out of the loop

Though Isaac has decided to forego his past habit of entering the library at a run screaming “TRUUUUUCK!!!!! BOOOOOOOK!!!!!” at the top of his lungs, he still expects that these bastions of literacy be equipped with an unending supply of books on vehicles of large proportions and the holy scripture on which his religion is based is a slim volume titled My Truck Is Stuck. My open-minded child is not opposed to reading books that aren’t about trucks, but while on site, it isn’t his mission to deal in such things.

Any library visit involves Isaac pulling book after book off the shelf in search of trucks, and me lagging behind him pulling off anything that looks like maybe it could contain a story or theme of interest or at least is nicely illustrated. Since I am usually trying to keep him from unshelving the entire children’s section, I don’t look very carefully at the books I’m grabbing. Often, when I get them home they are not so hot. The pool of horrible kids’ books is wide and deep.

Some of you may be familiar with Elmer the patchwork elephant who stars in his own series. I knew of Elmer, had seen the stuffed toy, and even own a bilingual board book about his colors that I quite like. And sometimes when you get to know someone too well, it ruins everything.

Apparently, Elmer has a cousin – Wilbur. Wilbur is checkered (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Wilbur is also, apparently, a ventriloquist.

Now, some women complain that they feel divorced from the professional world after having kids and leaving the workforce for a while, like they are out of the loop and haven’t kept up with new developments. Has something crazy happened in the world of literature while I was busy getting my son to 2 and a half? Have I missed something? Is this now a common or useful literary device? – to supply your patchwork elephant with a family member who can throw his voice?

The set up was smooooth. It went something like “Wilbur was a ventriloquist.” Uh, yeah. So, Elmer sets off into the jungle to find Baby Elephant’s lost teddy bear. He talks to the lions, the tigers, and a few other wild creatures, who tell him they haven’t seen the teddy bear. Then, he discovers the bear, who calls out to him “I’m lost! I’m lost!” to which Elmer responds in utter shock, “You can talk?” But don’t be silly, it was Wilbur, his black and white checkered cousin ventriloquist playing a trick. Whew. For a minute there, I thought they were going to step over the line and ask me to suspend belief in a way I just wasn’t ready to.

how far the apple falls from the tree

Isaac has been whining about Daddy all morning, so we drive up to Mike’s office and meet him for lunch.

We wander together into one of the lunch rooms that shares space with a book exchange library. Isaac takes to the shelves and begins flipping through mystery paperbacks.

“What’s that book about?” Mike asks him.

“Words,” Isaac says plaintively, placing it on the floor and digging out another.

After a brief look, his fears are confirmed: “Dit one ‘bout words too,” he sighs.

tell tale signs

A sure way to tell if someone has no children, or alot of extra time on their hands (actually, the two are synonymous): They watch you walk to your car with babe in arms then decide to wait for your parking space.

success comes with its own challenges

In a crowded restaurant at lunch, Isaac returns from the restroom with his dad.

At the top of his lungs:
“ME GO POOPY IN THE POTTY!!!!!!”

so close

"Mama! Knock, knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Ummm. Me not sure."

false dichotomies

I still remember when Isaac was about 10 weeks old. I was talking to my sister on the phone, telling her that lately Isaac wouldn’t always fall asleep right after I fed him and I didn’t know what was wrong.

“What should I do?”

- a beat, then…

“Interact. With. Your. Baby,” came the reply.

I was panicked.

How? What do you mean “interact??”

I know how to change diapers, take walks, and breast feed (sort of). Now you’re expanding my job description? I’m not ready!

So it has been ever since – running to catch up with the next phase Isaac has moved on to while loathe to relinquish my comfortable hold on what I had worked so hard to get down in the last phase.

Something else has also stayed the same – the choice of “to do for” versus “to engage with.”

“To do for” is the more comfortable of the two – the rules are clear and the route is (mainly) undisputed, e.g., baby needs lunch for preschool tomorrow. Action: make lunch for baby. These lists of “to do” not only fill time, but release me in some small way to my adult thoughts –
call about playdate,
buy diapers,
return library books,
wipe son’s nose.

Naturally, baby barges in on the “to do” list. I find I usually become most annoyed at Isaac when I’m on a roll with “to do” and he’s mucking it up with “engage” –

call about playdate = “Me talk! Meeeeeeeeeeee TALK!”
buy diapers = “No sit in cart!” followed closely by begging for some sort of dinosaur cookie lamentably placed front and center at the check out.
return library books = scattering books randomly about the building then stamping his entire body with the due date.
wipe son’s nose = hiding in the closet to the tune of “Not see me, Mama!”

I once held a job (I know, just stay with me here) in which I had much creative freedom in how to fill my days. New projects were welcomed, new directions expected. Sometimes, it was nothing short of torturous, my battered soul longing for a form to fill out.

Prior to the job, I once had a graduate professor who warned me in the margins of my thesis draft to “beware false dichotomies.” I’ve thought of that advice more often than I can relate in the last eight years. “To do for” and “engage” are likewise part of the same whole. The part of me that wants to find out where they meet, leaves the list lying around the house until, “Mama, me draw on dis?”

“Yeah, Iz, go ahead.”

Vancouver continued (again), i.e. Chapter 3

There is a longing that comes and goes. It's about my former life, or at least an imagined former life, in which I might visit a city, say, a city in the Pacific Northwest, a cosmopolitan city of great beauty, with more water sculpture and fountains per capita than any other, a city full of coffee houses and playhouses, and restaurants. I might go in them, enter and be entertained, enter with a partner no less, speak softly over goblets of shiraz, wiping the corners of my mouth with the sage napkin before replacing it on the black lacquered table and rising to leave again. It is in these settings that the longing comes rather than goes.

Isaac chose this moment, this time of longing to act out what are no doubt growing pains of the emotional, psychological and physical kind. What I mean to say is, he is intolerably hyperactive and rebellious. Read: BRAT. Oompa-Loompas, anyone? (I know I should be laying out examples of his evil ways rather than reporting simply that he is on my nerves, but sorry, my writer self has been under siege in too many ways for me to creatively relate much of anything.) Mind you, this is my son who not long ago waited patiently and happily in the DMV with me for an hour watching the monitor for a “G” to appear, signaling our turn at last.

It's a little like parents who complain about their infants who started out sleeping through the night but now are waking up once or twice. I have no sympathy for these people. Zero. They are just getting their bleary-eyed come-upance. So it clearly may be that neither am I entitled to any shoulders to cry on. And yet, if you offered, know that we could likely float away on the deluge.

Vancouver continued

Would it have been so very hard for the concierge to have spent a little less time on her make up and a little more learning about her job? Then, she could have told me about Science World – a kid wonderland just a couple quick metro stops from our hotel rather than sending me out by taxi to the Maritime Museum with its broken magnetic boats to dock.

But I had pretty much established that our hotel – the big fancy one that Mike's organization was paying for and that was situated just a few blocks from the conference center – wasn't really set up for assisting families of young children round about the time housekeeping, being careful not to knock on the door since the privacy sign was out, called my room during Isaac's much-needed nap to ask when I'd like service.

What if I accept that someone or something is testing me; and what if we all agree that I've failed miserably? Now may I PLEASE be dismissed???

Maritime Museums. Dreary places playing news reels from this and that sea-faring disaster, counting up the numbers of crew and passengers lost, the bell recovered by divers hanging over the display (it tolls for thee). Cold, metal instruments and cumbersome equipment I don't know the names of. Claustrophobic cabins with logs laid out as if the bearded captain has just stepped out on the deck to smoke his pipe and will return any moment. Ladders and ropes and wheels that speak of icebergs and rats.

Just so you know, Isaac marked the Maritime Museum just as he marked most other stopping points on our trip – with a potty training accident. My son was apparently a cat in a former life. So stand back, all this glory is his and his alone.

Vancouver

Chapter I

in which the Complaining is discussed and a husband gets some sleep

(After A.A. Milne)

She had been right in the midst of the Complaining, a Complaining she'd worked hard to design, build and now, execute, revised as it was at 1:45 am lying in her Unacceptably Small hotel bed, eyes moist, next to her two-year-old, Only Recently Asleep after a Hysterical Meltdown brought on, no doubt, by Utter Exhaustion, and a body away from her husband, Sleeping Reliably Well.

The Complaining was revised again at 3:05 am, and again at 5:14, 6:29, 6:50 and 7:12.

She was right in the middle of laying out the Personal Assault, aka, the Complaining, made on her by the Night Clerk when she had arrived tired and hungry in the dark and rain at just past midnight, when the Day Clerk, aka Recipient of the Complaining, had said, “I'd be happy to take care of your breakfast tomorrow to compensate for any inconvenience.”

And she looked at the Day Clerk, who in turn looked neat as a banker, and she sighed. It was a Helpless Sigh, and she thought the woman, the manicured banker posing as a hotel clerk, saw the glimmer of sorrow that must have passed over her face. And then she paused, unsure how to proceed. And this woman, this clerk/teller in her post pearls and her square, white-tipped fingernails, in her navy blazer covering a predictable red satin camisole, was somehow just like her husband, the Reliable Sleeper, as he too was always jumping to Solutions and not wanting to listen to the problem at hand (in all of its grand and careful detail). And in the next moment, the one after the sigh and the sorrow, the one after the indecision, she said, “I'd like to make one more comment about my experience...”

Afterwards, now, for example, thinking back, she was proud of the Phrase. It felt Dignified – a solid recovery from the Sorrowful Sigh of Indecision, and also quite polite.

In her room, her new room, for they had given her a new room, proving that she sometimes succumbed to Solutions, she found, very accidentally, the print out of their reservation. There it was, right there, “1 King Bed – Nt Gtd.” Naturally, it was the “Nt Gtd” part that had caused all the fuss, and so she threw it away post haste, so as not to have to look at it.

Her husband, now Awake and presumably Well-Rested, had disappeared to a conference where he would attend a series of tightly packed 20-minute sessions during which Some Soul was to explain to a room full of Other Souls things like “An Augmented Reality Architecture for the Creation of Hardware-in-the-Loop and Hybrid Simulation Test Scenarios for UUVs (070427-011).” He had kindly left her a copy of his itinerary from which she could determine at which time he'd be listening to a speech on Inductive Power Systems for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and when, exactly, he'd be lulled to the rhythms of Time-Series Data Exchanges Using the Geography Markup Language.

Since there is no such thing as Too Much Sharing, he had also said he would update her over email about when he might have a break. But she felt pessimistic about her chances for retrieving the information. In the drawer of the hotel room desk was a cable and a book marked “Internet” and under that “User Guide/Guide l'utilisateur.” Seeing how she'd failed to operate the coffee brewer properly, she thought she might leave the cable and its storybook where it was and just lie down a bit next to her two-year-old, Recently Asleep, on the Acceptably Large hotel bed and try to get some rest, maybe review how the Complaining of the morning had gone.

language: the end of an era

“Hey, baby boy, whatcha doing?”

“Me not baby.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re bo.”

“Me BIIIIIIIIIG!”

It doesn’t so much tear at my heart that he doesn’t want to be called a baby anymore, but, forever and ever, like almost half of Isaac’s life, before all the other words he can say now started popping out of his mouth like fake snakes from a can, “Big” has been “Bo.”

It has even taken on the status of family language – you know, those weird distortions that are only understandable to an intimate group of people. Mike and I had begun routinely saying things to each other like in serving pizza - “I want the bo piece.” Or in throwing away a poopy diaper - “Bo poop!”

It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of bo.

If you don’t hear from me after this for about a week, it’s because we’re headed to Vancouver (although, I think I’m bringing my laptop so we’ll see.). Isaac asked me where we were going on our trip. And then on receiving the answer he tried out his favorite new construction replying with, “Me like Van-oo-er.”

Usually the efforts to be a big boy and the parrot repetition that has grown exponentially in the last months are amusing and endearing – e.g. exhibit A above, and e.g., below:

Isaac and Mike are in the bedroom getting Mr Iz dressed.

“Can you take off that shirt yourself?”

“Hawd!”

“You almost got it.”

“Hawd!”

“Keep going… You did it! You’re a regular Houdini.”

“Oo-dini?”

“Yeah, he was a guy who could get out of lots of shirts,” says Mike.


But there are times when it just isn’t cool:

We are driving in the car with the radio on NPR, as usual, when the news comes on to report, as usual, a suicide bombing. “The Taliban took credit for the incident,” the news anchor says. “Tal-bon!” my two-year-old calls from the back seat. Mike and I exchange a glance before I quickly punch the button for the bad 80s compilation CD. Somehow, I’d rather end up hearing “Me like Jesse’s Girl!” more than some other possibilities.

It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of oblivion.

controlling the environment

We live in a world where meteorologists apologize for weather that does not comply with expectations or weekend agendas.

Whenever possible, if our environment doesn’t suit us, we change it. We play sports under domes - the rain delay only a fond memory, killed off is its spontaneous song and dance put on by soaking wet idiots in the nosebleed section. We burn holes in the ozone with big, climate-controlled SUVs. We cut down trees that block our view and build dams to divert water from where we want to live. We hose the shit out of what should be desert until it snaps to at our heels, growing a lackluster shade of green.

Luckily for me, as a renter, I get to enjoy old-fashioned helplessness when it comes to my surrounding environment. Once upon a time we lived as renters in a condo complex where we were actively disregarded and left uninformed. We never quite knew what we’d wake up to – chainsaws in the live oaks, power washing on our patio. Finally, when the condo association entered our patio to rip out a young acacia tree that had happily started up on its own outside my kitchen window, all bets were off.

We had friends around the corner having some work done on their house and the craftsman just happened to leave his sledgehammer there for the night. Mike smashed up one of the squares of cement on our patio to make way for a 3’ x 3’ water garden. While the sledge hammering was in progress, a neighbor passed by. “What are you doing?” he asked Mike. “Gardening,” said my husband, resting the sledgehammer on his shoulder and wiping his forehead. We carried the crooked pieces of concrete to the dumpster after dark.

But even when we are gentle in our campaigns to mold our environment to our liking, things can get ugly. This summer, my garden was the site of The Great Aphid Festival. Aphids moved in with their tiny little aphid suitcases, greeting long lost cousins with relish, hosting aphid raves, where they would swing from vines, trees, flowering buds, make out on the underside of leaves, and generally go wild. (I think I might have spotted teeny-tiny little glow sticks, but it could have just been the slant of the sun.)

And where there are aphids, there are ants – big bully bouncer ants standing at the doors of the biggest raves with their arms crossed over their tee shirts that read “Security” across the back. Some of you may know about this symbiotic relationship – the aphid generates a substance called “honeydew” that the ants dig. Apparently, if you’re an ant, this stuff is so way yummy that you actually protect aphid eggs to ensure their buddies and future generations will stick around. And it goes on from there…

Like a good organic gardener, I went out and bought ladybugs to spread around that would hopefully dine on the partying aphids. I decided to put them in the garden while Isaac wasn’t around still concerned as I was about creating the kind of scene I witnessed when Isaac was around a year old… (I need a “Wayne’s World” flashback sequence sound here.)

We were with friends at a local organic farm for an Earth Day celebration that included food, entertainment, a train for the kids to ride on, and a woman dressed as a giant ladybug who was supposed to take the kids out into the field to release real live bugs.

So, the key phrase here is “out in the fields.” You, see, the giant ladybug didn’t really go out into the fields, but rather stood on the edge of the field. Four- and five-year-olds swam at her feet as more and more real ladybugs crawled out of her bag, onto the ground and the people there for the spectacle. It was a tickly, joyous atmosphere until, lo and behold, the train came around again and everyone who could stepped out of the way.

You’ve probably guessed what came next – Yup. Sobbing preschoolers fretting at the wheels of the mini-train, beside themselves, crying, “You’re killing them! You’re killing them!”

(Return from flashback.)

Not wanting any unforeseen massacre to jar Isaac, I went it alone – just me and the bugs.

Everything was smooth, I thought. I went out into the garden a couple hours later to check on them and found them here and there, though their numbers seemed a little thin. Then I noticed an ant who seemed to have hold of one of the ladybug’s legs. Odd. Then I noticed several ants who, if I didn’t know any better, seemed to be ganging up on a ladybug, like, kind of, attacking it. By the evening, I could only find a couple of my spotted friends hunkered down in the crook of a calla lily leaf.

A little research confirmed my fears. Ants actually protect aphids from predators, organizing to fight them off. (“You’re killing them! You’re killing them!”)

I guess we aren’t the only ones that manipulate our surroundings to suit us better.

I have stopped killing bugs since Isaac was born, fixated as I am on teaching him to respect all life. I have even stopped hurling snails into the street, which if you know me at all, is huge. (Isaac likes to transport them in his bulldozer to the shabby patch of vegetation in the island of our street, from where, he believes, they “go home to mama.”) But these freaking ants are testing me – invading our pantry, swarming whenever I water – carrying their eggs frantically to higher ground, coming in with garden bouquets to jog across the coffee table, and – for godssake – killing my ladybugs?? while the aphids party hard.

And after the domes can help us no more, and the dams kill off the river life, and the SUVs kill off the ozone layer, you thought it was going to be the cockroach that survived.

party games

So, Isaac went to a real live kid party the other weekend. With games and cake and favor bags.

Alright, I confess: This is actually his second. Mike took him to one while I was out of town this spring, but that one doesn’t count, since I wasn’t there. This time I got a chance to have a complete panic attack in the middle of it while talking to a couple I don’t know very well about where they got their daughter’s little backpack – you know, world changing stuff – and suddenly needed to leave immediately as I realized, the energy level rising, the backpack talk coming into focus, a four-year-old racing a dump truck by my feet at mach speed, that I was the adult at a kid party.

So, as I was saying, I went to a real live kid party the other weekend.

The first game was pin the balloon on the fire truck (?) Isaac did not participate.

The second game was throw the water balloon at the drawing of the house on fire. Isaac was slow to participate, but managed to get to throw one balloon before the other kids trashed the rest of the bucket. (“Where more?”)

The third and final game was the fire truck piñata. Isaac held back until all the other children had two turns each. Then, without warning, he swooped in on the action claiming his turn and hammering on this piñata like a star student of anger management class (And then, mama wouldn’t let me have ice cream. (Wham!) And then, daddy told me to come inside. (Whack!)) He so far outstripped the feeble attempts of the other children that parents started turning to look at Mike and I, while I slunk backwards through the crowd pretending to be interested in a toy helicopter.

And then came the logical conclusion to all this whacking…Welcome to California: where the blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid smacks the hell out the piñata and runs back to his mama with pride gleaming in his eye and an organic fruit leather clutched in his sweaty little fist.

can’t argue with that

I’ve always felt that logic was way overrated.

You’d think, then, that living with a two-year-old would be easier for me than it is. We aren’t anywhere near logic, being some four years away from the “age of reason” as they tend to call it. Isaac is safely immersed in imagination – his own. We don’t watch TV; he’s never seen anything produced by Disney.

So what do I do when Logic shows up with its pesky tentacles reaching, getting all up in Imagination’s face and has the nerve to wrangle with Safety, that prim little witch with a permanent scowl?

**********

Isaac is dropping pebbles from the yard from as high as he can reach. “Rain! Rain, Mama! Come down! Weeeeeee!” Handful after handful spatter the driveway in a musical twinkle, the energy with which they are thrown growing.

“Isaac, you have to be careful with those. You can’t throw those. You shouldn’t land them on your head. They could hurt you or they could get in your eye, or they could get in Mama’s eye.”

He frowns. “Mama, not rocks. Rain. RAIN. Get WET, not hurt.”

**********

Isaac is playing train. He asks me to be the car behind him. We choo-choo around the front yard until he approaches the end of our walkway and announces,

“Go in weet.”

“We can’t go in the street, Iz. We don’t go in the street, you know that.”

“Me TRAIN. Train go in weet!”

Sometimes I get scared that it’ll be my kid with the pillow case tied around his neck jumping from the roof, invincible.

the signs were all there...

Halloween 2005.
(see entry below regarding vocational directions)

Isaac’s career paths – part III

Here we go again. More possible vocational directions for Isaac.

- Deep sea explorer. (The daily mantra: “Mama, Mama, me sea lion. Me go down deep. Wawa right dere! Me have f’ippers. Splash!!!”)

- Songwriter. (Commonly heard at our house: “Brannew song. Um, ‘Starwish.’ Come see? (starts to sing) Starwish, starwish, starwish. La la la. Starwish. All done. Otay. Brannew song: ‘Wain.’ (sings) Wain. Wain. Dome down. Turn aroun’. Rain.” etc.)

- choreographer for “So You Think You Can Dance.” (“Mama, jump up n down? Watch.” “That’s great, Isaac.” “Mama?” “You want Mama to jump up and down?” “Yeah.” (I jump.) “No. Like dis.” (repeats his jump) “I think I did do it like that, Isaac.” “Mama, dant?” “You don’t like the way I jump, but you want me to dance?” (takes off into a dance not unlike Elaine on that “Seinfeld” episode) “Mama do?” (I attempt to mimic him) “No! Like dis.” “I give up, Isaac.” “Like dis.” (dances in circles, down the hall and throws himself on the floor of his room).

- Finally, I’d like to replace my previous suggested occupation of underwater cave dweller. I wasn’t really tuning in to my son’s tendencies when I said that. But now, after observing him repeat each morning, “Mama, the sun is out!” like some kind of accusation while crossing his arms over his eyes and retreating like he’s been actually struck by a fireball, I’d like to enter the option of vampire for my son’s future job.

save the children

from this world of quick fixes and dubious charity.

I’m in the vitamin store hunting down powdered colostrum for Isaac, which we’ve given him as an immune booster ever since the only two ear infections he got (within two months of each other) and seems to be working.

The saleswoman bustling around in a would-be efficient manner accosts me with the week’s sales flyer – a glossy thing printed, I’m sure, in the millions. I reject it. She’s confused, momentarily thrown off balance, until she recovers and says to me, like she’ll say to the next 250 customers that walk through the door, “Let me know if I can help with anything.”

I then proceed to stand waiting at the check out counter while she flits like a garden bug around her shelves of sealed white caps.

Ultimately, she does see me and propels herself toward the cash register. I’ve take vague notice of the green circles taped to the counter denoting “Vitamin Angels” when she asks if I’d like to donate a dollar to their cause. “Not today,” I tell her.

“Well,” she counters, “one dollar will save the eyesight of four children in developing countries. Something you might want to keep in mind for the future.” She reaches for a bag for my palm-sized, self-contained purchase.

“I don’t need a bag, thanks,” I hurry to get in. Then, mumbling into my inexplicably long receipt, add, “One fewer bag can save the world unknown amounts of fossil fuel. Something you might want to keep in mind for the future.”

metaphors

I have always lived between worlds.

I am bi-coastal, defending east when I'm west, west when I'm east. I know my way around various lines of underground transportation, but I won't look twice if your house smells of cleansing sage and you ask all the guests to leave their Ugg boots on the porch.

I spent three years hosting poetry slams shouting encouragement at the crowd, the largest chunk of which was under 20 and overflowing with angst, and then would be invited to read for a Jeffers' Tor House benefit, where the white-haired attendees would sip wine and no one begged to get in for a buck cuz it was all they had, man.

When I taught in Hungary, I learned all the polite-isms to nod at my colleagues, but would spend all my free time with my students (learning cooler stuff).

So it doesn't surprise me that I'm here again, in a borderland.

As a poet, I avoid cliche - oh, let's just say it - like the plague. The glue of poetry is fresh, rich metaphor. But as someone who writes for newspaper (we'll just stay clear of those needling little titles like "reporter"), I am asked to embrace cliche with - indeed - open arms. Newspapers are built on the idea of cliche. New metaphors are frowned upon, edited. You need look no further than the headlines.

My life as a mother falls right smack in the middle of the scale where metaphor and cliche are concerned. I want to find new metaphors for what I'm doing, what I'm burdened by and blessed with, but the easy ones, the old, tired comparisons are so easy to walk into, their little siren voices calling, calling...

My son wraps himself in a ribbon and asks me to tie it.

"Present!" he then tells me. "Open!"

"What could be inside?" I wonder as I untie the bow.

"Me!" he squeals and leaps into my arms.

As required of any toddler game, it is repeated over and over again. And each time, I receive my gift with equal parts joy and discovery.

What's a poet to do?

open letter to the Uber-Mom

Listen, we need to talk. Things are hard enough around here. You think I want to listen to how after searching and searching, you finally located the sippy cups made of some magical material that doesn’t leech toxins into your kid’s system? Hurray. Hurrah.

Now, look, the human race will go on not because of you and your greeny, green, green, lala, overachiever, making the rest of us look bad ways, but thanks to those of us who continue to give our toddlers the bot-bots they are madly attached to – the ones they chewed the (toxic) nipple half off of, putting them at risk of not just leeching but swallowing bits of the (toxic) plastic. We’re talking the difference between garlic powder and whole fucking cloves. I’ve seen the fish with legs on your hybrid, sweetheart, so I know you’ll follow along when I explain that that (toxic) plastic will assist in our genetic evolution after all the farm land has been turned into subdivisions and vineyards and we are forced to wash down our asphalt lunch with a (fruity yet earthy, wood-like flavored) Pinot Noir. Our kids with (toxic) plastic running through their veins will survive the shit out of your pussy-footed little organic baby doll.

And could you PLEASE not ALWAYS be so freakin’ excited to see your kid – the whole crouching down, sneaking quietly up to the door of the preschool grinning like a ninny to peer in on little pooka-pooka, then sweeping button-button up like you’ve been separated for weeks? Okay, so maybe I should slow the car down just a tad more as I throw open the door and honk for Isaac, but you really push things too far.


PS - Check it out - I'm the featured reader on mamazine.com today. (They may regret that after this entry...)

just listen to yourself

In grad school once, (language analysis course), we were tasked with transcribing speech of some kind or another. A conversation. To hear what we really say and how we really say it or don’t or say it again and again or say it over each other or “um” our way through it or in general, talk. It was pretty durn fascinating.

So lately, I’ve been wondering what it would sound like if you could really hear the conversations that go on in our house these days. Absent a recording device, I’ve tried to recreate one as faithfully as possible. Let’s check in with reading time. Children’s literature is fascinating, sends you places you’ve never been before…

“’N’ dat?”

“And that looks to me like a donkey dancing with a chicken.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why a donkey would dance with a chicken, frankly. Couldn’t tell ya.”

“Why?”

“Why couldn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, because I just don’t know. Seems a bit odd, don’t you think? Maybe the chicken is a really good dancer.”

“Dood dan-er?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he took dance lessons.”

“Dant le-uns?”

“Yeah, like maybe it was always his dream to be a dancer and he took lessons and now he’s stuck dancing with this donkey who has four left feet.”

“Wo feet?”

“Yeah, donkeys have four feet. See?”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Don-e feet?”

“Yup, the donkey has feet. Four. One, two, three, four.”

“Right dere?”

“Yup, right there.”

“Why?”

“Wanna count them with me?”

“Un. Ooh. Wee. … Un. Ooh!!!” (raises both arms in triumph)

“Yay… One, two, three, four. Four comes after three. Wanna try?”

“Don-e dant?”

“Yeah, the donkey dances.”

“Why?”

“Should we turn the page?”

“Why, Mama? Why?”

“Why should we turn the page or why does the donkey dance?”

“Um, dat, dat don-e…Um, um, dat don-e… dat don-e dant?”

“Uh-huh.”

(Giggles) “Dat don-e dant!” (Giggles.)

“That’s kind of a silly donkey, huh?”

“Why?”

dolls and ‘dozers

When Isaac was an infant, I went through a phase in which I was determined to supply him with the perfect baby doll. It would be there for him when he got home, despite whatever kind of genderization of toys he experienced out in that larger world of small boxes and segregated clothing sections. It would be there when he wanted to nurture his nurturing nature. It would be not too big, not too small, not too hard but not a simple stuffed cushion. It would be something other than the blue-eyed blonde-headed doll that he is, reflecting difference where possible, since reinforcement of his mirrored reflection was not hard to find elsewhere. It would be a friend, a teacher, a companion, going everywhere with him, speaking for him when necessary, loving him back.

I searched Ebay. I scoured the web for homemade dolls, artists’ work, something special. I compared 12 inches to 18 inches, debated jewelry the older dolls wore, wondered girl or boy. I found one site that sold extended families of anatomically correct cloth dolls of various ethnicities for a lot of money.

Finally, I dropped it. The obsession just faded away and as my infant became a toddler overcome by the sight of the garbage truck, I bought him likenesses of mechanical beasts and settled for taking pride in the fact that I also bought him pink clothes hangers and yellow socks that the other mothers of boys wouldn’t touch.

I’d nearly forgotten about my desire for Isaac to have a doll when he began, just recently, to wrap random objects in blankets and cradle them lovingly in his arms: playdoh, police cars, bits of his lunch. He’d shush me, tell me his baby was sleeping. So I asked him if he’d like to have a doll.

“Yeah,” he said. “Doll. Baby doll. My baby doll.”

As we already had plans to fill in his truck collection with a long-absent bulldozer, I thought we might as well pick up a doll on the same trip.

Something I essentially have never done – take my kid shopping for toys. In a break with his usual M.O., apparently aware of the uniqueness of the opportunity, Isaac actually readily agreed to sit in the front of the cart.

We found the doll aisle first. There wasn’t a big selection, but I’d left my craving for the ideal doll months ago, back at hormonal surge #346, so this would do.

A woman pushed a cart with her grandson in it past the shelf we were peering at. “I want one of those!” the probably four-year-old said pointing at a Cabbage Patch Kid. “Oh, I don’t think you do,” said his grandmother keeping her stride.

“Which doll do you like?” I asked Isaac. We looked. We held. We debated colors of hats and flexibility of limbs. We changed our mind. We changed our mind again. Iz decided on a small doll in a purple outfit whose eyes closed when you laid it down. It cost $4.99.

“Is this the dolly you want to take home and love and take care of?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said my son, and promptly threw it over his shoulder into the cart without looking back.

There wasn’t any better a selection in the bulldozer aisle. There was only one truck we could find that was officially a bulldozer, besides the remote control monster model I was determined to ignore completely. We discussed scoops and the possibility for indoor or outdoor ‘dozing. Finally, Isaac picked out a small but sturdy dozer with slow crawler tracks – the “real” thing.

Off we started for the check out, but at the end of the aisle there was something else, a packaged pair of friction-charged trucks – a front loader and a tow truck – his two biggest weaknesses. Soon, we’d made a deal for door #3 and the dozer was history.

He wouldn’t put the package in the cart. He insisted on holding it, staring down at it with genuine affection.

“Truck!” he’d squeal every few seconds. “Brannew truck!” he sighed, as he cradled it in crook of his arm.