
I remember, years ago, a group of young moms gathered at someone's house. We were discussing marriage, intimacy, men and women--all that relationship stuff that ladies love to talk about. Dee, balancing a cup on her knee, spoke. "You know," she said, stirring the coffee, "Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look over at Rollie, I think to myself, `Gee, I'm so lucky to have such a fantastic, wonderful husband.' And sometimes when I wake up in the morning and look over at him, I just want to smash his face in." Smiling, she sipped her coffee.
There was a moment of silence, and the we all roared with laughter, for we knew exactly what she meant. Not that we'd ever smash in our spouse's face (no matter how tempted we might be), or maybe even that we thought he was so great in the first place (although we did marry the guy). But those wildly veering sentiments of extravagant love and the dismay of "Oh my God--who is this doofus I married anyway?" were those we all shared. And Dee had spoken them.
But back to my weekend with Steph. Over our days together, we covered a variety of areas that appeared to form a primer for living with the aging male, specifically the aging male boomer, for our generation has inserted its own particular spins on everything, including getting old. While in some ways we are distressingly (to us AND them) like our parents' and grandparents' generations, we do display idiosyncrasies of our own. And while we may have to trust people over thirty at this point in our lives (after all, we've got KIDS over thirty), we still have problems with those in authority and anyone thirty years OLDER than we are. (Jerry Rubin may be dead, but his aphorism lives on).
Steph and I narrowed the primer down to a few main themes--after all, we had only a weekend. Our primer, as it has emerged, is a work in progress, like life, and doubtless many more themes will materialise, like those worms that litter the sidewalk after a hard rain. And, no doubt readers will think of more themes--and I encourage you to share them--after all, this is also a collective work as well as progressive. Just like living with men has always worked better as a collective enterprise (women sharing stories) and progressive (jury's still out on that one!) process.
Here are some of the themes we came up with--these will be discussed in more detail later (see future blog entry):
1) Male hair migrates 2) Control (or the illusion of it) must be maintained 3) Who'll get Dad if Mom goes first? 4) The aging male brain [also know as "The Fog of Ignore"] 5) You're not getting better--you're getting weirder.
As I said, these are merely the few we touched upon during our very fun weekend. We had a great time, and are now refreshed and ready to keep living with these guys. There are certainly other themes we didn't get to--again, those of you who have more, please suggest them, along with illustrative examples.
What has all this to do with raising four boys, you ask? Well, in a nutshell, it's about survival. I'm still alive, Jack's still alive, the boys are still alive, and we're all relatively sane (except for maybe Jack). Humour played a big role in dragging us through some pretty dense thickets and fairly mucky ditches over the years. Humour parodied Scarlett O'Hara's maxim of "After all, tomorrow is another day!" in a way so as to take the terror out of it. It was humour shared with others that helped us realize we were all living in the same world, suffering similar difficulties, experiencing parallel triumphs, raising collateral kids, and married to the same *#$%&!* guy.
Mordecai Richler said that "Humor, after all, is a very serious business." That's good, because it has a big job, and has to do it while appearing not to, for once the underpinnings of humour are examined, it's no longer funny. Try explaining a joke, and you will understand this.
So cherish your inner comedian, your interior gag-writer, your hidden humorist. Trot her or him out regularly. By this time in our lives, those intrinsic funny guys need as much air as they can get. Some of them may be gasping for breath as we speak. Your children (and grandchildren) will thank you.
Or they will think you are just being lame. In either case, as long as someone gets a laugh, meagre though it may be, it's better than crying. As the Bible says (sort of), "Instead of cursing the darkness, or even lighting a candle (after all, you may not have a match!), just tell a joke!"
(The above is a rather free translation...)
(Note to all men reading this: As you roll your eyes and snort to yourselves, "Well, we could say a thing or two about living with WOMEN!", I suggest you get your own blog...)
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tercero Eye Eye (I I)
Here I was, back again, in the hospital about to give birth. Obviously I had completely forgotten about the messy and painful aspects of this procedure, otherwise why would I even be here? I am mystified by those adventurous folks who opt for home births--who will clean up the mess, I ask myself? (This, alas, only shows up my own prejudices and shortcomings in this area).
Those of you who have given birth have undoubtedly noticed how quickly the memories of pain and discomfort vanish--poof, gone, only to instantly rush back the minute you are in a bed (hospital or home), on a stool or in a wading pool, ready to grab your surfboard and hit the waves once again.
Of course, we know that this handy amnesia is nature's way of perpetuating the human race. Without amnesia, children would be onlies with no siblings. And while this might make it easier for parents to wrangle one kid instead of herds large and small, it likely wouldn't have led to homo sapiens surviving as a species.
So, here I was again, about to lose my amnesia. Here I was, talking to an unborn who was already showing signs of not doing was was expected. Here I was, bargaining with an abdominal lump. But you see, I'd been through this twice before, and this time it was going to be different. I'd heard the siren call of modern medical science and had responded--I wanted the EPIDURAL--nothing could be allowed to interfere with that. Especially since this would be the last time I'd go through such a thing--three kids would be enough for us, by God. And so this labour, my last labour, would proceed in a civilized and scientific (read "pain-free") way. I'd gone natural twice--now I was embracing technology.
Something urgent in my voice must have crossed the placental barrier, because just before midnight, I felt a twinge. I'd been reading in bed--such a luxury not to worry about kids waking up for water or a diaper change or a cuddle. Lovely to have the light on without listening to grumbling about how some people have to go to work the next day and need their sleep and when was I going to turn off that light anyway? So peaceful knowing that there was no breakfast to cook the next day, no housework or duties of any kind, other than popping out a kid, but hey, that was going to be a piece of cake, thanks to the EPIDURAL.
I put the book down and concentrated. The reading lamp cast a small golden pool. Beyond this the room was in darkness, except for the faint line of light from the hall seeping past the door. I could hear the muted workings of the night-time ward. Putting my hands on either side of the bump, I listened and felt for signs.
There it was--another twinge. I felt my abdominal muscles clench briefly, and then relax. A signal from the deep. I waited for a third sign, and then rang the nurse. So, there would be no inducing of labour. Thank heavens the little beggar had listened and decided to come out on his own terms, late as they were.
The usual bustle of people ensued--nurses doing their brisk business, doctors checking this, that and the other thing, Jack arriving from his parents' house three blocks away. I was whisked to one of the hospital's new (at that time) labour-and-delivery rooms, all decked out to look like a hotel room. Except for the bed, of course, which had more controls than a jet fighter.
Doctor Heather's order for the EPIDURAL (I use all caps here to indicate my regard for this word--I am not shouting, unless perhaps out of gratitude) were duly noted, and a tired-looking but friendly anesthesiologist (had to look THAT one up!) explained the procedure to me while Jack was checking out the bed's controls. I took in very little of what he was saying--the anesthesiologist, that is, not Jack, who by now had moved on to pushing the various buttons on the bed's controls. I wanted the anesthesiologist to hurry up and get on with it--Doctor Heather had explained that timing was crucial--too early and the EPIDURAL could stop the contractions; too late and the EPIDURAL would have no effect. "Come on! Come on!" I hollered in my head, dodging the parts of the bed that rose and fell as Jack pressed control buttons. "Quit gabbing and just DO IT!"
The anesthesiologist (I figure that if I type it out enough times, I'll remember how to spell it!) must have heard my internal panic, because he announced that now was the time. Mentally wanting to confer sainthood on the guy (by then the contractions were gaining serious attitude), I blissfully followed his directions. So thrilled was I to be getting the EPIDURAL that I remember very little about the procedure itself. I do remember it involved some bending then something cold shooting into my back--but it wasn't painful. A good sign, I thought to myself.
"You'll still feel the contractions" said the anesthesiologist. "But they won't hurt so much and you'll be able to get some rest." Nodding crazily like one of those dashboard toy dogs, I waited for it to take effect. All I'd really heard the guy say was "Blah blah blah...blah blah..won't hurt...blah blah..."
The nurses and the anesthesiologist (last time, I promise!) left Jack and me in the mellow glow of the room's decorator lamps. Jack took up his usual post by the fetal monitor's display, which was merrily chugging out its paper read-out ribbon. The smooth lines indicated a hiatus between contractions. Suddenly, the lines started moving back and forth. "Hey," said Jack. "Looks like a contraction. Do you feel anything?"
Frowning in concentration, I went deep into the waves, ready to hop onto my surfboard. I felt pressure, then more pressure, then a lot of pressure, then less pressure, then hardly any pressure. What I didn't feel was pain. I looked at Jack, who was still checking the read-out. "Jack," I whispered, "It doesn't hurt!" Now I know there are those who feel that perhaps medical science has overstepped its bounds here and there and gone down some questionable roads, but I am here to say that all things are completely compensated for by the invention of the EPIDURAL, the greatest thing (in my mind) since the eradication of smallpox, the discovery of insulin, and sliced bread.
For the next several hours, we amused ourselves by watching the monitor's read-out ribbon as I wrested the bed's controls away from Jack and played with them, raising and lowering sections of the bed. "That was a big one," Jack would say as I peered in mild curiosity at the wildly fluctuating lines. "A whopper," I would agree as the foot of the bed chugged upwards and downwards.
I didn't have to ride the big waves anymore. Now I could paddle around in the shallows on my skim board and, while "enjoying myself" might have been a bit strong, at least I wasn't stuck out where the big ones were rolling, waiting to get to shore but knowing it would be hours yet.
Five hours of manipulating the bed and watching the contractions quickly passed. We started noticing that the contractions were getting stronger and closer together. From the Olympian heights of my EPIDURALISED (Is that a word? Never mind--it should be) state, I inspected the read-out and agreed.
"I think we need to get the doctor in here" said Jack. I was feeling pretty good--I knew the contractions were getting stronger because the pressure on my abdomen was increasing, but they still didn't hurt enough to cause too much discomfort (there, how I've used the word myself!). Whatever sensation the contractions were provoking beyond mere pressure was simply that--discomfort--and THAT I could live with.
"Okay Jack," I said. "Let me push the call button." I'd fallen in love with all the buttons, knobs and controls while flying the bed--I wanted one at home--in case I got bored in the middle of the night I could amuse myself by playing with the controls.
The head-nurse came in. A large Jamaican lady, she had a lovely island lilt in her voice. She checked the monitor, checked me, nodded and went off to summon the resident on call and to phone Doctor Heather. A couple of minutes later, a disheveled resident trotted into the room, looking all of twelve years old.
"This is my first delivery," he announced. He sounded nervous.
"That's okay," I said, lulled into complacency by the EPIDURAL. "We've done this before. It's a piece of cake." Jack, startled, looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. But you know how it is--you worry and worry about some really hard thing you have to do. It turns out to be not so bad, and so you overcompensate, blowing it off completely. I imagine marathoners do this--"Shoot!" they say after the race. "I was worried about hitting the wall but I didn't even notice that sucker when it popped up--piece of cake!"
Perhaps the twelve-year-old resident knew something like that was going on, because my words didn't appear to reassure him much. In fact, he looked even more worried. He checked the monitor, he checked me, I think he mentally checked himself, and then he checked me some more. In between the checking, he would scoot his wheeled chair over to the sink on the room's far side and wash his hands. Then he'd scoot back, check things out, watch a contraction/push or two, and zip back over to the sink.
In the meantime, I'd moved well into Stage Three--you will recall that my previous Stage Three's had been nightmares of pushing, gasping, heaving, exhaustion, pushing some more, etc. etc. While there was still pushing, I didn't need to gasp and heave and puff nearly as much. Refreshed from all the rest I'd gotten during the EPIDURALISED labour, I had lots of energy to push with.
By now, amniotic fluid was spewing out with each push. "Hey, I think I can see the head!" said Jack. "Uh, doctor, I can see the head...I think you need to get over here." The resident, at this point back at the sink, turned his head and glanced at us, looking like a deer caught in headlights. I think he was buying time with all his chair scooting, hoping like hell that Doctor Heather would arrive in time and save him.
"Uh, doctor," said Jack again, moving down to the foot of the bed, reading to get into position in case the resident didn't get scooted back in time. "I think this kid is coming NOW!" The urgency in Jack's voice must have convinced him that he'd better return to his station, or perhaps he figured his hands were clean enough. In either case, he scooted his chair back in time to catch the baby who, carried on a final gush of fluid, spurted out like a watermelon seed. The twelve-year-old resident managed to make the catch. He held up another whopper of a baby.
"It's a boy!" he announced, smiling in triumph and, no doubt, enormous relief. He placed the baby on my breast as he cut the umbilical cord and saw to all the afterbirth stuff.
And so arrived Tercero, the small, determined surfer. He'd dictated the terms of his arrival and would continue to march to his own drummer. He was a peaceful and sleepy newborn--remarkably relaxed. After getting APGAR'd and weighed, "Nine pounds, fifteen and one-half ounce" crowed the nurse as she handed him back, all bundled up in a warm blanket. "He's a big one."
"We grow 'em that way" I said. At that moment, the Jamaican head-nurse and Doctor Heather came into the room. The nurse stopped just inside the doorway, hands on ample hips, as she stared at me, the floor, and back at me again.
"What de hell happen here?" she demanded. "Where all de fluid come from? Looks like a flood in here!" Now that I had time to look around, I noticed that I was lying in pools of liquid, and the floor under the bed was awash in puddles of it.
"There's enough amnio fluid here to float a battleship!" said Doctor Heather, as she checked me out and then the baby.
As people bustled about, cleaning things up and drying them off, Jack and I and Tercero engaged in the sweetest part of labour--getting acquainted with the new arrival. We did our usual inspection--the touching that ties child to parents in the most tactile of ways--handling the tiny fingers and toes, touching cheeks to the downy head, breathing in the fragrance of fresh life, wondering what kind of person lay within the slumbering scrap of humanity.
For Primero and Segundo had already taught us that humans are infinitely different, even those who come from the same stock and are raised in the same household. So what did little Tercero have in store for us? How would he be different from his brothers? What would he teach us?
Secure in the knowledge that we would learn much, we were happy to simply be with him at that time in that place--so newly arrived, so peaceful, so tranquil. Because we knew that going home with three boys would be anything but.
Those of you who have given birth have undoubtedly noticed how quickly the memories of pain and discomfort vanish--poof, gone, only to instantly rush back the minute you are in a bed (hospital or home), on a stool or in a wading pool, ready to grab your surfboard and hit the waves once again.
Of course, we know that this handy amnesia is nature's way of perpetuating the human race. Without amnesia, children would be onlies with no siblings. And while this might make it easier for parents to wrangle one kid instead of herds large and small, it likely wouldn't have led to homo sapiens surviving as a species.
So, here I was again, about to lose my amnesia. Here I was, talking to an unborn who was already showing signs of not doing was was expected. Here I was, bargaining with an abdominal lump. But you see, I'd been through this twice before, and this time it was going to be different. I'd heard the siren call of modern medical science and had responded--I wanted the EPIDURAL--nothing could be allowed to interfere with that. Especially since this would be the last time I'd go through such a thing--three kids would be enough for us, by God. And so this labour, my last labour, would proceed in a civilized and scientific (read "pain-free") way. I'd gone natural twice--now I was embracing technology.
Something urgent in my voice must have crossed the placental barrier, because just before midnight, I felt a twinge. I'd been reading in bed--such a luxury not to worry about kids waking up for water or a diaper change or a cuddle. Lovely to have the light on without listening to grumbling about how some people have to go to work the next day and need their sleep and when was I going to turn off that light anyway? So peaceful knowing that there was no breakfast to cook the next day, no housework or duties of any kind, other than popping out a kid, but hey, that was going to be a piece of cake, thanks to the EPIDURAL.
I put the book down and concentrated. The reading lamp cast a small golden pool. Beyond this the room was in darkness, except for the faint line of light from the hall seeping past the door. I could hear the muted workings of the night-time ward. Putting my hands on either side of the bump, I listened and felt for signs.
There it was--another twinge. I felt my abdominal muscles clench briefly, and then relax. A signal from the deep. I waited for a third sign, and then rang the nurse. So, there would be no inducing of labour. Thank heavens the little beggar had listened and decided to come out on his own terms, late as they were.
The usual bustle of people ensued--nurses doing their brisk business, doctors checking this, that and the other thing, Jack arriving from his parents' house three blocks away. I was whisked to one of the hospital's new (at that time) labour-and-delivery rooms, all decked out to look like a hotel room. Except for the bed, of course, which had more controls than a jet fighter.
Doctor Heather's order for the EPIDURAL (I use all caps here to indicate my regard for this word--I am not shouting, unless perhaps out of gratitude) were duly noted, and a tired-looking but friendly anesthesiologist (had to look THAT one up!) explained the procedure to me while Jack was checking out the bed's controls. I took in very little of what he was saying--the anesthesiologist, that is, not Jack, who by now had moved on to pushing the various buttons on the bed's controls. I wanted the anesthesiologist to hurry up and get on with it--Doctor Heather had explained that timing was crucial--too early and the EPIDURAL could stop the contractions; too late and the EPIDURAL would have no effect. "Come on! Come on!" I hollered in my head, dodging the parts of the bed that rose and fell as Jack pressed control buttons. "Quit gabbing and just DO IT!"
The anesthesiologist (I figure that if I type it out enough times, I'll remember how to spell it!) must have heard my internal panic, because he announced that now was the time. Mentally wanting to confer sainthood on the guy (by then the contractions were gaining serious attitude), I blissfully followed his directions. So thrilled was I to be getting the EPIDURAL that I remember very little about the procedure itself. I do remember it involved some bending then something cold shooting into my back--but it wasn't painful. A good sign, I thought to myself.
"You'll still feel the contractions" said the anesthesiologist. "But they won't hurt so much and you'll be able to get some rest." Nodding crazily like one of those dashboard toy dogs, I waited for it to take effect. All I'd really heard the guy say was "Blah blah blah...blah blah..won't hurt...blah blah..."
The nurses and the anesthesiologist (last time, I promise!) left Jack and me in the mellow glow of the room's decorator lamps. Jack took up his usual post by the fetal monitor's display, which was merrily chugging out its paper read-out ribbon. The smooth lines indicated a hiatus between contractions. Suddenly, the lines started moving back and forth. "Hey," said Jack. "Looks like a contraction. Do you feel anything?"
Frowning in concentration, I went deep into the waves, ready to hop onto my surfboard. I felt pressure, then more pressure, then a lot of pressure, then less pressure, then hardly any pressure. What I didn't feel was pain. I looked at Jack, who was still checking the read-out. "Jack," I whispered, "It doesn't hurt!" Now I know there are those who feel that perhaps medical science has overstepped its bounds here and there and gone down some questionable roads, but I am here to say that all things are completely compensated for by the invention of the EPIDURAL, the greatest thing (in my mind) since the eradication of smallpox, the discovery of insulin, and sliced bread.
For the next several hours, we amused ourselves by watching the monitor's read-out ribbon as I wrested the bed's controls away from Jack and played with them, raising and lowering sections of the bed. "That was a big one," Jack would say as I peered in mild curiosity at the wildly fluctuating lines. "A whopper," I would agree as the foot of the bed chugged upwards and downwards.
I didn't have to ride the big waves anymore. Now I could paddle around in the shallows on my skim board and, while "enjoying myself" might have been a bit strong, at least I wasn't stuck out where the big ones were rolling, waiting to get to shore but knowing it would be hours yet.
Five hours of manipulating the bed and watching the contractions quickly passed. We started noticing that the contractions were getting stronger and closer together. From the Olympian heights of my EPIDURALISED (Is that a word? Never mind--it should be) state, I inspected the read-out and agreed.
"I think we need to get the doctor in here" said Jack. I was feeling pretty good--I knew the contractions were getting stronger because the pressure on my abdomen was increasing, but they still didn't hurt enough to cause too much discomfort (there, how I've used the word myself!). Whatever sensation the contractions were provoking beyond mere pressure was simply that--discomfort--and THAT I could live with.
"Okay Jack," I said. "Let me push the call button." I'd fallen in love with all the buttons, knobs and controls while flying the bed--I wanted one at home--in case I got bored in the middle of the night I could amuse myself by playing with the controls.
The head-nurse came in. A large Jamaican lady, she had a lovely island lilt in her voice. She checked the monitor, checked me, nodded and went off to summon the resident on call and to phone Doctor Heather. A couple of minutes later, a disheveled resident trotted into the room, looking all of twelve years old.
"This is my first delivery," he announced. He sounded nervous.
"That's okay," I said, lulled into complacency by the EPIDURAL. "We've done this before. It's a piece of cake." Jack, startled, looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. But you know how it is--you worry and worry about some really hard thing you have to do. It turns out to be not so bad, and so you overcompensate, blowing it off completely. I imagine marathoners do this--"Shoot!" they say after the race. "I was worried about hitting the wall but I didn't even notice that sucker when it popped up--piece of cake!"
Perhaps the twelve-year-old resident knew something like that was going on, because my words didn't appear to reassure him much. In fact, he looked even more worried. He checked the monitor, he checked me, I think he mentally checked himself, and then he checked me some more. In between the checking, he would scoot his wheeled chair over to the sink on the room's far side and wash his hands. Then he'd scoot back, check things out, watch a contraction/push or two, and zip back over to the sink.
In the meantime, I'd moved well into Stage Three--you will recall that my previous Stage Three's had been nightmares of pushing, gasping, heaving, exhaustion, pushing some more, etc. etc. While there was still pushing, I didn't need to gasp and heave and puff nearly as much. Refreshed from all the rest I'd gotten during the EPIDURALISED labour, I had lots of energy to push with.
By now, amniotic fluid was spewing out with each push. "Hey, I think I can see the head!" said Jack. "Uh, doctor, I can see the head...I think you need to get over here." The resident, at this point back at the sink, turned his head and glanced at us, looking like a deer caught in headlights. I think he was buying time with all his chair scooting, hoping like hell that Doctor Heather would arrive in time and save him.
"Uh, doctor," said Jack again, moving down to the foot of the bed, reading to get into position in case the resident didn't get scooted back in time. "I think this kid is coming NOW!" The urgency in Jack's voice must have convinced him that he'd better return to his station, or perhaps he figured his hands were clean enough. In either case, he scooted his chair back in time to catch the baby who, carried on a final gush of fluid, spurted out like a watermelon seed. The twelve-year-old resident managed to make the catch. He held up another whopper of a baby.
"It's a boy!" he announced, smiling in triumph and, no doubt, enormous relief. He placed the baby on my breast as he cut the umbilical cord and saw to all the afterbirth stuff.
And so arrived Tercero, the small, determined surfer. He'd dictated the terms of his arrival and would continue to march to his own drummer. He was a peaceful and sleepy newborn--remarkably relaxed. After getting APGAR'd and weighed, "Nine pounds, fifteen and one-half ounce" crowed the nurse as she handed him back, all bundled up in a warm blanket. "He's a big one."
"We grow 'em that way" I said. At that moment, the Jamaican head-nurse and Doctor Heather came into the room. The nurse stopped just inside the doorway, hands on ample hips, as she stared at me, the floor, and back at me again.
"What de hell happen here?" she demanded. "Where all de fluid come from? Looks like a flood in here!" Now that I had time to look around, I noticed that I was lying in pools of liquid, and the floor under the bed was awash in puddles of it.
"There's enough amnio fluid here to float a battleship!" said Doctor Heather, as she checked me out and then the baby.
As people bustled about, cleaning things up and drying them off, Jack and I and Tercero engaged in the sweetest part of labour--getting acquainted with the new arrival. We did our usual inspection--the touching that ties child to parents in the most tactile of ways--handling the tiny fingers and toes, touching cheeks to the downy head, breathing in the fragrance of fresh life, wondering what kind of person lay within the slumbering scrap of humanity.
For Primero and Segundo had already taught us that humans are infinitely different, even those who come from the same stock and are raised in the same household. So what did little Tercero have in store for us? How would he be different from his brothers? What would he teach us?
Secure in the knowledge that we would learn much, we were happy to simply be with him at that time in that place--so newly arrived, so peaceful, so tranquil. Because we knew that going home with three boys would be anything but.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Tercero
Last weekend Jack and I were on the ferry to Vancouver. It was a beautiful, calm day. Great humps of mountains rose out of the silver water, like massive whales frozen in time and space. As the Gulf Islands slid past, in the distance I could see a dark square of something moving. The dark square, coming closer, turned into a barge with a bulky load. I made the mistake of idly commenting "I wonder what that is."
Jack looked at the barge. "Looks like garbage." I immediately lost interest. Jack didn't. "Maybe it's scrap metal," he said, warming to the subject. "No, it looks almost like tires, but why would they haul tires on a barge? No, it's got to be scrap metal. Or maybe it IS garbage. Boy, that's expensive, barging garbage like that. I wonder where it's going?" And on and on. There were long silences, during which I prayed the subject (and the barge) would disappear. The barge eventually did.
"Maybe it's mixed recycling. Or it could be wood waste, although why would they barge wood waste? I wonder where it's going?" Jack mused. By this point, I was bored with the entire conversation and tuned out.
There is a point to all of this, and it has to do with the next installment of our herding boys story.
By the time Tercero was on his way, it was pretty clear that our house was too small. Primero and Segundo shared a tiny room and our "master suite" was the formerly windowless shed--it still sported the ominously buzzing electrical box, but we did have a window for quick escapes.
I'm not sure why we decided to have a third kid--I don't think it was a particularly conscious decision. Like so many things, we kind of drifted into it (NOT a good strategy when planning new human beings). Once we found ourselves expecting number three, we looked around and, like Roy Scheider and his desire for a larger vessel in Jaws, said to ourselves "We're going to need a bigger house!"
By now we'd been paying a monthly mortgage for some time. Granted, the amount was small (not to us!) but we managed to carve out a credit rating with the Herbert Co-op. This fiscal responsibility stood us in good stead when we approached the Co-op for a second mortgage. Because, for all intents and purposes, we were really building a whole other house onto the old one.
Which brings me back to the ferry tale (sorry, couldn't resist!) It was during the building of the house-addition that I discovered one of Jack's less endearing paradoxes. It had to do with information sharing. On the one hand, when you merely required a short explanation or brief exchange about something, Jack would launch into a doctoral dissertation. If you tried to bury the discussion, he'd dig it up and, like a dog worrying a bone, chew on it some more. He would draw diagrams--on cigarette packages when he still smoked, and on any handy piece of paper when he quit. The boys learned to run when Jack pulled out a pencil. (Now that they're grown, however, they've discovered that diagram drawing is in the blood.)
On the other hand, when you wanted specific and comprehensive information, Jack would turn annoyingly vague, as in the following conversation: Me--"How long will this take to build?" Jack--"Oh, a while." Me--"What will this cost?" Jack--"Oh, not too much."
I'm not sure if Jack always suffered from this affliction, or if I'd only noticed it because such a large project demanded many questions on my part. I do know he suffers from it still, despite several decades of hard looks from me when he throws out one of his hazy answers. I suspect it's a combination of the two--it's been my observation in life that most things involve combinations of two or more things--I believe that God likes complexity--it likely keeps Him from getting too bored.
Over the years, I've developed the questioning methods of a Crown Attorney with unlimited room to lead a balky (and often hostile) witness: "Exactly how much time, in days, hours and minutes, please, will this project take to complete, and by completion, I mean the following--(here I would provide a detailed list)".
It was during the building of the addition that I also learned to disappear--physically and mentally--during Jack's longer explanations. Being pregnant and living with two small children in a construction zone will encourage that particular survival skill.
By April, we found out another baby was on the way. By May, we decided to add a house onto the house. By June, the Co-op agreed to lend us the money. By July, the plans were complete. By August, we'd hired our friend Barry, a carpenter, to help Jack with the big stuff. Jack only had two weeks' holidays, and a lot to build.
I remember waking up in the heat of an August morning, our tiny bedroom (really only big enough for the bed, a small nightstand and the buzzing electrical box) already sweltering. I was uncomfortable with the pregnancy--only five months along but I looked almost ready to pop.
Voices and hammering had woken me up. Sighing, I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the finished product. Then I thought about the process of getting to the finished product. I remember telling myself, "Well, really, it shouldn't take TOO long to finish." I still howl with laughter at this.
That summer was hot and thundery, much like my mood. Barry was a godsend--he moved in, sleeping on our couch for the two weeks so he and Jack could work early and late. Once our bedroom was demolished (along with the entire back of the house as Jack, Rollie, Dee and I tore down walls in an exalted state of destructive glee), we moved into the greenhouse to sleep. I do not recommend this--it was like sleeping in a solar-powered convection oven.
My job--along with keeping Primero and Segundo from killing themselves with hammers, saws, knife-blades and all power tools in general--was to feed the work crew. For a little guy, Barry could really eat. I had to do whatever it took to keep the construction workers fed. I remember one day when, down with a twenty-four hour flu, I cooked a chicken on the barbeque. I would check on the bird and run into the bathroom to throw up. Crouching on the floor, bellied up to the toilet with my forehead on its cool porcelain rim, I remember thinking that death might not be so bad.
The summer passed in a blur of collapsing bedroom ceilings (see "The House That Jack Built"), crashing timbers, shrieking saws, hammering, dust, debris and heat. Primero and Segundo developed a fascination with all things construction. Segundo, just turned two, would sit on the addition's plywood floor and, brandishing a ball-peen hammer, pound in nails by the hour. The floor around him was paved with silver nail-heads, so close together that no wood was visible. Primero would hang around Jack and Barry, peppering them with questions until he wore then out, whereupon they would send him to me so he could wear me out.
Once Barry left and Jack's holidays (seems an odd word for those two weeks!) were over, he slaved on the addition after work and on weekends. Thanks to the long prairie evenings, it stayed light until ten or so. However, that summer was one of astonishing thunderstorms--heat would build up immense, bruised-looking thunderheads during the day--we could see them, billowing up and up on the horizon, knowing they were headed our way. By nightfall, the storms would begin.
Jack was in a frenzy to get some sort of roof on the addition--the two weeks hadn't been enough time. (It was during this time that I learned the Rule of Three--that is, all estimations of time and/or money must be tripled before they approach reality.) One night, after a particularly hot and humid day--remarkable for the prairies where we pride ourselves on the dry colds and heats--a real pisser of a storm broke over Herbert. The wind had been rising all evening and was really howling, tearing at the tar-paper Jack had nailed over the unfinished roof sections. Nervous about the storm, Jack had tacked up plastic sheeting on the inside ceiling in case the tar-paper didn't hold.
Actually, this story is Jack's, as by this time I had taken the boys after the ceiling had caved in on them (again, see "The House That Jack Built") and left. Safe at my parents, I would phone each night and ask, in my best Laurence Olivier/Marathon Man voice, "Is it safe?" To come back to a house with a roof, that is. Again, I call attention to the fact that this is Jack's account--all of you who know Jack will be able to decide on the reliability of the narrator (as they say in the Lit/Crit biz), which is not to say the story isn't interesting or enjoyable, as it stands.
A lightening flash lit up the greenhouse. The thunderclap was so loud it shook the house. The rain was bucketing down. Jack leaped up and ran into the kitchen, flicking on the light-switch. No power--the storm had hit something.
He looked at the ceiling just in time to see the plastic he'd stapled up earlier stretch, bulge and drop its water-load all over the floor. He managed to find a stapler in the lightening bursts and tack the plastic back up, only to see it sag in another place and dump its burden of water there.
The night passed in a fever of fastening the plastic, watching it come down, tacking it up again, sopping up the water. By the time morning came, Jack was heading for a breakdown. Fortunately the storm had blown itself out by then, and dawn brought the sun. Exhausted, Jack crawled under the bedcovers and slept, no easy feat in that convection-oven of a greenhouse.
By the time I returned with the boys, there was a roof over our heads that didn't cave in or leak. The next few months were consumed with getting the two ground-floor bedrooms finished enough to move into--by then sleeping in the greenhouse had worn thin, not that it had been very thick to begin with.
I don't remember much about this construction phase--I think I was still recovering from the summer. I do know that I was growing at an alarming rate--Doctor Heather sent me for tests to ensure that the baby was okay and I hadn't developed diabetes or something that would account for the rapidly-swelling baby-bump. But the tests showed that everything was fine--the baby was just big.
"Swell," I thought to myself, remembering Segundo and those pediatric nightgowns.
During my September check-up, Doctor Heather asked me if I was attached to the idea of natural childbirth. "I don't know," I replied. "Why? Is there an option?" At this point, with two natural childbirth experiences under my belt, I didn't feel an urgent need to replicate it for a third time. However, I wasn't sure about the alternatives.
"We could give you an epidural," said Heather, and explained what that was. For me, "epidural" became one of the sweetest words I'd learned in a long time. Essentially it meant that I would no longer have to surf those contraction waves, or rather, when I did, I would do it with a painless surfboard.
"Sign me up!" I announced. She said she'd make the arrangements. I just had to show up. I wondered where she thought I was going that I might not.
So I spend the last few months of the pregnancy getting bigger and bigger. People asked me if I was having twins. Thinking of Natalie and her boys, I shuddered. "God no!" I replied, thanking the universe for not-so-small mercies.
Hallowe'en came and went. I packed my bag's spartan contents--no tennis balls this time. By now, I'd pared the bag down to essentials--books and a house-coat. Peppermint sticks, candles, cologne, handkerchiefs--all had been jettisoned by experience and expediency.
The due date arrived and went. As did several more. And more. I went to see Doctor Heather about getting this kid out. She booked me into the hospital the next day. "If this baby doesn't arrive by the day after," she said, "we'll induce labour."
I didn't like the sound of that. The women I'd know who'd had induced labours shared horror stories about the fierce contractions. Uh-uh, I thought. Not for me.
I went home and packed up Primero and Segundo, who were staying with my parents. We drove back into town. Jack dropped them off and then took me to the hospital. It was all very leisurely--no panic, no contractions, no hurry. I walked into the hospital under my own steam. By the time I was settled into my room, I checked for internal signs. Nothing. Not a twinge.
"Okay kid," I said to my belly lump. "I do NOT want to be induced. I doubt you want that either. I want an epidural and I don't want you to screw this up. So time to come out, okay?" It was to be one of the few times that Tercero would actually listen.
Jack looked at the barge. "Looks like garbage." I immediately lost interest. Jack didn't. "Maybe it's scrap metal," he said, warming to the subject. "No, it looks almost like tires, but why would they haul tires on a barge? No, it's got to be scrap metal. Or maybe it IS garbage. Boy, that's expensive, barging garbage like that. I wonder where it's going?" And on and on. There were long silences, during which I prayed the subject (and the barge) would disappear. The barge eventually did.
"Maybe it's mixed recycling. Or it could be wood waste, although why would they barge wood waste? I wonder where it's going?" Jack mused. By this point, I was bored with the entire conversation and tuned out.
There is a point to all of this, and it has to do with the next installment of our herding boys story.
By the time Tercero was on his way, it was pretty clear that our house was too small. Primero and Segundo shared a tiny room and our "master suite" was the formerly windowless shed--it still sported the ominously buzzing electrical box, but we did have a window for quick escapes.
I'm not sure why we decided to have a third kid--I don't think it was a particularly conscious decision. Like so many things, we kind of drifted into it (NOT a good strategy when planning new human beings). Once we found ourselves expecting number three, we looked around and, like Roy Scheider and his desire for a larger vessel in Jaws, said to ourselves "We're going to need a bigger house!"
By now we'd been paying a monthly mortgage for some time. Granted, the amount was small (not to us!) but we managed to carve out a credit rating with the Herbert Co-op. This fiscal responsibility stood us in good stead when we approached the Co-op for a second mortgage. Because, for all intents and purposes, we were really building a whole other house onto the old one.
Which brings me back to the ferry tale (sorry, couldn't resist!) It was during the building of the house-addition that I discovered one of Jack's less endearing paradoxes. It had to do with information sharing. On the one hand, when you merely required a short explanation or brief exchange about something, Jack would launch into a doctoral dissertation. If you tried to bury the discussion, he'd dig it up and, like a dog worrying a bone, chew on it some more. He would draw diagrams--on cigarette packages when he still smoked, and on any handy piece of paper when he quit. The boys learned to run when Jack pulled out a pencil. (Now that they're grown, however, they've discovered that diagram drawing is in the blood.)
On the other hand, when you wanted specific and comprehensive information, Jack would turn annoyingly vague, as in the following conversation: Me--"How long will this take to build?" Jack--"Oh, a while." Me--"What will this cost?" Jack--"Oh, not too much."
I'm not sure if Jack always suffered from this affliction, or if I'd only noticed it because such a large project demanded many questions on my part. I do know he suffers from it still, despite several decades of hard looks from me when he throws out one of his hazy answers. I suspect it's a combination of the two--it's been my observation in life that most things involve combinations of two or more things--I believe that God likes complexity--it likely keeps Him from getting too bored.
Over the years, I've developed the questioning methods of a Crown Attorney with unlimited room to lead a balky (and often hostile) witness: "Exactly how much time, in days, hours and minutes, please, will this project take to complete, and by completion, I mean the following--(here I would provide a detailed list)".
It was during the building of the addition that I also learned to disappear--physically and mentally--during Jack's longer explanations. Being pregnant and living with two small children in a construction zone will encourage that particular survival skill.
By April, we found out another baby was on the way. By May, we decided to add a house onto the house. By June, the Co-op agreed to lend us the money. By July, the plans were complete. By August, we'd hired our friend Barry, a carpenter, to help Jack with the big stuff. Jack only had two weeks' holidays, and a lot to build.
I remember waking up in the heat of an August morning, our tiny bedroom (really only big enough for the bed, a small nightstand and the buzzing electrical box) already sweltering. I was uncomfortable with the pregnancy--only five months along but I looked almost ready to pop.
Voices and hammering had woken me up. Sighing, I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the finished product. Then I thought about the process of getting to the finished product. I remember telling myself, "Well, really, it shouldn't take TOO long to finish." I still howl with laughter at this.
That summer was hot and thundery, much like my mood. Barry was a godsend--he moved in, sleeping on our couch for the two weeks so he and Jack could work early and late. Once our bedroom was demolished (along with the entire back of the house as Jack, Rollie, Dee and I tore down walls in an exalted state of destructive glee), we moved into the greenhouse to sleep. I do not recommend this--it was like sleeping in a solar-powered convection oven.
My job--along with keeping Primero and Segundo from killing themselves with hammers, saws, knife-blades and all power tools in general--was to feed the work crew. For a little guy, Barry could really eat. I had to do whatever it took to keep the construction workers fed. I remember one day when, down with a twenty-four hour flu, I cooked a chicken on the barbeque. I would check on the bird and run into the bathroom to throw up. Crouching on the floor, bellied up to the toilet with my forehead on its cool porcelain rim, I remember thinking that death might not be so bad.
The summer passed in a blur of collapsing bedroom ceilings (see "The House That Jack Built"), crashing timbers, shrieking saws, hammering, dust, debris and heat. Primero and Segundo developed a fascination with all things construction. Segundo, just turned two, would sit on the addition's plywood floor and, brandishing a ball-peen hammer, pound in nails by the hour. The floor around him was paved with silver nail-heads, so close together that no wood was visible. Primero would hang around Jack and Barry, peppering them with questions until he wore then out, whereupon they would send him to me so he could wear me out.
Once Barry left and Jack's holidays (seems an odd word for those two weeks!) were over, he slaved on the addition after work and on weekends. Thanks to the long prairie evenings, it stayed light until ten or so. However, that summer was one of astonishing thunderstorms--heat would build up immense, bruised-looking thunderheads during the day--we could see them, billowing up and up on the horizon, knowing they were headed our way. By nightfall, the storms would begin.
Jack was in a frenzy to get some sort of roof on the addition--the two weeks hadn't been enough time. (It was during this time that I learned the Rule of Three--that is, all estimations of time and/or money must be tripled before they approach reality.) One night, after a particularly hot and humid day--remarkable for the prairies where we pride ourselves on the dry colds and heats--a real pisser of a storm broke over Herbert. The wind had been rising all evening and was really howling, tearing at the tar-paper Jack had nailed over the unfinished roof sections. Nervous about the storm, Jack had tacked up plastic sheeting on the inside ceiling in case the tar-paper didn't hold.
Actually, this story is Jack's, as by this time I had taken the boys after the ceiling had caved in on them (again, see "The House That Jack Built") and left. Safe at my parents, I would phone each night and ask, in my best Laurence Olivier/Marathon Man voice, "Is it safe?" To come back to a house with a roof, that is. Again, I call attention to the fact that this is Jack's account--all of you who know Jack will be able to decide on the reliability of the narrator (as they say in the Lit/Crit biz), which is not to say the story isn't interesting or enjoyable, as it stands.
A lightening flash lit up the greenhouse. The thunderclap was so loud it shook the house. The rain was bucketing down. Jack leaped up and ran into the kitchen, flicking on the light-switch. No power--the storm had hit something.
He looked at the ceiling just in time to see the plastic he'd stapled up earlier stretch, bulge and drop its water-load all over the floor. He managed to find a stapler in the lightening bursts and tack the plastic back up, only to see it sag in another place and dump its burden of water there.
The night passed in a fever of fastening the plastic, watching it come down, tacking it up again, sopping up the water. By the time morning came, Jack was heading for a breakdown. Fortunately the storm had blown itself out by then, and dawn brought the sun. Exhausted, Jack crawled under the bedcovers and slept, no easy feat in that convection-oven of a greenhouse.
By the time I returned with the boys, there was a roof over our heads that didn't cave in or leak. The next few months were consumed with getting the two ground-floor bedrooms finished enough to move into--by then sleeping in the greenhouse had worn thin, not that it had been very thick to begin with.
I don't remember much about this construction phase--I think I was still recovering from the summer. I do know that I was growing at an alarming rate--Doctor Heather sent me for tests to ensure that the baby was okay and I hadn't developed diabetes or something that would account for the rapidly-swelling baby-bump. But the tests showed that everything was fine--the baby was just big.
"Swell," I thought to myself, remembering Segundo and those pediatric nightgowns.
During my September check-up, Doctor Heather asked me if I was attached to the idea of natural childbirth. "I don't know," I replied. "Why? Is there an option?" At this point, with two natural childbirth experiences under my belt, I didn't feel an urgent need to replicate it for a third time. However, I wasn't sure about the alternatives.
"We could give you an epidural," said Heather, and explained what that was. For me, "epidural" became one of the sweetest words I'd learned in a long time. Essentially it meant that I would no longer have to surf those contraction waves, or rather, when I did, I would do it with a painless surfboard.
"Sign me up!" I announced. She said she'd make the arrangements. I just had to show up. I wondered where she thought I was going that I might not.
So I spend the last few months of the pregnancy getting bigger and bigger. People asked me if I was having twins. Thinking of Natalie and her boys, I shuddered. "God no!" I replied, thanking the universe for not-so-small mercies.
Hallowe'en came and went. I packed my bag's spartan contents--no tennis balls this time. By now, I'd pared the bag down to essentials--books and a house-coat. Peppermint sticks, candles, cologne, handkerchiefs--all had been jettisoned by experience and expediency.
The due date arrived and went. As did several more. And more. I went to see Doctor Heather about getting this kid out. She booked me into the hospital the next day. "If this baby doesn't arrive by the day after," she said, "we'll induce labour."
I didn't like the sound of that. The women I'd know who'd had induced labours shared horror stories about the fierce contractions. Uh-uh, I thought. Not for me.
I went home and packed up Primero and Segundo, who were staying with my parents. We drove back into town. Jack dropped them off and then took me to the hospital. It was all very leisurely--no panic, no contractions, no hurry. I walked into the hospital under my own steam. By the time I was settled into my room, I checked for internal signs. Nothing. Not a twinge.
"Okay kid," I said to my belly lump. "I do NOT want to be induced. I doubt you want that either. I want an epidural and I don't want you to screw this up. So time to come out, okay?" It was to be one of the few times that Tercero would actually listen.
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Two Child Family
Today I threw a load of laundry into the washing machine, microwaved milk for coffee, checked Facebook to see what a bunch of people all over the world are up to, emailed registration material for a workshop I'm attending next week, plugged in my cellphone to recharge, and downloaded some more tunes for my MP3 (indispensable item for running).
I remember washing clothes in a Hoover Spin-Dryer--you actually had to touch the laundry--no fun when it came to poopy diapers (a particularly memorable laundry episode involved an ill-fitting diaper pail lid and some intrepid maggots). Milk was heated in a pot on the stove--it took forever, usually boiled over and made a sticky mess. If you wanted to talk to friends far away, you needed a rich uncle to pay for long distance charges. Phones were rotary monsters that hung on walls with long cords that tangled and strangled or perched, like gigantic insects, on desktops. As for tunes, there was vinyl--you played records on a stereo that had an incredibly expensive (and fragile) thing called a stylus. Styluses and three-year-olds were a bad (and expensive) combination, as we discovered.
My granddaughter is visiting this weekend. She is still in diapers (although she's at the stage where she mews "poopoo, poopoo" to indicate the need to unload). Her diapers are paper-thin, but can hold a bucketful of material. Her stroller is an all-terrain vehicle, able to roll over boulders and large dogs with ease. It has holders and chambers for every conceivable item--all it needs is a satellite dish and we can invade some recalcitrant desert nation with it.
I remember cloth diapers--again, you had to actually handle these after they were used--rinse them off in the toilet and fling them into a malodorous (no matter how hard you scrubbed or shined) receptacle called "the diaper pail" (see second paragraph for laundry horror tale). Once they were washed and dried, you had to fold them so they were ready to use. I can still see the high towers of folded cotton, leaning precariously, on the baby's dresser. After many washings, no matter how much you bleached them, they acquired an attractive shade of pale grey. You had to keep the gigantic diaper pins sharp by sticking them into a cake of soap. For extravagant pee-ers, double-diapering was the norm. It's a wonder more kids didn't have their hip-joints permanently popped from accommodating such gigantic wads of fabric.
My granddaughter's car seat is a marvel of engineering--I doubt the Apollo astronauts were protected as well as she is in her automotive cradle. She will inhabit this car seat until high school, or thereabouts. Our kids' car seats, while much safer than the primitive device my younger brother endured (some of you may remember these--a folding canvas contraption that hooked over the front seat, positioning the kid at the perfect height for launghing through the windshield--it also had a little steering wheel so the tyke could steer while sailing through the air) were still light-years away from the high-tech cocoons of today.
You can probably guess where this is going--another of those "we never had that stuff when WE were young and look how we turned out" harangue. You're half right--we never DID have stuff like that when our kids were growing up, but boy howdy, would I have loved to have it--all of it, because it's way better stuff.
But stuff aside, we did the best with what we had. The real job was learning to have two kids instead of one. Because Segundo's arrival changed us from a single to two child family. I don't think we were quite prepared for the degree of change this entailed. It's hard to imagine what we have no experience of, so we tend to envision the same thing, only bigger and more of it. But having two kids is completely different from having one, and not just in terms of more (more laundry, more groceries, more housework, more bodily fluids to clean up, more sleep to lose, etc.). While it does entail all those mores, it's also Something Completely Different, as Cleese, Idle, Palin (Michael, NOT Sarah) and the Python gang might say.
As Segundo's personality emerged (along with his face from the fat rolls of birth--although he would hang onto those famous cheeks for years yet), we were gobsmacked by how different two kids could be. Same gene pool, same environment, but two quite distinct personalities. Segundo was serious but quirky, cracking us up with jokes and antics, furious with us for laughing at them. Primero was affectionate and easy-going--amenable to most everything. The two quickly became a unit--Segundo the Pancho to Primero's Cisco Kid.
It was during this time that "Not Me" moved into our house. Not Me became our ghostly third child. Whenever anything went missing, got broken, messed up or wrecked, it was always Not Me who was the transgressor. "Who broke the cup?" "Not Me!" "Who threw all these toys everywhere?" "Not Me!" "Who chucked the cat off the roof to see if she would land on all fours?" "Not Me!" (more about this later).
One of Not Me's more memorable deeds was uncovered by Jack when the toilet refused to flush. No amount of plunging or snaking would work. Jack, cursing and swearing, finally yanked the toilet off its wax ring and fished out a nice, round apple--intact except for one small bite--that was blocking the drain.
Two pairs of eyes stared at him from shin height. Two mouths offered up the culprit--"Not Me! Not Me!"
Not Me moved in with Segundo and stayed for years. He didn't take up much room. He was always there--no matter how many kids were over, Not Me was there as well. Angry Mom who just dodged shrapnel while weeding garden: "Who threw the aerosol can into the burning barrel?" Little Moron Club Chorus: "Not Me! Not Me! Not Me!"
Not Me stalked us. In the car, grocery shopping, camping trips, Pizza Hut, Burger King, MacDonalds--he was always there. It was Not Me who instigated the infamous Helium Balloon caper at Pizza Hut's grand opening--it's amazing how many balloons a couple of small children can suck dry and how annoyingly loud their shriveled vocal chords can get. I believe we are banned still--"lifetime" is a term tossed after us as we exited.
Apparently Not Me had clones living with all our friends as well. I'm not really sure when Not Me left home--I do know I suffered no empty nest syndrome at his leaving. He just seemed to disappear one day. But I can pinpoint his coming--he came with Segundo.
Segundo brought other things as well. As parents, we now each had a kid to wrangle--no more superior numbers. We achieved a detente of sorts--it was short-lived, only lasting until Tercero showed up, but we did have it there for a while.
Segundo introduced Primero to the concept of sharing--toys, attention (positive AND negative), cookies, his room, bacon, etc. The shared room lasted for several years and brought with it many opportunities for learning--UN peacekeepers could learn a lot from observing shared rooms.
Along with sharing, Segundo brought "He's bugging me!" in its various guises. "He's bugging me" outlasted Not Me and was even more exasperating. It could be initiated by the most innocuous things--air: "He's sucking up all my oxygen!", a glance: "He's LOOKING at me!", area: "He's taking up my space!" It always escalated into "Am not!" "Are too!" etc. etc. or "Did not!" "Did too!" etc. etc. ad nauseam ad infinitum.
Segundo's arrival necessitated a strategy we came to call "Blanket Shit"--essentially punishment that didn't differentiate between instigator and instigatee. We discovered early on that it was far too time-consuming to wade through the rhetoric of fault-finding when sanctions needed to be applied swiftly. Blanket Shit meant that both parties suffered the same consequences, regardless of malfeasance. Of course, we didn't call it Blanket Shit in front of the kids, but between ourselves, the term stuck like, well, like you-know-what to a blanket.
As you can see, Segundo's arrival precipitated many things. In particular, it introduced us, as parents, to the concept of strategy. Because even though the number of heads might have matched (two parents--two kids), kids will always win hands-down in the cunning ingenuity department. We had to hone our wits to stay a step or two ahead. Later, as the boys grew (in age as well as number), we were happy to just keep up. Even that became more and more elusive, as the years progressed. We eventually settled for not being left TOO far behind.
Of course, Segundo also brought a sense of teamwork with him. Primero and he learned to operate as a unit, for good as well as ill. They taught each other many virtues--patience, generosity, cooperation--and in so doing, they taught us as well. For being parents of a two child family is never static--having two kids introduces (in spades, as they say) the concept of dynamics--forces and motion, forces IN motion. And the two forces most in motion are the kids.
For us, having two kids hammered home the idea that family is more than the sum of its parts. We quickly realized that the energy required to herd two small children far outweighed what we expected to expend. I'm sure there is a mathematical formula of some kind (one of those exponential ones that rapidly add up to dizzying amounts) that would explain the exact ratio of parental-energy-to-number-of-kids sort of thing). Throw in two completely different personalities to mess up the numbers, and you understand that you are dealing with a complex entity that defies neat analysis or formulas.
Having two kids introduced our children very early to the idea that the world did not revolve around each of them--a good thing in this world where we all need to learn to share. Thus our two-child family became a primal place of learning this important principle: we defer to the other out of love, not fear or threat of punishment (although the enforced "time out" can be very effective when breaking up your more boisterous disagreements).
Segundo brought all that and more when he came home with us. Of course, without Primero, he wouldn't have been able to do so. Each child plays a pivotal role, for we are all pivots and THE pivot, the centre, all at the same time. If we understand that being the pivot, the centre, is a shared phenomenon, then there is room at the centre for us all. Its economy becomes one of generosity rather than scarcity. We can all stand there, side by side. Perhaps such a centre can hold, unlike the one W.B. Yeats so famously wrote about in 1917: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." ("The Second Coming"). But then, W.B. had just witnessed the Easter Rising and the Great War's beginning. Perhaps he'd also glimpsed the rest of the twentieth century's brutal disintegrations. I prefer to think of Seamus Heaney's (another Irish poet) idea of centre from his 1974 poem "Kinship": "This centre holds / And spreads, / Sump and seedbed / A bag of waters."
The centre shifts and changes, as does the world. We are in a very different place than Yeats's 1917, or even Heaney's 1974. I like to think of Heaney's "sump and seedbed" centre seeping its way into the heart of the world, its "bag of waters" watering all those seeds into a blossoming of new sensibility.
Segundo and Primero are all grown up now, as are Tercero and Cuarto. But Segundo and Primero were the first partners in learning about "other". They set the pattern. And while that pattern looked ferocious and savage at times, beneath its hectic exterior, the basic lessons of love and fellowship were being learned.
And not just by the kids.
I remember washing clothes in a Hoover Spin-Dryer--you actually had to touch the laundry--no fun when it came to poopy diapers (a particularly memorable laundry episode involved an ill-fitting diaper pail lid and some intrepid maggots). Milk was heated in a pot on the stove--it took forever, usually boiled over and made a sticky mess. If you wanted to talk to friends far away, you needed a rich uncle to pay for long distance charges. Phones were rotary monsters that hung on walls with long cords that tangled and strangled or perched, like gigantic insects, on desktops. As for tunes, there was vinyl--you played records on a stereo that had an incredibly expensive (and fragile) thing called a stylus. Styluses and three-year-olds were a bad (and expensive) combination, as we discovered.
My granddaughter is visiting this weekend. She is still in diapers (although she's at the stage where she mews "poopoo, poopoo" to indicate the need to unload). Her diapers are paper-thin, but can hold a bucketful of material. Her stroller is an all-terrain vehicle, able to roll over boulders and large dogs with ease. It has holders and chambers for every conceivable item--all it needs is a satellite dish and we can invade some recalcitrant desert nation with it.
I remember cloth diapers--again, you had to actually handle these after they were used--rinse them off in the toilet and fling them into a malodorous (no matter how hard you scrubbed or shined) receptacle called "the diaper pail" (see second paragraph for laundry horror tale). Once they were washed and dried, you had to fold them so they were ready to use. I can still see the high towers of folded cotton, leaning precariously, on the baby's dresser. After many washings, no matter how much you bleached them, they acquired an attractive shade of pale grey. You had to keep the gigantic diaper pins sharp by sticking them into a cake of soap. For extravagant pee-ers, double-diapering was the norm. It's a wonder more kids didn't have their hip-joints permanently popped from accommodating such gigantic wads of fabric.
My granddaughter's car seat is a marvel of engineering--I doubt the Apollo astronauts were protected as well as she is in her automotive cradle. She will inhabit this car seat until high school, or thereabouts. Our kids' car seats, while much safer than the primitive device my younger brother endured (some of you may remember these--a folding canvas contraption that hooked over the front seat, positioning the kid at the perfect height for launghing through the windshield--it also had a little steering wheel so the tyke could steer while sailing through the air) were still light-years away from the high-tech cocoons of today.
You can probably guess where this is going--another of those "we never had that stuff when WE were young and look how we turned out" harangue. You're half right--we never DID have stuff like that when our kids were growing up, but boy howdy, would I have loved to have it--all of it, because it's way better stuff.
But stuff aside, we did the best with what we had. The real job was learning to have two kids instead of one. Because Segundo's arrival changed us from a single to two child family. I don't think we were quite prepared for the degree of change this entailed. It's hard to imagine what we have no experience of, so we tend to envision the same thing, only bigger and more of it. But having two kids is completely different from having one, and not just in terms of more (more laundry, more groceries, more housework, more bodily fluids to clean up, more sleep to lose, etc.). While it does entail all those mores, it's also Something Completely Different, as Cleese, Idle, Palin (Michael, NOT Sarah) and the Python gang might say.
As Segundo's personality emerged (along with his face from the fat rolls of birth--although he would hang onto those famous cheeks for years yet), we were gobsmacked by how different two kids could be. Same gene pool, same environment, but two quite distinct personalities. Segundo was serious but quirky, cracking us up with jokes and antics, furious with us for laughing at them. Primero was affectionate and easy-going--amenable to most everything. The two quickly became a unit--Segundo the Pancho to Primero's Cisco Kid.
It was during this time that "Not Me" moved into our house. Not Me became our ghostly third child. Whenever anything went missing, got broken, messed up or wrecked, it was always Not Me who was the transgressor. "Who broke the cup?" "Not Me!" "Who threw all these toys everywhere?" "Not Me!" "Who chucked the cat off the roof to see if she would land on all fours?" "Not Me!" (more about this later).
One of Not Me's more memorable deeds was uncovered by Jack when the toilet refused to flush. No amount of plunging or snaking would work. Jack, cursing and swearing, finally yanked the toilet off its wax ring and fished out a nice, round apple--intact except for one small bite--that was blocking the drain.
Two pairs of eyes stared at him from shin height. Two mouths offered up the culprit--"Not Me! Not Me!"
Not Me moved in with Segundo and stayed for years. He didn't take up much room. He was always there--no matter how many kids were over, Not Me was there as well. Angry Mom who just dodged shrapnel while weeding garden: "Who threw the aerosol can into the burning barrel?" Little Moron Club Chorus: "Not Me! Not Me! Not Me!"
Not Me stalked us. In the car, grocery shopping, camping trips, Pizza Hut, Burger King, MacDonalds--he was always there. It was Not Me who instigated the infamous Helium Balloon caper at Pizza Hut's grand opening--it's amazing how many balloons a couple of small children can suck dry and how annoyingly loud their shriveled vocal chords can get. I believe we are banned still--"lifetime" is a term tossed after us as we exited.
Apparently Not Me had clones living with all our friends as well. I'm not really sure when Not Me left home--I do know I suffered no empty nest syndrome at his leaving. He just seemed to disappear one day. But I can pinpoint his coming--he came with Segundo.
Segundo brought other things as well. As parents, we now each had a kid to wrangle--no more superior numbers. We achieved a detente of sorts--it was short-lived, only lasting until Tercero showed up, but we did have it there for a while.
Segundo introduced Primero to the concept of sharing--toys, attention (positive AND negative), cookies, his room, bacon, etc. The shared room lasted for several years and brought with it many opportunities for learning--UN peacekeepers could learn a lot from observing shared rooms.
Along with sharing, Segundo brought "He's bugging me!" in its various guises. "He's bugging me" outlasted Not Me and was even more exasperating. It could be initiated by the most innocuous things--air: "He's sucking up all my oxygen!", a glance: "He's LOOKING at me!", area: "He's taking up my space!" It always escalated into "Am not!" "Are too!" etc. etc. or "Did not!" "Did too!" etc. etc. ad nauseam ad infinitum.
Segundo's arrival necessitated a strategy we came to call "Blanket Shit"--essentially punishment that didn't differentiate between instigator and instigatee. We discovered early on that it was far too time-consuming to wade through the rhetoric of fault-finding when sanctions needed to be applied swiftly. Blanket Shit meant that both parties suffered the same consequences, regardless of malfeasance. Of course, we didn't call it Blanket Shit in front of the kids, but between ourselves, the term stuck like, well, like you-know-what to a blanket.
As you can see, Segundo's arrival precipitated many things. In particular, it introduced us, as parents, to the concept of strategy. Because even though the number of heads might have matched (two parents--two kids), kids will always win hands-down in the cunning ingenuity department. We had to hone our wits to stay a step or two ahead. Later, as the boys grew (in age as well as number), we were happy to just keep up. Even that became more and more elusive, as the years progressed. We eventually settled for not being left TOO far behind.
Of course, Segundo also brought a sense of teamwork with him. Primero and he learned to operate as a unit, for good as well as ill. They taught each other many virtues--patience, generosity, cooperation--and in so doing, they taught us as well. For being parents of a two child family is never static--having two kids introduces (in spades, as they say) the concept of dynamics--forces and motion, forces IN motion. And the two forces most in motion are the kids.
For us, having two kids hammered home the idea that family is more than the sum of its parts. We quickly realized that the energy required to herd two small children far outweighed what we expected to expend. I'm sure there is a mathematical formula of some kind (one of those exponential ones that rapidly add up to dizzying amounts) that would explain the exact ratio of parental-energy-to-number-of-kids sort of thing). Throw in two completely different personalities to mess up the numbers, and you understand that you are dealing with a complex entity that defies neat analysis or formulas.
Having two kids introduced our children very early to the idea that the world did not revolve around each of them--a good thing in this world where we all need to learn to share. Thus our two-child family became a primal place of learning this important principle: we defer to the other out of love, not fear or threat of punishment (although the enforced "time out" can be very effective when breaking up your more boisterous disagreements).
Segundo brought all that and more when he came home with us. Of course, without Primero, he wouldn't have been able to do so. Each child plays a pivotal role, for we are all pivots and THE pivot, the centre, all at the same time. If we understand that being the pivot, the centre, is a shared phenomenon, then there is room at the centre for us all. Its economy becomes one of generosity rather than scarcity. We can all stand there, side by side. Perhaps such a centre can hold, unlike the one W.B. Yeats so famously wrote about in 1917: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." ("The Second Coming"). But then, W.B. had just witnessed the Easter Rising and the Great War's beginning. Perhaps he'd also glimpsed the rest of the twentieth century's brutal disintegrations. I prefer to think of Seamus Heaney's (another Irish poet) idea of centre from his 1974 poem "Kinship": "This centre holds / And spreads, / Sump and seedbed / A bag of waters."
The centre shifts and changes, as does the world. We are in a very different place than Yeats's 1917, or even Heaney's 1974. I like to think of Heaney's "sump and seedbed" centre seeping its way into the heart of the world, its "bag of waters" watering all those seeds into a blossoming of new sensibility.
Segundo and Primero are all grown up now, as are Tercero and Cuarto. But Segundo and Primero were the first partners in learning about "other". They set the pattern. And while that pattern looked ferocious and savage at times, beneath its hectic exterior, the basic lessons of love and fellowship were being learned.
And not just by the kids.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
It Takes a Community....
As I think about what to write for this blog, which, if it follows any chronological order at all, will be about Tercero's arrival into our little family, I find my mind wandering down parallel paths--a wayward tourist who refuses to follow the tour guide impatient of getting on with the day's agenda.
Last week, at my book club's regular gathering, we were discussing Ami McKay's fine novel The Birth House. As we talked about the women in the book and their support of one another's child rearing and other gazillion jobs that women have traditionally done, the subject of our own years as young mothers came up.
I briefly recounted being in a close and supportive community of young (and some not-so-young) parents. The book club members commented that I was fortunate to have been nurtured this way. I've had other conversations with people that indicate such an experience was not universal. Many folks did not have a community watching their backs as they struggled with life, kids, spouses, work, home, etc.
I've been thinking a lot about this--writing the blog has let loose those misty (and sometimes pesky) water-coloured memories, after all. But last week's conversation underscored a fundamental truth for me--what kept me sane all through the "tired years" (as my friend Claire calls them--you know the ones--all those days of running after kids, cleaning up, cooking meals, doing dishes--most days you didn't even get your face washed until supper time) was community.
Word freak that I am, I check with the dictionary to see what "community" really means and find that the word's Latin root is communitas, which is made up of cum (with, together) and munus (gift). Those Latins--always ready to provide roots for the everyday terms we toss around with such abandon. I am struck by the notion that "gift" inhabits the word "community." And "community" has become one of those words that is used a lot these days. Everyone is part of some kind of community, and there are all sorts available: gay-and-lesbian community, immigrant community, environmental community, arts community, seniors community--take your pick. I wonder if there is a folks-who-don't-want-to-be-part-of-a-community community out there somewhere. Likely so.
The ubiquitousness of the term leads me to believe that being part of a community is a very human thing. I think we all yearn to be part of something bigger--just remember Bogie's farewell "hill of beans" speech to Bergman in Casablanca. Many of us belong to several communities, all at once. To be human is, in some way, to be a joiner. What allowed our prehistoric ancestors to survive, according to the paleontologists, was their ability to cooperate, to, as The Beatles commanded, "Come together, right now!" (I never got what the "over me" was all about, but then I never understood the lyrics to "I am the Walrus" either).
We didn't have the sharpest teeth, the fastest legs, the strongest arms, the quickest time as we ran through the jungle (hmmm, first the Beatles and now Fogerty--interesting what pops up...). What humans did have was the ability to cooperate, which Richard Leakey says "must be a very basic motivation in human nature"(Leakey & Lewin, People of the Lake, p.121). I try to imagine those cave-days--"Okay you guys--Oog and Blorp will kill the mastadon, Trull will skin it, Kraab will drag it home--remember, it's the BIGGEST mastadon we ever saw! Everyone got it?"
But back to the gift of community--the munus, as the Latins say. The community of families we were part of back in Herbert was most definitely a gift. Many things distinguished this little community of young parents with oodles of kids living in fixer-uppers and driving balky cars. The cars were mostly old and European--one of several idiosyncrasies that distinguished us. Other peculiarities were energy-efficient wood stoves (this resulted in a spectacular roof-ballet involving Rollie on a cold winter day as he fandango'd two icy stories up trying to quell neighbour Bob's chimney fire), the men wearing sneakers with suits to weddings, a passion for playing RISK on weekend evenings (along with the requisite after-game play-by-play--"Oh why, oh why did I go for Asia SO SOON?"), and an open door/bottomless coffee pot policy when it came to visiting.
We lived within a seven minute walk of one another (ten if you ambled or were shoving an umbrella stroller along the uneven pavement). No one locked doors or phoned ahead. You just grabbed the kids (when they were little) or left a note (when they could read) and headed over. There was usually a line of strollers at the back door and a gaggle of kids in the yard getting dirty (summer) or in the house getting IT dirty (winter). The number of kids grew--they evolved into a pack intent on monkey tricks--a pack that Natalie dubbed "The Little Moron Club" after one of their more harebrained adventures. As the kids grew older, their range increased--they moved from the house and yard onto the streets, the school-ground, the railroad embankment, the fields, the creek.
Primero refers to his Herbert upbringing as his "Tom Sawyer childhood." He and his friends had the luxury, so elusive today, of wandering in the world. The Little Moron Club (membership ever-shifting) built forts, tree-houses, encampments. They played with frogs, newts, tadpoles. They hunted gophers, rabbits and stalked badgers. They ate dirt, bugs and carrots with sand still on them. They fell out of trees, off their bikes, into fresh pavement. Their legs in summer were criss-crossed with the scrapes, scratches and bruises of activity. They engaged in annual, epic green tomato fights (this was encouraged by Rollie, who hucked more green tomatoes than any of the kids--Dee was not happy--she'd been saving them for chutney).
What else distinguished our little community? There were some very strong personalities among its members, as well as a generous supply of eccentricities. Perhaps this is what made it so vital and so much fun. We also shared an understanding of being citizens of a rapidly shrinking globe. We may have been living in the middle of the prairie, but we had a keen sense of participating in a world community gradually waking up to its responsibilities and vast potential. We shared a belief that there was more to the world than met the eyes--that we inhabited a spiritual dimension as well as a physical one, and that we needed to nurture that dimension to be fully alive.
Most of all, I believe, we loved one another--not just despite our different personalities and backgrounds, but because of them. I believe we created, for a time, a web of relationships that cradled all of us in its silky, steel-strong filaments. I use the word "web" deliberately, for it is the master metaphor of all things text and textile--a web is made of the ties-that-bind, literally.
Joe and Allie still live in Herbert, but the rest of us, like dandelion fluff, have scattered with the wind. We're all over the place--all over Saskatchewan, all over the country. Most of us are still married to the same guy. In an age where the divorce rage is fifty percent, this seems remarkable. I'm not sure what it points to--perhaps the thought of jettisoning decades of training is too wearying to contemplate. After all, how many years did it take to get the toilet seat left down? Do you really want to spend more time teaching someone the proper answer to "Do these jeans make my butt look big?" And you are unlikely to find a male who will respond with something when you ask "What are you thinking?" It's been my experience that men's thought balloons are often empty.
So we stay in touch. Our kids attend each other's weddings. Facebook abounds with buddies sharing the latest news. The web filaments may be stretched across time and space, but they retain a tenacious strength. As we morph into grandparents, we hope this new generation of parents and children finds its own home-web, wherever that may be.
Back again to munus--to the gift of community. My mind circles this notion like a retriever who's lost the scent--is it human nature to look back with longing on those years? I remember (hmmm, will have to check how many times this phrase crops up in this blog) our neighbours in Herbert, Barb and Eldon, who lived across the street from us. Barb and Eldon were in their forties at the time--they'd raised five kids, a couple of whom we used as babysitters and all of whom became our friends. Barb had the real-life equivalent of a Ph.D. in practical parenting--there was little she didn't know. Possessed of a quirky sense of humour, she would minister to us younger moms with whimsy and wisdom and lots of strong coffee. "Now you girls remember," she'd say, "enjoy these years when your kids are young--little kids, little problems. You'll look back on these years with great fondness, so cherish them as they come."
We would look at each other in horror, consumed as we were by poopy diapers, pukey kids, messy houses (usually in various states of re-construction), empty bank accounts, overgrown yards, and think "It gets WORSE?"
Barb was right. And I'm thankful that I get to tell her so regularly, as she and Eldon live just up-island from us (I enjoy using the term "up island"--it sounds so Vancouver-Island-Native-speak), bless their great hearts. It's almost like having them across the street, only without the blizzards (for which I am endlessly thankful). I do look back at those years with fondness, and realize that I cherished them anyway, even if I didn't realize it at the time, what which being so busy trying to survive them. It's a great wonder how humans can do more than one thing at a time.
I cherish them still--along with the people who made them so memorable. My memory is full of the most amazing images (some of which Jack has managed to scan into his digital album, although at a snail's pace as he has not yet moved through the entire process of purchasing the doo-dad that will speed this up).
I remember whoever came home with a new baby (this happened a LOT for a while) had the first visit--along came the casserole and the toddlers checking out the new arrival. They would peer at the wrapped package and then go off to play, satisfied that the interloper would not interfere with the doings of The Little Moron Club for a while yet.
I remember Rollie dancing on neighbour Bob's roof, trying to put out the chimney fire as Duane and Jack raced over with their fire-extinguishers. Thankfully Rollie lived, as did the house. The stove was a bit of a mess, however.
I remember Natalie phoning us to come quick! We raced over to find her in hysterics as she scrubbed away the signs of yet another infamous poop party--Twins Evan and Luke liked to paint the walls with their poo, which wound up everywhere--on the walls, on the cribs, even little balls of it in their hair. If one twin didn't have any in his diaper, the other would scoop some out and toss it over. Laughing so hard she cried, Natalie said she'd rather howl than bawl.
I remember Joe, famously unable to handle the sight of blood, freaking out when Cameron stepped on the rake. Allie called Jack over to see if Cameron needed to go to the hospital, as Joe, running in circles and flapping his arms like a chicken, was all but useless.
I remember Dee dispensing level-headedness along with her coffee--Dee, our safe port in emotional storms.
I remember, me--just like all those Quebeckers on their license plates--so much more evocative than "Land of Living Skies" (the less-than-stellar Saskatchewan motto whatever it means--I've always thought "It's a Dry Cold" much more apt). As I remember, I am thankful for the gift that was my community of brothers and sisters who were moms and dads, just like us. Just learning about life, like we were. Trying to do a good job of raising kids without a manual, just like we were. We were each other's sounding boards, therapists, nannies, recreational coordinators, EMT's, caterers, wet-nurses (at times), mechanics, friends, allies, compatriots, amigos, etc. We shared our labour, our lives and, most of all, our love. Sometimes we got irritated with one another, with all those eccentric, strong personalities, but somehow we blundered through--it seemed to take more energy being pissed off at someone than to shrug it off. What with the ever-burgeoning Little Moron Club to ride herd on, we had no extra energy anyway.
If wishes were fishes, we'd swim all day long. But wishes we do have, for a'that (as Mr. Robbie Burns might say). And I wish, for all new moms and dads out there, many of whom are former members of The Little Moron Club, the same kind of safety-web we had when we were learning to be parents while still trying to keep the ability to play. Because we did play, and had a lot of fun. I remember (there it is again!) backyard wiener roasts, camping trips, cross-country-ski junkets, RISK tournaments, Hallowe'en parties (some memorable costumes--Duane's dirty old man fondling Natalie's prim prom-queen comes to mind--maybe Jack has a slide?), pot-luck dinners (so many people sometimes that the plates were passed, hand to hand, like pails in a bucket-brigade), and many conversations over coffee--philosophical conversations, spiritual discussions, nonsensical musings, emotional sharings.
I am thankful to all my brothers and sisters, my cum plus munus. While we no longer live within seven minutes of each other (ten if we amble or are shoving an umbrella stroller along the broken pavement), you all live in my heart, where it takes no time at all to come together.
Last week, at my book club's regular gathering, we were discussing Ami McKay's fine novel The Birth House. As we talked about the women in the book and their support of one another's child rearing and other gazillion jobs that women have traditionally done, the subject of our own years as young mothers came up.
I briefly recounted being in a close and supportive community of young (and some not-so-young) parents. The book club members commented that I was fortunate to have been nurtured this way. I've had other conversations with people that indicate such an experience was not universal. Many folks did not have a community watching their backs as they struggled with life, kids, spouses, work, home, etc.
I've been thinking a lot about this--writing the blog has let loose those misty (and sometimes pesky) water-coloured memories, after all. But last week's conversation underscored a fundamental truth for me--what kept me sane all through the "tired years" (as my friend Claire calls them--you know the ones--all those days of running after kids, cleaning up, cooking meals, doing dishes--most days you didn't even get your face washed until supper time) was community.
Word freak that I am, I check with the dictionary to see what "community" really means and find that the word's Latin root is communitas, which is made up of cum (with, together) and munus (gift). Those Latins--always ready to provide roots for the everyday terms we toss around with such abandon. I am struck by the notion that "gift" inhabits the word "community." And "community" has become one of those words that is used a lot these days. Everyone is part of some kind of community, and there are all sorts available: gay-and-lesbian community, immigrant community, environmental community, arts community, seniors community--take your pick. I wonder if there is a folks-who-don't-want-to-be-part-of-a-community community out there somewhere. Likely so.
The ubiquitousness of the term leads me to believe that being part of a community is a very human thing. I think we all yearn to be part of something bigger--just remember Bogie's farewell "hill of beans" speech to Bergman in Casablanca. Many of us belong to several communities, all at once. To be human is, in some way, to be a joiner. What allowed our prehistoric ancestors to survive, according to the paleontologists, was their ability to cooperate, to, as The Beatles commanded, "Come together, right now!" (I never got what the "over me" was all about, but then I never understood the lyrics to "I am the Walrus" either).
We didn't have the sharpest teeth, the fastest legs, the strongest arms, the quickest time as we ran through the jungle (hmmm, first the Beatles and now Fogerty--interesting what pops up...). What humans did have was the ability to cooperate, which Richard Leakey says "must be a very basic motivation in human nature"(Leakey & Lewin, People of the Lake, p.121). I try to imagine those cave-days--"Okay you guys--Oog and Blorp will kill the mastadon, Trull will skin it, Kraab will drag it home--remember, it's the BIGGEST mastadon we ever saw! Everyone got it?"
But back to the gift of community--the munus, as the Latins say. The community of families we were part of back in Herbert was most definitely a gift. Many things distinguished this little community of young parents with oodles of kids living in fixer-uppers and driving balky cars. The cars were mostly old and European--one of several idiosyncrasies that distinguished us. Other peculiarities were energy-efficient wood stoves (this resulted in a spectacular roof-ballet involving Rollie on a cold winter day as he fandango'd two icy stories up trying to quell neighbour Bob's chimney fire), the men wearing sneakers with suits to weddings, a passion for playing RISK on weekend evenings (along with the requisite after-game play-by-play--"Oh why, oh why did I go for Asia SO SOON?"), and an open door/bottomless coffee pot policy when it came to visiting.
We lived within a seven minute walk of one another (ten if you ambled or were shoving an umbrella stroller along the uneven pavement). No one locked doors or phoned ahead. You just grabbed the kids (when they were little) or left a note (when they could read) and headed over. There was usually a line of strollers at the back door and a gaggle of kids in the yard getting dirty (summer) or in the house getting IT dirty (winter). The number of kids grew--they evolved into a pack intent on monkey tricks--a pack that Natalie dubbed "The Little Moron Club" after one of their more harebrained adventures. As the kids grew older, their range increased--they moved from the house and yard onto the streets, the school-ground, the railroad embankment, the fields, the creek.
Primero refers to his Herbert upbringing as his "Tom Sawyer childhood." He and his friends had the luxury, so elusive today, of wandering in the world. The Little Moron Club (membership ever-shifting) built forts, tree-houses, encampments. They played with frogs, newts, tadpoles. They hunted gophers, rabbits and stalked badgers. They ate dirt, bugs and carrots with sand still on them. They fell out of trees, off their bikes, into fresh pavement. Their legs in summer were criss-crossed with the scrapes, scratches and bruises of activity. They engaged in annual, epic green tomato fights (this was encouraged by Rollie, who hucked more green tomatoes than any of the kids--Dee was not happy--she'd been saving them for chutney).
What else distinguished our little community? There were some very strong personalities among its members, as well as a generous supply of eccentricities. Perhaps this is what made it so vital and so much fun. We also shared an understanding of being citizens of a rapidly shrinking globe. We may have been living in the middle of the prairie, but we had a keen sense of participating in a world community gradually waking up to its responsibilities and vast potential. We shared a belief that there was more to the world than met the eyes--that we inhabited a spiritual dimension as well as a physical one, and that we needed to nurture that dimension to be fully alive.
Most of all, I believe, we loved one another--not just despite our different personalities and backgrounds, but because of them. I believe we created, for a time, a web of relationships that cradled all of us in its silky, steel-strong filaments. I use the word "web" deliberately, for it is the master metaphor of all things text and textile--a web is made of the ties-that-bind, literally.
Joe and Allie still live in Herbert, but the rest of us, like dandelion fluff, have scattered with the wind. We're all over the place--all over Saskatchewan, all over the country. Most of us are still married to the same guy. In an age where the divorce rage is fifty percent, this seems remarkable. I'm not sure what it points to--perhaps the thought of jettisoning decades of training is too wearying to contemplate. After all, how many years did it take to get the toilet seat left down? Do you really want to spend more time teaching someone the proper answer to "Do these jeans make my butt look big?" And you are unlikely to find a male who will respond with something when you ask "What are you thinking?" It's been my experience that men's thought balloons are often empty.
So we stay in touch. Our kids attend each other's weddings. Facebook abounds with buddies sharing the latest news. The web filaments may be stretched across time and space, but they retain a tenacious strength. As we morph into grandparents, we hope this new generation of parents and children finds its own home-web, wherever that may be.
Back again to munus--to the gift of community. My mind circles this notion like a retriever who's lost the scent--is it human nature to look back with longing on those years? I remember (hmmm, will have to check how many times this phrase crops up in this blog) our neighbours in Herbert, Barb and Eldon, who lived across the street from us. Barb and Eldon were in their forties at the time--they'd raised five kids, a couple of whom we used as babysitters and all of whom became our friends. Barb had the real-life equivalent of a Ph.D. in practical parenting--there was little she didn't know. Possessed of a quirky sense of humour, she would minister to us younger moms with whimsy and wisdom and lots of strong coffee. "Now you girls remember," she'd say, "enjoy these years when your kids are young--little kids, little problems. You'll look back on these years with great fondness, so cherish them as they come."
We would look at each other in horror, consumed as we were by poopy diapers, pukey kids, messy houses (usually in various states of re-construction), empty bank accounts, overgrown yards, and think "It gets WORSE?"
Barb was right. And I'm thankful that I get to tell her so regularly, as she and Eldon live just up-island from us (I enjoy using the term "up island"--it sounds so Vancouver-Island-Native-speak), bless their great hearts. It's almost like having them across the street, only without the blizzards (for which I am endlessly thankful). I do look back at those years with fondness, and realize that I cherished them anyway, even if I didn't realize it at the time, what which being so busy trying to survive them. It's a great wonder how humans can do more than one thing at a time.
I cherish them still--along with the people who made them so memorable. My memory is full of the most amazing images (some of which Jack has managed to scan into his digital album, although at a snail's pace as he has not yet moved through the entire process of purchasing the doo-dad that will speed this up).
I remember whoever came home with a new baby (this happened a LOT for a while) had the first visit--along came the casserole and the toddlers checking out the new arrival. They would peer at the wrapped package and then go off to play, satisfied that the interloper would not interfere with the doings of The Little Moron Club for a while yet.
I remember Rollie dancing on neighbour Bob's roof, trying to put out the chimney fire as Duane and Jack raced over with their fire-extinguishers. Thankfully Rollie lived, as did the house. The stove was a bit of a mess, however.
I remember Natalie phoning us to come quick! We raced over to find her in hysterics as she scrubbed away the signs of yet another infamous poop party--Twins Evan and Luke liked to paint the walls with their poo, which wound up everywhere--on the walls, on the cribs, even little balls of it in their hair. If one twin didn't have any in his diaper, the other would scoop some out and toss it over. Laughing so hard she cried, Natalie said she'd rather howl than bawl.
I remember Joe, famously unable to handle the sight of blood, freaking out when Cameron stepped on the rake. Allie called Jack over to see if Cameron needed to go to the hospital, as Joe, running in circles and flapping his arms like a chicken, was all but useless.
I remember Dee dispensing level-headedness along with her coffee--Dee, our safe port in emotional storms.
I remember, me--just like all those Quebeckers on their license plates--so much more evocative than "Land of Living Skies" (the less-than-stellar Saskatchewan motto whatever it means--I've always thought "It's a Dry Cold" much more apt). As I remember, I am thankful for the gift that was my community of brothers and sisters who were moms and dads, just like us. Just learning about life, like we were. Trying to do a good job of raising kids without a manual, just like we were. We were each other's sounding boards, therapists, nannies, recreational coordinators, EMT's, caterers, wet-nurses (at times), mechanics, friends, allies, compatriots, amigos, etc. We shared our labour, our lives and, most of all, our love. Sometimes we got irritated with one another, with all those eccentric, strong personalities, but somehow we blundered through--it seemed to take more energy being pissed off at someone than to shrug it off. What with the ever-burgeoning Little Moron Club to ride herd on, we had no extra energy anyway.
If wishes were fishes, we'd swim all day long. But wishes we do have, for a'that (as Mr. Robbie Burns might say). And I wish, for all new moms and dads out there, many of whom are former members of The Little Moron Club, the same kind of safety-web we had when we were learning to be parents while still trying to keep the ability to play. Because we did play, and had a lot of fun. I remember (there it is again!) backyard wiener roasts, camping trips, cross-country-ski junkets, RISK tournaments, Hallowe'en parties (some memorable costumes--Duane's dirty old man fondling Natalie's prim prom-queen comes to mind--maybe Jack has a slide?), pot-luck dinners (so many people sometimes that the plates were passed, hand to hand, like pails in a bucket-brigade), and many conversations over coffee--philosophical conversations, spiritual discussions, nonsensical musings, emotional sharings.
I am thankful to all my brothers and sisters, my cum plus munus. While we no longer live within seven minutes of each other (ten if we amble or are shoving an umbrella stroller along the broken pavement), you all live in my heart, where it takes no time at all to come together.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Blast From the Past
Since beginning this blog, I've had some great feedback from family and friends--you all know who you are. Many of you were there, at the beginning. Some of you are new to our little eccentricities.
Anyway, you may be seeing photos posted soon. Jack, who never needs much encouragement to buy a doo-dad of some sort, has purchased a scanner that turns slides into digitized (is that a word?) photos. Of course, he had to research this on the net--consumer reports, industry reports, Gallup and Ipsos-Reid polls, etc. Those of you who know Jack will understand that this is a crucial and often lengthy process in itself. Then he had to scrutinize Craig's List, E-Bay, Used Every-city-on-the-planet, etc. to see what used units were going for. Then he had to buy a new one, bring it home, try it out, be dissatisfied with it, take it back, lose his bill, argue with the guy at the Service Desk, persuade the guy at the Service Desk to give him a complete refund sans bill, and return to the used sites. Then he had to find one, enter into heavy negotiations with whomever to make the deal as sweet as possible. Our boys will know that this will now become the saga, soon to be oft-told by Jack, of "how he got the best deal ever on the best used scanner in the universe".
To make a long story shorter, he now has the scanner thing-a-ma-jig. But the process doesn't end there. He had to figure out how to hook it up to his computer, make it run, and turn all our slides into digital photos. We have a LOT of slides--when we were young and broke, slides were the most economical way to take photos--processing was cheaper, and the colours! Just have a listen to Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"--he says it all.
Last night, after much cursing and swearing at a balky key-board, touchy software interface (I pick up these terms from time to time--am taking a shot in the dark here about how to use them), finally managed to scan five slides--all in only four hours. Apparently there is another doo-dad out there that will scan several slides at once--he's in the research phase right now.
Anyway, the photos are, quite literally, blasts from the past. Of course we have photo albums, but we didn't start prints until well into the Eighties. For the B.C. (Before Children) shots, we only have the slides.
It's a bit disconcerting when your husband of over thirty years looks at a photo of your younger self and asks (with an incredulous note in his voice), "Holy cow, is that YOU?"
You burst into tears, flee into the bathroom, lock yourself in and peer into the mirror. "Holy shit!" you say to yourself, "WAS that me? And is this me NOW?" You may have thought those morning glances in the mirror to check whether there's toast in your teeth reveal the same face you've had for the last thirty-odd years, plus a wrinkle here or there. But you, my friend, have been kidding yourself. It's not the same face at all. That face lies beneath the one you've got now--WAY beneath--and it is disappearing at an exponential rate.
While your face has gone south, your body likely has been accompanying it. Try getting into your wedding dress, if you still have it. You may be able to wedge yourself into it, but zipping it shut is a whole other thing. Or try getting into those skinny jeans you saved from the Eighties (as a fashion artifact, you told yourself--maybe I'll wear them if they ever come back in style). Well--now's your chance--skinny jeans are back--try yours on--I dare you. Or try running up a set of stairs (remember how many times a day you took these while doing laundry, running after kids, cleaning the house, etc.?). You may wish to consult your physician before this last one, however.
Anyway, back to the slides (our culture punishes us enough for getting older--why am I helping it along?). I am thinking that no generation has been so relentlessly documented, filmed, photographed, video'd, as our kids. While we baby boomers had our fair share of eight millimeter home movies (you remember those--where everyone is squinting in the blinding light, frozen in place because the guy on the other end of the camera has just ordered them to do something funny), slides (and the accompanying rite of passage for all teenaged dates--the FAMILY SLIDE NIGHT), photos, etc. But our kids have lived through slides, photos, videos, and now digital cameras, cell-phone cameras, shoe-phone cameras, etc. Their every move has been scrutinized and documented. Babies of baby-boomers, this is your life! And more of your life! And yet more life!
Jack has been following my blog--he is registered as an official follower, as "Jack"--the quotation marks are a self-referential nod-and-wink, but it's him, all right. Since he's become a follower, he's turned into a bit of a pain-in-the-ass (well, okay, MORE of a pain in the ass that usual)--"Why don't you put in the part about blah! blah! blah!" "That's not right--what really happened was blah! blah! blah!" "You forgot to talk about blah! blah! blah! blah!" (All you wives out there will know what I mean).
The Breakfast post seems to have really set him off. He wants to engage Primero in an online continuation of the bacon-cooking debate. He also wants to add more pointers about cooking bacon and eggs. I told him to go get his own blog (among other things).
Anyway, the reason for Jack's purchasing of the scanner doo-dad was so that photos of our collective life could be posted to illustrate the blog posts. I told him to go ahead (sometimes it's easier to just agree), thinking the process of research, search, buy/return, wheel and deal would proceed at its usual glacial pace. What I didn't figure on was Jack's desire to participate in this memory sharing. He worked his way through the entire process in record time--as mentioned, by last night he had five slides done.
Besides the photo of myself (and his sensitive comment) that sent me sobbing into the bathroom, he scanned a couple of photos of the boys as babies/toddlers in our first house (remember the hell hole?).
"Wow," he said, looking at the untaped drywall, the rusty tub that stuck out into the dining room, the torn fibre-board that backed the taps, "It really was a dump, wasn't it?"
There's no way we would move into such a place now. I wonder, if we were young again, would we do so again? I don't know. Do young couples just getting started move into dives and dream of fixing them up? I'm sure they do--I think it's a function of youth and energy and vision and time. When you're young, there's all the time in the world. When you've used up more of that time than you've got left, your priorities shift. You also tend to look backwards a lot. This may simply be human nature--after all, you've got more material to look back at than you have to look forward to.
Jack wondered about posting these pictures--"The kids might be mad at us for forcing them to grow up in a dump!" he said. I pointed out to him that they had plenty of other stuff to be mad at us about without resorting to raw drywall and shabby bathrooms. I also mentioned that he'd worked hard transforming the hell-hole into an actual house. The process, while lengthy (at times it seemed endless), was never dull. I can put up with many things, but boredom is not one of them.
As for the boys, I don't think growing up in a construction zone has emotionally scarred them. Physically, yes, especially Primero, but that is another story. In fact, all our boys have turned out remarkably well (aside from the odd eccentricity). They have good work ethics (now that they've moved out, that is), they have chosen amazing life-partners (except for Tercero--he's adamant that nothing will happen in that direction until he hits forty--we'll see--he does have three sisters-in-law, after all). They all evince the many virtues that we, as parents, hope and pretty much know are lurking beneath sometimes recalcitrant exteriors.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. As a writer, I'll take the thousand words any day. But sometimes pictures are worth a great deal--perhaps not words, bit in their ability to conjure up past reality, photos have few equals (except for, perhaps, the sense of smell--read your Proust!). And so Jack's project of turning a part of our past that is not easily accessible (you need to find the slide projector, the screen, and the battered suitcase that all the slides have been shoved in, and WHO was last in there messing up his organizing system, anyway?) into images that can join the stream of binary digits ("billions and billions of them" as Carl Sagan might have said) that circle the virtual world, binding us together into McLuhan's global village (hmm--Sagan and McLuhan in the same sentence!).
So the slide-scanning continues--it just may become, for a little while at least, Jack's "goddamn raison-d'etre" (to quote Nathan Arizona Senior). For us, it is a way of seeing our past--did we really look like that? Did we really live there? Were those kids ever that small? Why did the mullet last as long as it did?
I wonder how the next generation, our grandchildren's, will experience the documentation of their lives? One thing I know--it will be thorough. Sixty-odd years from now, when they are living on the Planet Zircon colony, they will beam their holographs into the air, look at each other and say, "Holy cow! Is that really YOU?"
Anyway, you may be seeing photos posted soon. Jack, who never needs much encouragement to buy a doo-dad of some sort, has purchased a scanner that turns slides into digitized (is that a word?) photos. Of course, he had to research this on the net--consumer reports, industry reports, Gallup and Ipsos-Reid polls, etc. Those of you who know Jack will understand that this is a crucial and often lengthy process in itself. Then he had to scrutinize Craig's List, E-Bay, Used Every-city-on-the-planet, etc. to see what used units were going for. Then he had to buy a new one, bring it home, try it out, be dissatisfied with it, take it back, lose his bill, argue with the guy at the Service Desk, persuade the guy at the Service Desk to give him a complete refund sans bill, and return to the used sites. Then he had to find one, enter into heavy negotiations with whomever to make the deal as sweet as possible. Our boys will know that this will now become the saga, soon to be oft-told by Jack, of "how he got the best deal ever on the best used scanner in the universe".
To make a long story shorter, he now has the scanner thing-a-ma-jig. But the process doesn't end there. He had to figure out how to hook it up to his computer, make it run, and turn all our slides into digital photos. We have a LOT of slides--when we were young and broke, slides were the most economical way to take photos--processing was cheaper, and the colours! Just have a listen to Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"--he says it all.
Last night, after much cursing and swearing at a balky key-board, touchy software interface (I pick up these terms from time to time--am taking a shot in the dark here about how to use them), finally managed to scan five slides--all in only four hours. Apparently there is another doo-dad out there that will scan several slides at once--he's in the research phase right now.
Anyway, the photos are, quite literally, blasts from the past. Of course we have photo albums, but we didn't start prints until well into the Eighties. For the B.C. (Before Children) shots, we only have the slides.
It's a bit disconcerting when your husband of over thirty years looks at a photo of your younger self and asks (with an incredulous note in his voice), "Holy cow, is that YOU?"
You burst into tears, flee into the bathroom, lock yourself in and peer into the mirror. "Holy shit!" you say to yourself, "WAS that me? And is this me NOW?" You may have thought those morning glances in the mirror to check whether there's toast in your teeth reveal the same face you've had for the last thirty-odd years, plus a wrinkle here or there. But you, my friend, have been kidding yourself. It's not the same face at all. That face lies beneath the one you've got now--WAY beneath--and it is disappearing at an exponential rate.
While your face has gone south, your body likely has been accompanying it. Try getting into your wedding dress, if you still have it. You may be able to wedge yourself into it, but zipping it shut is a whole other thing. Or try getting into those skinny jeans you saved from the Eighties (as a fashion artifact, you told yourself--maybe I'll wear them if they ever come back in style). Well--now's your chance--skinny jeans are back--try yours on--I dare you. Or try running up a set of stairs (remember how many times a day you took these while doing laundry, running after kids, cleaning the house, etc.?). You may wish to consult your physician before this last one, however.
Anyway, back to the slides (our culture punishes us enough for getting older--why am I helping it along?). I am thinking that no generation has been so relentlessly documented, filmed, photographed, video'd, as our kids. While we baby boomers had our fair share of eight millimeter home movies (you remember those--where everyone is squinting in the blinding light, frozen in place because the guy on the other end of the camera has just ordered them to do something funny), slides (and the accompanying rite of passage for all teenaged dates--the FAMILY SLIDE NIGHT), photos, etc. But our kids have lived through slides, photos, videos, and now digital cameras, cell-phone cameras, shoe-phone cameras, etc. Their every move has been scrutinized and documented. Babies of baby-boomers, this is your life! And more of your life! And yet more life!
Jack has been following my blog--he is registered as an official follower, as "Jack"--the quotation marks are a self-referential nod-and-wink, but it's him, all right. Since he's become a follower, he's turned into a bit of a pain-in-the-ass (well, okay, MORE of a pain in the ass that usual)--"Why don't you put in the part about blah! blah! blah!" "That's not right--what really happened was blah! blah! blah!" "You forgot to talk about blah! blah! blah! blah!" (All you wives out there will know what I mean).
The Breakfast post seems to have really set him off. He wants to engage Primero in an online continuation of the bacon-cooking debate. He also wants to add more pointers about cooking bacon and eggs. I told him to go get his own blog (among other things).
Anyway, the reason for Jack's purchasing of the scanner doo-dad was so that photos of our collective life could be posted to illustrate the blog posts. I told him to go ahead (sometimes it's easier to just agree), thinking the process of research, search, buy/return, wheel and deal would proceed at its usual glacial pace. What I didn't figure on was Jack's desire to participate in this memory sharing. He worked his way through the entire process in record time--as mentioned, by last night he had five slides done.
Besides the photo of myself (and his sensitive comment) that sent me sobbing into the bathroom, he scanned a couple of photos of the boys as babies/toddlers in our first house (remember the hell hole?).
"Wow," he said, looking at the untaped drywall, the rusty tub that stuck out into the dining room, the torn fibre-board that backed the taps, "It really was a dump, wasn't it?"
There's no way we would move into such a place now. I wonder, if we were young again, would we do so again? I don't know. Do young couples just getting started move into dives and dream of fixing them up? I'm sure they do--I think it's a function of youth and energy and vision and time. When you're young, there's all the time in the world. When you've used up more of that time than you've got left, your priorities shift. You also tend to look backwards a lot. This may simply be human nature--after all, you've got more material to look back at than you have to look forward to.
Jack wondered about posting these pictures--"The kids might be mad at us for forcing them to grow up in a dump!" he said. I pointed out to him that they had plenty of other stuff to be mad at us about without resorting to raw drywall and shabby bathrooms. I also mentioned that he'd worked hard transforming the hell-hole into an actual house. The process, while lengthy (at times it seemed endless), was never dull. I can put up with many things, but boredom is not one of them.
As for the boys, I don't think growing up in a construction zone has emotionally scarred them. Physically, yes, especially Primero, but that is another story. In fact, all our boys have turned out remarkably well (aside from the odd eccentricity). They have good work ethics (now that they've moved out, that is), they have chosen amazing life-partners (except for Tercero--he's adamant that nothing will happen in that direction until he hits forty--we'll see--he does have three sisters-in-law, after all). They all evince the many virtues that we, as parents, hope and pretty much know are lurking beneath sometimes recalcitrant exteriors.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. As a writer, I'll take the thousand words any day. But sometimes pictures are worth a great deal--perhaps not words, bit in their ability to conjure up past reality, photos have few equals (except for, perhaps, the sense of smell--read your Proust!). And so Jack's project of turning a part of our past that is not easily accessible (you need to find the slide projector, the screen, and the battered suitcase that all the slides have been shoved in, and WHO was last in there messing up his organizing system, anyway?) into images that can join the stream of binary digits ("billions and billions of them" as Carl Sagan might have said) that circle the virtual world, binding us together into McLuhan's global village (hmm--Sagan and McLuhan in the same sentence!).
So the slide-scanning continues--it just may become, for a little while at least, Jack's "goddamn raison-d'etre" (to quote Nathan Arizona Senior). For us, it is a way of seeing our past--did we really look like that? Did we really live there? Were those kids ever that small? Why did the mullet last as long as it did?
I wonder how the next generation, our grandchildren's, will experience the documentation of their lives? One thing I know--it will be thorough. Sixty-odd years from now, when they are living on the Planet Zircon colony, they will beam their holographs into the air, look at each other and say, "Holy cow! Is that really YOU?"
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