I don’t suppose it gets any easier, ever. Decisions, indecisions, stasis…the ever fresh sting of a sharp blade, no matter the depth of the cut, only discernible after it slices, in perpetuity. I don’t mind the ghosts though, even when they smart, they are welcome, wanted, missed.
This is the coldest, drabbest part of the season for me…and yes, I know that I live in a state that has no seasons. The chill comes from nostalgia. A most painful nostalgia, brought on by fall and my absence from home. I should have been smelling the chile roasting, stepping on crackling leaves, and watching Zozobra burn into cinders…and perhaps watching some hot air balloons, also bursting into flames. I can smell fall in New Mexico, if I close my eyes. I can feel the air and the crunch of leaves, but only for small moments.
I had intended on heading back to New Mexico this fall, but those plans were derailed, and the boys have pre-k now anyway, so…no fall homecoming trip. We signed them up for soccer instead, and something so simple has suddenly encouraged my cynical being to pretend that it is indeed fall.
Bringing back memories of my brother’s fall soccer games, which I had almost completely forgotten the feel of. These sensorial memories were spurred on not by the fields, or the screaming parents, but by the children whom I thought were far too young for the manner of competition they have displayed.
I saw Liam make his “tough-guy” face, and attempt to out-large the other guy. This happened several times before Liam actually pushed out with both hands, and very purposefully, and forcefully leveled the other boy. I was shocked, but more shocked that the children’s already strong notions about “otherness,” than about Liam reacting the way he did.
My mother got to watch a game on her visit, and that made the memories even more tangible. Perhaps that is what my system needed. A little bit of soccer, a little bit of competition…well, that and the frozen green chile that was shipped to my door…
What makes us just give up and quit trying? Do we really just get worn down? Filed down and away? I suspect it is something more along the lines of a change in priorities, and a new line of sight. One can only be shoved to the side and taken for granted for so long before they make their own way, or decide that some battles just aren’t worth the blood-spill.
We grow, we change, we forget, or we remember, but no body is stationary, and we can only sit still for so long. Do we grow together? I suppose we can. But we don’t often like to, because that suggests supplication, vulnerability, weakness.
What are we willing to lose for an unpromised potential? Or are we better off with the comfortable battle that we know?
It’s been a long time since the boys have gone running with me. I thought they would never want to go again, but tonight, I talked them into it! I used the persuasion of Christmas lights and it worked!
We talked about all of the lights, and Liam asked why there were no skeletons up…which makes me wonder if he’s seen “The Nightmare Before Christmas” too many times now. He asked when there would be snow, and I explained to him that Florida is the armpit of the world, and that it’s just always sticky, hot, and all-around unpleasant here, so there would be no snow. That’s when I started thinking about global catastrophes that might indeed cause snow flurries here, and all of that headed out of my mouth before I could really stop it. And stopping an escaped thought while you are running isn’t easy, because it takes so much more effort to speak, I just feel that if I have begun it I must also finish it.
About half way through the run, Liam suddenly started telling me about what happens if our lungs get punctured. “If you get a hole poked in your lungs you can’t breathe,” he said…rather cheerfully. Finn concurred. I said, “We are out for a run, and looking at Christmas lights! Where did you hear that?” Their answer, “In a book at school!” I couldn’t help it, I had to explain why we can’t breathe if our lungs are punctured. I’m curious to see how my explanation manifests at school tomorrow.
Just a little farther down the road, both boys started yelling at a car that passed a bit too closely. “Idiot! Jerk! Stupid Idiot!” And that was TOTALLY my fault. They heard all of that on the way home, as all of Jacksonville freaks out and would rather get home fast and dead than safe and alive.
I said, “That’s it guys! Let’s spread the Christmas cheer!” Liam asked me why I said that…and in addition to all of the other things I had to explain, firstly that we can only say those things about other people when we are in our car, and when they are with me, and secondly, what “ironic,” “cynical,” and “facetious” mean. I don’t really know what of my lecture they understood, but I am really curious to know.
Also, it is really tough to push seventy some pounds of boys in a jogging stroller! It’s a good workout though. I might have to talk them into seeing the lights every night.
Sugar just might be the ruination of me and my much beleaguered parenting skills. This Halloween marked the second one in which the boys have discovered a great love and desire for candy. I want them to have the experience of getting dressed up and running amok after dark, but the candy I could frankly do without. Sugar now seems to be their reason for existence.
Much like candy, pies and cakes, take center stage over the meaningful and festivity-driven holidays/special occasions. Birthdays are for what? They are solely for the purpose of cake ingestion. Thanksgiving? Well, that’s for mashed potatoes and pies (of which, my three-year olds must have at least three slices…topped with ice cream).
That’s fine, so long as I am not the only one saddled with the responsibility of watching them demonstrate their parkour skills. In fact, eating a holiday meal at another family member, or friend’s home is ideal even if one may not have leftovers for weeks to come. Thanks to the in-laws doing all of the work, I not only have a relatively clean…er…no filthier than normal kitchen, I also don’t have to deal with the screaming demands for pie. Nope. You can’t have any, because we don’t have any pie in the house! No chocolate or sugary frosted coma drops either! Don’t even ask for them after dinner, because they simply do not exist.
This also makes me look much more adult, and saves me the awkward moments of being caught by my children, hunched over Gollum-style, in the kitchen, with a mouthful of pie. No pie in my home means no explanation/justification as to what’s really in my mouth, or why I get to eat pie for breakfast, but nobody else does.
Really though, pie baked by someone else is simply far more appealing than one that I created. I just wish I had one now…
Now that I think about it, beer and pie might not be that bad for breakfast tomorrow…I’m gonna go bake a pie.
Yesterday was likely the most astonishing display of someone else’s authoritative power over my being that I had yet experienced.
My surgeon yelled at me. Not pretend yelling, like “you non-wealthy kids and your bad insurance…” but real anger and curse-words kinds of yelling!
Don’t get me wrong, I am really super elated and blessed, and enormously thankful to have had this woman as my doctor, it’s just that I am equally as elated, and blessed and thankful not to have to work with, under, around, or near her. I am grateful that our relationship remains solely in the bounds of patient and physician. As terrifying as she is, I know that when I am under her care my life/well being is THE top priority, and everyone else had better hop too and do exactly as she orders them, with skill and precision.
I had been dreading the last week’s appointments, especially with the whole rigmarole that I have to go through to convince the doctor that I cannot afford her hospital’s MRIs, and that I need to have them done elsewhere. On top of that, I also have to put up with the imaging center that my insurance covers (somewhat covers).
It was supposed to be the best imaging center outside of Mayo, but since I can’t afford great healthcare, the technicians can never find good veins (or any…I’ve even wondered if they are trained to know what a vein looks like), and I get asked to come back repeatedly because they f*&%k up my images…Which is how all the yelling began.
After waiting for far too long, and getting stabbed only twice (things were starting to look up for this imaging center), I couldn’t tell if it was the contrast dye, or my nerves that were making me feel so icky. They say to drink lots of fluid to flush that contrast out, so I did—I hydrated with alcohol. I figure that it covered two needs in one dose! It flushed out the dye, and it has a calming, sleep-inducing effect.
Two days later, the husband picked up the radiology report, and snuck a peek at it before taking it and the CD of images to Mayo. This helped the Thursday appointment greatly, as the good news of “no sign of recurrence” made the two hour wait bearable.
Only, I wasn’t expecting to be screeched at by an enraged deity of health. I don’t know what the imaging center did to the CD, or how they loaded the images, but It wasn’t good (and that isn’t a surprise). It took the Doctor 45 minutes to pull the images off of the CD. It was 45 minutes to her, but it was two hours for us. I became a target for having wasted her time because I am poor, and my insurance company and her hospital don’t belong to the same club, and the imaging place never does a good enough job.
It was strange. She looked up at me as she was yelling and pushing on my belly, and said, “You know I’m not mad at you!…yell, yell, yell…” And just like the beta I am, all I could do was lower my eyes and apologize for something I didn’t have control over…just like a child.
If anything, it makes me feel worse for children. How often do they get treated like that and we don’t even recognize it?
The good part is, that I am lump free, and don’t have to go through this again for another six months! Woohoo!
Not a Lumpy Space Princess,
Pru
Fighting is just a lifestyle in our house these days. I’ve given in to the idea that the boys will inevitably maim or contuse one another, or perhaps dislodge somebody’s eye. Until today, I was pretty much the sole audience for this sort of beastly entertainment. I keep thinking that it’s because they are three, and as all three-year olds do, they get rather frustrated when they can’t express themselves properly. However, I am changing my mind. I mean, really, effective expression has nothing to do with it. By the time they were 2 they could both speak like news anchors, albeit drunken ones. They spoke clearly, and better than most five-year olds we know (not to mention their vocabulary exceeds that of many adults…though, not always in an acceptable way).
I realized, today, upon receiving an “Incident Report” from the school, that it really is just brutality over not being able to force one’s will upon another body. That people have an often violent aversion to doing what others tell them to do. It’s like sharing. Nobody likes to share, and I don’t care how old you are. Human beings are simply NOT GOOD at sharing.
Today, as always, I was greeted at the boys’ school by the ever-friendly girl at the front office. However, she seemed particularly jovial, if not trying to hold in some giggles. As I signed the boys out, she handed me the “Incident Report,” and then let go of the laughter that had been building.
They aren’t supposed to name names, when it comes to “Incidents,” but she exploded with laughter, telling me that it was a bit of brother-on-brother violence…She laughed even harder when I read the report, which also made me laugh. “Liam bit Finn?!” I asked in stymied confusion. “Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?” She assured me that Liam was the biter, and Finn was the victim. Turns out, Finn was taking too long to wash his hands, and Liam wanted to wash his, so, he chomped Finn on the back.
I guess Liam learned from the best, and the best got some of his own.
I am feeling the strain and pull of the world upon my children, and I don’t like it. The first day at school wasn’t so bad, but as they encounter others, I feel like a little of their own personalities are disappearing…little by little. For the first time, the world at large has possession of my children. It can tell them what to do, how to think, and what to feel, and without even knowing it is doing so. Other children and their annoying habits seem to be rubbing off on mine. Granted, I only hear the “catch phrases” that are constantly repeated (to their delight at being cool, and my sinus-infected disagreeable self), but I realize that this is now my world.
I want them to be comfortable enough to be a part of the world, but I don’t want them to lose themselves to the memes, like so many others. They are odd, and I want them to embrace that, not be ashamed of it.
Nostos algos,
Pru
It occurred to me that maybe I ought to lower everyone’s expectations of me…and then I thought, perhaps nobody really expects anything from me anyway, and that is totally liberating.
I think I might be retarded. No, seriously. Take today, for example. The simple task of filling my tank with gas, turned into a fiasco of ridiculous proportions. How? It all started when I couldn’t remember my PIN number… But that story depresses me, so here’s something MUCH better:
The boys are into telling stories these days. Lies, but also real, honest-to-God stories. Usually, I only hear these if I am eavesdropping, but a couple of months ago, they actually told me a story, together, and into my camera/voice-recorder-thingamajigger. I thought about close-captioning it, but, meh. So, here it is! The boys’ first cartoon! Part II should be on the way sometime…but, then again, lots of my projects have been largely orphaned, and while I keep making them promises of picking them up, and finishing them, well… Anyway, on with the toons!
So, someone just came through the living room with a pair of pliers. I had been complaining about needing to take all of my glasses to the eye doctor and have them adjusted. I’m not naming any names, but I will say that some people have totally mishandled my spectacles.
So, somebody decided to take it upon himself to “fix” the specs. With pliers.
I’ve already had a glass or two of wine…it’s been a long couple of weeks back at work, and the boys had to be taken out of school early–Illness, not bad behavior…though, I will get to that later.
So, having had a bit to drink, all I saw was a blur. I heard some mumbling, saw a metalic glint, and noticed my glasses were gone.
Upon replaying the mumbling, and deciphering it, in my head, I realized my glasses had been taken to be fixed. I looked over, saw a lens pop out, and tried to pretend that I wasn’t worried. From the other side of the bar, I am being reassured that he’s done this before, and recently. This sounds suspiciously akin to a statement like, “don’t worry, I can remove your appendix! I’m totally qualified! I watch House (okay, I have never seen a full episode…it’s the only tv-doctor reference I have)!
Then, from the kitchen, I hear: “Uhoh.” And now, I am presented with a Glad Snackbag filled with the parts that were once my glasses.
Really? “I don’t know what happened. I just fixed mine this way, and they were way more mangled than yours.”
Really?
Blind Pru.
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