Big Girl, You Are Beautiful

I used to pet sit for my boss at the university once or twice a year when she took week long vacations.  I loved doing it because it gave me some much needed alone time, since I was in my twenties and still living with my parents at the time.  My boss and her partner’s home was very nice, it felt like a little vacation for me.  Plus, they paid generously so I made some much needed extra cash.  My grandmother had just moved in with us, my personal space was non existent, and I had to sleep on the couch.  So going over to someone else’s house and sleeping in a normal bed for a week was worth catering to the cute but pampered animals.  At that time my boss had two dogs and a cat.  One of the dogs was a tiny, adorable and emotional silky terrier who would curl up and sleep next to me every night.  The other dog was a high maintenance, out of shape, overweight beagle.  I didn’t always have to watch the beagle, eventually my boss gave her to another owner and she died a very expensive and drawn out death.  But I remember specifically that first night of pet sitting, when at about ten o’clock at night I came to the realization that I was all alone in a house for the first time in years, with only an out of shape dog who never moved and a super tiny dog who was afraid of anything that moved to protect me. I was kind of freaked out.  I climbed into bed, turned on the t.v. and left the light on.  The terrier was snuggled next to me on the bed and eventually, I fell asleep.  Around midnight I awoke suddenly to what sounded like a woman in high heels running across the hardwood floor in the living room.  It was coming closer and closer to my room.  I froze in terror.  Then the sound came into my room and all of a sudden, smack, something hit the bed and moved it about six inches.  I sat up and looked down at the foot of the bed.  It was the beagle.  She walked back into the living room and lo and behold, galloped into the bedroom again at full speed, her nails clicking hard against the wooden floors and once again, boom, smacked against the bed.  I wasn’t sure what was happening.  I didn’t know what to do, so I watched for a third time as the portly beagle ran from the front of the house into the bedroom and finally accomplished what she had set out to do.  She jumped onto the bed.  It took three times, but that fat dog finally got her fat butt up on the bed and slept with me the entire night. 

This is the exact image I conjure up in my head when I think about my struggle with weight loss. 

I have never in my life been called skinny.  I think only once in high school did anyone tell me that I needed to gain weight.  I’ve always had hips, thighs, and a sizable-by-comparison booty.  I don’t think I would have ever called myself fat per se, I knew what my body type was and I think I worked with what I had.  I put on some weight in college but a few months after I graduated, I was back to my normal, healthy weight.  When I met my husband, I was my most superficially confident self.  I maintained my weight with no problem, probably because I was so love sick.  I didn’t have too many issues with how I looked back then.  In fact, I thought I had never looked better.  But after a few years of marriage, life happened.  One day my dad went in for a CT scan because he had a dizzy spell and in twenty four hours they were prepping him for surgery to remove an egg sized tumor out of his brain.  I remember the day of the surgery.  It was towards the end of February, right around this time of year, and it was also Girl Scout Cookie time.  The day of my dad’s surgery I ate an entire box of Tagalongs.  That’s when I fell into a habit of eating to de-stress.  I ate anything and everything to get through those first couple months of shock.  Doctors had given my dad three to six months to live.  Of course, he lived for three years after that.  I had gained about twenty extra pounds by the time I was scheduled for gall bladder removal surgery later that year, which of course I couldn’t have because I was pregnant.  So, with all the extra weight already packed on from eating my feelings all summer, I played up my new role of “eating for two” with gusto. Only, I was eating for two full size football players.  And all I could eat were carbohydrates.  I ate them all.  And then I ate some more.  If you had some on your plate I’d eat those too.  I ate until I thought I might explode.  I gained a lot of weight.  I was swollen.  I was miserable. 

I don’t know why I thought the weight would magically come off after I had the baby.  Some of it did.  But not enough.  I joined Weight Watchers and lost about twenty pounds, which was a good start, but then I gained it all back the months following my grandmother’s and father’s deaths.  So I quit.  Then I decided after a few months to join up again, and a week later my father in law had a stroke.  So I quit again.  I didn’t think the universe was happy with my joining Weight Watchers.   I’m not sure if I’ll ever do it again, afraid that the next time I join I might actually lose an arm or have a heart attack.

Life stresses me out.  Being a mom stresses me out.  On any given day, I’ll put my son down for a nap, grab a snack and unwind in front of the T.V. or with a book.  My biggest problems are sweets.  I can’t get enough of them.  I’m pretty self-aware and that's a problem, because I can’t say with a straight face that I might have some secret underlying reason for eating so I better get myself into therapy.  I know why I eat.  It makes me feel good.  It’s like a friend who calms me down.  But it’s a sick and twisted friendship, because my real friends would never make me gain weight.  I told a friend of mine the other night that I think I have an addiction to food.  I hate admitting that, because it makes me feel like I’m a victim, to food of all stupid things, like it has a power over me and I can’t fight it off.  I am not raped by food.  I could fight it off if I wanted to.  I eat to de-stress.  Some people drink.  Some people do drugs.  Some people paint pictures or take walks or do yoga.  I eat.  Pretty soon I’ll be all out of excuses and I’ll be done solving the problems of the world.  We close on my mom’s house in Maplewood tomorrow, and I feel like that might give me some much needed closure to this part of my story.  Maybe then I’ll be ready to deal with this food issue, or maybe not.  I told the same friend the other night that my husband and I are trying to have another baby.  I joked, “I have a big belly already so I may as well put something useful in there.”  I was only half kidding.  I find it futile to try so hard to lose weight when I’m only going to put it back on when I’m pregnant.  I’m over thirty.  My metabolism has changed dramatically.  When I try to lose weight, I feel like I have to get a running start and even then I feel like I have to work three times as hard as the normal person to achieve any results.  I feel like that fat beagle that just can’t get up on the bed. 

Do not feel sorry for me.  That’s not the point here.  I don’t want your solutions.  I know what the decision has to be and when I’m ready for it, I’ll make it.  I see women all around me overcoming their weight problems and it’s very inspiring.  I love those women.  I also see women who pop out babies like vending machines and their bodies are not morphed into stretch marked blobs at all.  I hate those women.  They make me feel like I need to apologize for having my body type.  But guess what?  That’s not going to happen.  I know you thought that may be where this blog entry was headed, but it’s not.  I’m not going to apologize for myself.  I carried a child within me.  I’m going to try to do it again.  I’ve been through a lot and my body has suffered for it, and when the time is right, I’m going to do something about it, hopefully before it’s too late.  It may take a while and I may have to start from all the way in the living room, but eventually, I too will get my ghetto-fabulous booty up on that metaphorical bed, just like my fat beagle friend, Lord rest her soul.  In the meantime, I’m going to still love myself, take care of myself the best that I can, be proud of how I look and try not to shame myself when I enjoy a few cookies with my Wendy Williams.

Hurt

When I was twelve years old, my seventeen year old sister died in a car accident along with her best friend.  I was spending a week with one of the families from our church and I was woken up very early in the morning by my friend’s dad.  He wouldn’t tell me why I had to go home.  It was an insufferably long car ride from North County, out by the airport where they lived, back to Maplewood.  I was supposed to spend the week with them; I did that sometimes in the summer.  Disappointed that I had to end my week long sleepover three days early, I fantasized on the car ride home about a reasonable explanation as to why I would be called home so soon.  The only thing that made sense in my young mind was that my dad was going to drive over to Illinois to see his brother and I would accompany him on his trip.  We talked about going there almost every other week.  I loved visiting my cousins, especially in the summertime.  They lived in a small town with plenty of open fields and dusty country roads, with more than enough space for our imaginations to run wild.  I loved spending alone time with my dad on the drive over.  He’d find some crackling radio station that barely tuned in and would sing along to Randy Travis and George Jones, music I wasn’t old enough to appreciate.  He always knew when I would start to get tired or carsick and I would lay my head down on his lap.  We’d drive down long stretches of corn lined country highway in his undependable, old pickup and at least fifty percent of the time we’d end up broken down on the side of the road, him tinkering with something under the hood before it would start again and we’d finally be able to reach our destination. My favorite part of these trips was stopping at the blackberry fields.  We’d pick them at their ripest and bring them home and my dad would make the best, most perfectly bittersweet cobblers you would ever taste. A scoop of ice cream on the side and suddenly it was a beautiful, dark purple and cream swirled tribute to my favorite time of year.  I even told my friend, who sat with me in the back seat of the car that morning on the way home, you know, I bet that’s what it is, I bet we’re going to Illinois.  I couldn’t wait.  I just knew for sure that this was the reason I was called home so early.  I leapt out of the car and went running with excited ignorance up the front steps and into the house. 

I was stopped at the door by my dad.  He grabbed me and pulled me to him.  In between crying he said some words, “dead” and “accident.”  Was that it?  My twelve year old brain wasn’t hearing him correctly.  Death was a foreign word I never had to use before, it didn’t sound right in my ears. I couldn’t vocalize any of the questions I had at that moment.  I may have said “What?” a couple of times.  I probably did.  I barely understood what was being said to me.  I certainly didn’t understand that this was the turning point of the rest of my life.  This was the definitive moment of before and after, innocent and not innocent, secure and insecure.  Everything before this was youth.  Everything after was not.  The forceful hug of my father was not comforting.  He hugged me more than I could stand and was unintentionally hurting me.  I slipped away, walked through the house in a confused fog, and found my mother on her bed clutching a picture of my sister.  I crawled my way over next to her.  The overly affectionate response of my father was brutally contrasted by the lack of response from my mother.  I wrapped my arms around her and felt her shake and sob but she didn’t feel me, so full of grief that her body just couldn’t respond or acknowledge me.  I got up and left the room.  I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn't find my other sister or brother.  I didn’t know what to say or where to go.  I went to the refrigerator and poured a soda.  The house was full of familiar people whose faces I can’t recall, save one.  Our pastor touched me on the shoulder in the kitchen as I opened the soda bottle.  “I’m sorry Carrie,” he said.  I didn’t look up at him.  I’d never been alone in a room with him before and I was embarrassed because I didn’t know how to act.  I just focused on my glass, not wanting to spill anything. 

And that’s all I can remember about that day.  I can’t remember anything that happened after those brief moments until the night of her funeral a few days later.  My sister died on August 9^th, 1990.  I was twelve years old.

They say that losing a child is like losing a body part.  When you lose a leg, or an arm, you experience what’s called phantom pain, as if the limb is still there and it still hurts. They say that phantom pain is worse than actual pain because there is nothing left to touch, and we mothers know fully well that touch sometimes helps to ease the pain.  I don’t know who “they” are, and I don’t quite know if that’s an accurate metaphor or not.  I know that when you lose a body part, you are incomplete but you’re still alive.  I can’t say the same thing about my mom that morning.  I think for a while, she died.  She slowly came back to life later on because she had to, but I can honestly say that when I touched her that morning she didn’t feel me.  And that’s what losing a child is like, I think.  Like you’re the leg that got cut off; you’re the piece that died.  I don’t know what else to compare it to.  I know what it looks like because I saw it, even in my youthful ignorance, that fateful morning.  I saw what losing a child looks like and it looks worse than losing a limb.  It looks even worse than dying because you have to live with it. 

There are other versions of this story.  Those who were in the room with her say that my mom picked up the phone, heard about the accident from the state trooper and collapsed, emitting a sound unlike anything they’d ever heard.  My brother came home early that night, after partying with some friends, to a chaotic scene on the street in front of our house filled with screaming and crying teenagers: my other sister and her friends.  Being the youngest, I was always the last to know anything, and I was always given a loose version of the truth in order to protect me.  I’m just now finding out about some things that happened in our house when I was a kid.  As I grew older, I was given more adult accounts of the truth as I probed my family history, but I still feel that my siblings go out of their ways to protect me, even now.  I can honestly say that I’m glad God spared me from experiencing the horror of watching my family find out about her death that night.  It was cruel enough witnessing the fallout in the morning.

As a twelve year old girl on the verge of my first “Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret,” moment, I think I was too self-centered and too young to be properly grieved at that time.  I experienced the grief of her death in other ways, like, watching others respond to it. My family portrait had a hole blasted through it and while my face was still in tact, everyone else’s was torn.  Her absence in our household revealed itself dramatically to the rest of my family but slowly to me.  One day, our house was full of family and friends and the next day, everyone was gone.  I was alone.  I knew I was supposed to be grieving the loss of my sister, but I was grieving the loss of my family even more.  That’s when I started going into my room and shutting the door right after school and not coming out sometimes until the next morning.  That’s when I started writing.  I wrote god-awful, egocentric poetry to work through the inner conflict, the guilt, the grief, the self-pity.  Somehow this was all about me.  I was depressed because it was expected of me, but no one knew that really, I was just lonely.  It was not the Judy Blume adolescence I was promised. 

I’m telling you this story now for a couple of reasons.  One, my sister would have been 38 years old today.  When my siblings and I talk about her, we agree that she would’ve been a great mom and probably would have had four or five kids by now.  She loved kids.  All of the girls she ran with in high school have families now, some of whom started having babies while they were still in high school.  We all agree that she probably would’ve started young.  She was very motherly to me, being the closest to me in age but old enough to be protective.  I think about all the things she missed out on, all the things I was able to experience.  It’s a weighty responsibility, this carrying on, making up for the time lost in others.  There’s some guilt involved in it too.  I promised a long time ago that if I ever gave birth to a daughter, she would be named after my sister.  Not just because she had a beautiful name, but so the name would be associated with life and not just death.  Her name is an honor, a legacy, but also a commission.  Go with this name and live.  My sister’s been dead longer than she had lived.  Today is the first time I’ve thought of that.

The second reason I’m telling you this story is because it’s important.  Maybe it will help you understand why I want to take care of my mother so badly.  It’s also a moment I’ve thought a lot about since becoming a parent.  There’s fear that comes with bringing a child into an unstable and unpredictable world.  The minute your baby is placed in your arms you think, how can I possibly protect this child?  And then you’re slammed with a cruel reality when you realize, you can’t.  I know this firsthand.  If there was anything my mother could’ve done to prevent it from happening, it was mulled over in her brain until it wormed its way into her heart and broke it, over and over again. 

For months after my son was born I would hold him in the middle of the night after his feedings and think to myself that I didn’t want to miss out on anything he did with his life.  I can’t possibly die until I experience every major milestone of life with him.  I don’t like to think of him living without me, but, someday he will have to do just that.  And he can live without me.  I know this from having lost a parent.  But I would die without him.  It’s the natural order of things, that the parents die first.  But sometimes, children die.  That’s the part of God that I don’t understand; that life can be cut off so quickly as if it had no purpose at all, no promise of a future, and no guarantees.  It’s a mystery I hope I never understand until God Himself tells me why. 

I can’t fathom it.  I can’t go there.  It’s a fear in the back of every parent’s mind but you shouldn’t live everyday in it.  There will come a day when my son doesn’t spend every waking moment with me and I’m sure the fear will creep in and overtake me at times.  It’s taken me a long time to understand why my mom didn’t hug me back when I wrapped my arms around her.  Didn’t she understand that she had other children who needed her?  Of course she did.  That’s why she slowly came back to life and finally became my mom again.  I never held it against her and I never will, especially now that I’m a mom.  She did what I would do, what you would do, if it happened to us. 

Maybe you’ve lost a sibling.  God forbid you’ve lost a child.  I’m sure you have your own story and your own way of reconciling your past to what’s going on in your life right now.  I had to go through that to get to where I am today, we all say, with a hint of skepticism.  The truth is, we wish we hadn’t gone through it.  I wish my sister were alive and I wish her children would have been born.  I wish I never had to see my mom lose her daughter.  I wish the fear of that loss wasn’t burned into my psyche.  But I have seen it, it happened, and it changed me forever, as a person, a daughter, and a mother.  At this point in my life, I'm bridging generations of my family together and am finally able to see my mother as the fragile but strong human being she’s always been.  There’s a point in your life when, strangely enough, you see your parents as real people instead of just secondary, two-dimensional characters in the story of your life.  It makes me want to thank her for coming back to life for me.  It makes me want to hug my son so tightly, until he’s uncomfortable, as tightly as my dad held me that morning, after he tried to explain what had happened and just…couldn’t.  Because who can explain such a thing?  He had just lost one daughter and couldn’t let another one go, not even into the next room.  He held onto me until it hurt us both. 

And now I understand and love my dad a little more, and I wish I could have told him everything that I’ve just told you.

Just the Two of Us

I feel like I’ve been dispensing a lot of advice lately at all sorts of events and I have to say, once again, that I feel very unqualified to do so.  At least twice last week my advice was solicited and I humbly complied.  The first of course was the email that my pregnant friend sent out.   But just this weekend at a friend’s bridal shower, all of the attendees had to write down their best marital advice and give it to the bride.  I think that some of my friends were expecting a funny quip from me, and while I really wanted to give them a good zinger about marriage, I ended up showing my true colors and ultimately wrote something mushy and sentimental.  I guess I could’ve pretended like I was a cynic, responding to an inquiry like, “What do I do when I can’t make spaghetti the way his mom made it?” with a, “Tell him he should’ve married his mom and feed him cereal.”  But the truth is, I love being married.  I believe in it.  Not in a Santa Clause sort of way, but I think God smiles upon it, the universe applauds it, that sort of thing.  Sure, my husband and I had a rough go of it over the past year and I can honestly say our determination, patience and even our affection for one another have all been tested but, I’m still confident that we’ve passed those tests and have come through still in tact, still in love.  On this Valentine’s Day I feel especially grateful for the man in my life who seven years ago today proposed to me after nervously sweating his way through a dinner that he couldn’t even eat.  I said yes, of course, that day and every day since then. 

Shortly after we were engaged, someone asked me if I thought my soon-to-be-husband was my soul mate.  I thought it was a very bold question that I could’ve taken offensively had I not known this person very well.  I answered simply, “I don’t believe in soul mates.”  Not in the traditional sense, anyway.  I don’t believe that there is only one person perfectly suited for you out there in the universe.  What a pain that would be to find your “perfect match.”  What if he died when he was a kid?  No soul mate for you.  That's a cruel way to look at love.  And what is a perfect match anyway?  Is it finding someone who likes the same movies as you, listens to the same music or reads the same books?  Those are great qualities to have in a friend, but not necessarily enough to create a deep bond that will last until one or both of you dies.  I’d like to believe that real love goes deeper than that.  There is an undefined element of love that even the dating websites can’t calculate into their equations.  They can match you with someone who looks great on paper but if “it” is not there, love doesn’t happen.  “It” is an “x” factor, if you will, that matches your soul to another.  And that’s what a “soul mate” is to me, not the one person that will “complete you” or who is going to be an extension of your ego, but someone who does something good for your soul, someone your soul says “yes” to.  Because the truth is, there is not just one person out there for every person.  There are lots of someones out there.  The responsibility shifts then from the grandiose idea of the universe bringing someone to you to the simple act that separates us from the animals, free will, or the act of choosing.  And that’s what marriage is, the great choice, saying yes over and over again to the same person.  It’s a choice that you have to make every day.  Otherwise, you will end up a depressing statistic.  Why do 1 in 2 marriages fail?  Because people stop choosing what is right in front of them.  I can’t help but think it’s also because we are a culture that thrives on newness, because something better is always on the table, something exciting is always on the market.  All of the couples counseling and sex therapy in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t look at your husband or wife and say, yes.  I want this.

And that’s essentially what I wrote as my advice to my engaged friend.  I wrote that marriage is a choice and to keep choosing your husband, even when times get tough, and they will, trust me.  I know.   Keep choosing your husband even after you have kids, when your marriage is strained, when your son demands all of your time and attention and he will, trust me.  Keep choosing your husband even when all you talk about when you are alone on a date night is your little one and how he said the darndest thing and how cute the little buddy is.  Because you will.  Trust me.

There are other tidbits of marital advice I can think of, like, to go out as much as you can before you have kids.  Go on vacations and go to the movies and dance a lot.  Because when you have kids you are so tired by the end of the week that you don’t want to go out.  Just going to bed early is exciting enough.  Recently a group of my girlfriends got together and while they were all excited to go out, I thought, eh.  It’s okay.  It means I have to put forth a huge amount of effort to make sure the baby is taken care of, my clothes are all clean and my hair is fixed.  I know, you’re thinking that I’m lazy but hey, a night out is a lot of work, and that’s when it’s just me.  Forget about it if I’m taking my son and husband with me.  Going out to eat is a craps shoot where you have to be ready for anything, mostly a meltdown in the middle of a crowded restaurant.  We've almost stopped going out altogether.  When we do eat out, we have to give up the mealtime power struggle in public so we ourselves can eat.  It doesn’t make us parents of the year, but at least we get to enjoy our food.  It’s certainly not romantic, in any sense of the word. 

My husband said the other day, “Remember when it was just the two of us and we could just go out and eat anywhere we wanted or take a nap together in the afternoon or just get in the car and drive somewhere?”  And I reminded him, “Yeah but now we have something better.”  It’s the truth.  I look at my husband playing in the snow with my son, or when they’re in bed together taking a nap, or when he takes my son’s hand to walk down the street and it makes my soul feel good.  It’s romance redefined, fulfilling in a way that flowers and candy never were.  We have a living, breathing, walking, talking symbol of love.  We love each other so much that it produced this beautiful life.  And even though our date nights are scarce and you can guess what we talk about most of the time, we are more in love today than we ever have been.  After all this time, we get each other.  We get to have each other and we actually get each other, as in, he so gets me.  At the end of the day, I get into bed with someone who gets me.  And I get him.  As long as we both shall live.

You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Baby

There are certain taboo subjects that are simply unladylike to discuss in public.  I realize that what I’m about to tell you is, as my husband puts it, inappropriate and way too personal.  I also think some of you might find it juvenile, and that’s all right by me.  I know you will read this story with all the sophisticated judgment of a New Yorker cartoonist and congratulate yourself for not being so sophomoric in your humor as to find something like this amusing.  But deep down, in the ugly places you don’t like to talk about, I hope that you too will laugh when all is said and done, even if you won’t admit it.  Because no matter how grown up you think you are, there are certain things that you will never outgrow.  Even my saint of a mother laughed when I told her about a news story from Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Apparently, they are withdrawing an important ex-mayor’s name from the running in a popular vote contest to name the new government building.  They are doing this because his name will most likely induce an “immature” response from the media.  His name is Harry Baals.  He does not pronounce it Bales.  You’re giggling along with the rest of the nation now.  The title of the article on MSNBC’s website was “Scratch Harry Baals off the list.”  Which proves my point that even when you work for a legitimate news conglomerate, you are still capable of telling jokes that appeal to twelve year old boys.

That’s why I think it’s okay to tell you my story.

It all began in early August of 2007.  I went to bed with an unsettled stomach after a dinner of spicy Spanish rice and sausage and, on top of that, ice cream for dessert.  The pain in my chest was unlike anything I’d ever experienced and around one o’clock in the morning I made my husband drive me to the ER, certain that I was having a heart attack.  When I got to the hospital, I had to wait for a good two hours to be seen and by that time the searing pain in my chest subsided.  I was pretty embarrassed.  It was suggested that I had a gall bladder attack and I needed to follow up with my doctor to have it removed. 

A few weeks later I was preparing for my surgery.  My doctor gave me specific instructions to take a pregnancy test before the big day since my husband and I were not being very responsible at the time.  Wanting to be a good patient, I took three.  They were all negative.  The day of surgery I arrived to pre-op, put on the hospital gown and the little paper shoes, and peed in a cup.  The nurse drew a few drops of blood and my husband and I were led to a room to wait to be carted up to surgery.  The nurse that drew my blood poked her head in our room.  She withdrew.  She poked her head in again and asked, “Is this your husband?”  “Yeah,” I said.  She left.  She came back in a third time.  “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”  “No way,” I said.  “I took three tests and they were all negative.”  “Oh,” she said, “Cause you’re pregnant.”

And that’s how I found out I was pregnant.  I was thrilled to be carrying a baby but not so thrilled that I had to keep my diseased and stone-filled gall bladder.  It made my pregnancy a real pain, literally.   I couldn’t eat anything and because I couldn’t eat anything, I wanted to eat everything.  The only foods that didn’t make me sick were carbs, so I ate them by the barrelful.  I was cranky and hormonal and it sucked big time, especially as the baby grew and began suffocating me.  I could’ve sworn that he was not growing in my uterus but in my lungs.  It felt like he was sitting right under my chin (or chins, by that time).  I was miserable.

A few months after having the baby I rescheduled my surgery.  This time I was going to make sure that I would not be pregnant and so I had a “hands off” policy with my husband starting about a month before the surgery was scheduled.  No way Jose, not going through that again.  All went well and my stupid gall bladder was successfully removed.  I was promised that in a few weeks all would return to normal and I would need to follow up with the doctor, just in case.  Little did I know that just because one’s gall bladder is removed that it does not mean one can just simply begin eating normally, or that one’s digestive system will ever be the same again.  Don’t let me scare you.  If your doctor suggests to you to get your gall bladder removed don’t be stupid, get it removed.  But I’ll tell you the truth, it took my stomach a good year to feel right again and my body still can’t properly digest certain foods.  Fried foods slide right through me.  And anything with fiber, well, I can just forget about going out in public for a few days.  The truth is that having your gall bladder removed leaves you vulnerable to two very gross things that us ladies never like to mention, diarrhea and gas.

This brings me to the crux of my story.  I still can’t believe I’m telling you this.  Here, have a laugh, on me.

A few days ago, ready to tackle step one of potty training, I decided to get my son hyped up about going to the store and picking out stickers and big boy underwear.  We first went to McDonald’s for a nice “buttering up” lunch.  Instead of getting something healthy that would’ve gone over better with my stomach, I choose some nuggets and fries.  And I can't have chicken nuggets without hot mustard.  We ate lunch and had a great time.  My son was on his best behavior and seemed to appreciate the novelty of just us two eating inside the restaurant, instead of the usual driving through and taking it home.  It was a good time.  When we were finished, we headed out to our neighborhood Target, which is currently being renovated.  The big banner promised they were “open during remodeling” so we went in, in search of the perfect bribes of stickers and underwear and a few other essential household items.  It took longer than I had expected to find light bulbs, which we had run out of at home, and I found myself wandering around the store for a good twenty minutes.  Finally, I found the light bulb aisle.  I turned down the aisle and that’s when it hit me.  It hit me with a flush to my face.  I knew what was coming.  There was a lady at the end of the light bulb aisle taking her sweet time, being a good consumer and comparing the length and prices of extension cords.  While I stared at the light bulbs and tried to concentrate on not doing it, I realized that my only hope of escaping certain humiliation was to move to the next aisle and pray to God that no one was there.  I turned the corner and two people were standing there looking at batteries.  I squeezed my cheeks as tightly as I could, but those of you who’ve ever been in this situation know that holding in gas only makes it worse and creates an even weirder sound when it finally does escape.  And that’s exactly what happened.  Heading back into the light bulb aisle I thought, just grab them and go, just grab them and go, but as soon as I turned the corner, out came the strangest sounding toot I’ve ever passed.  It was a sort of high pitched drum roll.  And of course, it stunk.  And that’s when I did something that I’m both ashamed of and quite proud of.  I totally blamed my son.  I said, “Buddy, did you toot?” 

My son laughs anytime he hears a toot sound.  He’s a boy.  He also likes the word “toot.”  Somebody who doesn’t know my standards taught him the other word for toot, and that day I found out two things.  One, that my son says the “f” word (f-a-r-t) and thinks that it too is hilarious.  Two, that he is so gullible he will take the blame for anything I accuse him of doing.  He said with confused pronouns, “My farted!”  He said it about ten more times and laughed hysterically as we picked up the light bulbs and high tailed it out of there.  I caught the look on the lady’s face.  She half smiled.  I have to wonder if she knew that it wasn’t true.  If she knew that it was I who passed the gas and then passed the blame onto my innocent son, who heartily accepted it and was proud to claim it as his own.  I said to him later, “No buddy, we call it a ‘toot.’’  As if calling it something cute and seemingly more proper would cancel out the gross act for which he was willing to take the fall. 

I dare you to tell me with a straight face that you’ve never tooted and then blamed someone else for it.  I dare you to tell me that some part of my story does not ring true in your life.  And then I will prove to you that thousands of people have already voted for the Harry Baals Government Building, and that the runner up, Eugene Johnson, only received about three hundred votes.  Eugene Johnson is not a funny name.  And you know that not only twelve year old boys voted for Harry.  You know that there are thousands of adults just like you and I who suffer from similar inappropriate senses of humor.  Someday they will make a pill for that, I suppose, like they do for everything else, that will keep you from giggling at the sound of a toot or the mention of a good genitalia joke.  I guess for now, I'll just have to go shopping for another pill, Bean-O. 

The Eye of the Tiger

Yesterday I told a friend of mine how in just one weekend we’ve completely done away with the binkies in our household.  You heard me.  The battle of the binky is officially over with yours truly as the victor.  Cue the confetti and the balloons.

While babysitting at another friend’s house, my son was forced to nap without his precious b-word (what we’re calling it now in our house, a word that’s strictly forbidden to be said out loud as to not give it any power).  It took a good forty-five minutes for him to fall asleep on their couch, mostly because he wasn’t tired, but he did eventually fall asleep.  Sitting in a chair across from him as he dozed off, I had a great revelation and thought to myself, why you little faker. You don’t need the binky to fall asleep!  I knew in that moment that I had stumbled onto something big and I wanted to keep the momentum going.  I had to try it again.  That night I put him to bed with no binky.  It was a complete success. And here’s the really strange part, he didn’t even ask for it.  Again, I thought, you little faker.  It was all the evidence I needed to do away with, once and for all, my son’s need for oral pacification.  Do you know it’s been four days and he and I both have survived without a binky?  Do you also know that he still hasn’t asked for it, not even once?   I feel like the underdog from the streets, the Italian Stallion, the great Balboa who just hit a TKO against that dreadful binky, the Mr. T a.k.a. Clubber Lang of enemies.  I’m ready for the big fight now.  The big time, baby.  I’m ready to go the distance.  I’m ready for (dun dun dun!) the Russian.  In other words, I’m so confident now that I’m ready to take on my next big opponent, the Big Boy Potty.  I’m ready for my very own potty training montage which includes going to the store to pick out stickers, big boy underwear and M&M’s.  I can do this.  I am as the song says “risin’ up to the challenge of our rival.”  With all the strength I never knew I had, I can run up those metaphoric steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, a mere 72 steps away from the Title.  I’m so close, I can taste it.  Eww, okay, I don’t really want to “taste” the victory of potty training.  I take that back.

My friend was so impressed with me that she responded, “Pretty soon you’ll be the one giving out advice.”  It stopped me in my tracks.  Now, I can’t fully take credit for the binky thing.  A good friend of mine told me that it just took one time for her daughter not to sleep with a binky and that was it.  She threw them all away.  So I took her idea, ran with it and made it my own.  Still, I can’t help but fantasize about how cool it would be if I actually came all this way as a parent and if I, a no-name kid from the poor streets of Maplewood, could actually qualify to give out parenting advice.  I still think I have way too much to learn to ever be taken seriously as a voice of authority.  I will, however, take this opportunity to give my best overall explanation as to why, for once, something I set out to do actually worked.  Take it as “advice” if you so choose.  I forgot to pack a binky for the naptime that I knew would take place over at my friend’s house.  So it was by accident that my son slept without it.  It just happened.  That part of it was out of my control.  But then, I saw an opportunity for growth and I seized it.  I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Phil lately.  

I can only pinpoint one other time in which I’ve seized the moment as it so blatantly presented itself.  It was after I bought Fridge Phonics for my son.  He became obsessed with the magnetic letters.  So I bought more alphabet toys and the more we played with them everyday the more he wanted to learn.  Then we started making games out of finding letters at random.  Before I knew it, he had learned his ABC’s in and out of order.  He is not yet three years old and can spell almost twenty words (increasing every day.)  People have asked me if I’m the spelling Nazi, if I drill him all the time or if I smack his knuckles with a ruler when he misspells a word.  That would be a no, no and heck no.  The only explanation I can offer is that when I recognized his desire to learn letters, I ran with it.  That’s why he knows how to spell “yellow” and “princess.”  That’s why just last night he added “e” and “v” to the letters he can actually write on paper with a pen.  (And thankfully, not on the couch.)  I saw that he loved letters so I surrounded him with them.  Again, I only take partial credit because he’s the one that started the whole thing.  Partial credit is better than none though, so I’ll humbly accept it.

A friend of mine who is having her first baby recently sent out an email asking all of her friends to give out their most sincere parenting advice.  She wanted to know everything, what diapers to use, what bottles to buy, what songs to sing to her child for sleepy time and what she should do if the baby won’t sleep.  I thought a lot about what she was asking of us.  I’ve asked those same questions myself when I was pregnant and preparing for my bundle of joy.  Thinking back to when I registered for my baby shower, I had no idea what to get or not to get.  I asked for friends’ advice too.  I even emailed a couple of my superstar mom friends.  And the truth is, because of them I registered for things I’ve never had to use and left off the list things I should have added.  But they are not to blame.  They couldn’t have known that my son would be too fat to fit into a Bumbo seat, or that he would break out when I used cocoa butter on him.  The fact is, no two kids are alike.  What one parent thinks is essential the next thinks inconsequential.  A new parent fumbles around in the dark and calls out to the voices of others for guidance.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as that new parent knows that she too has an intuitive voice that might get lost in the noise of others if she's not careful.  I asked for advice and help at every turn and milestone and, guess what, I still do sometimes, notwithstanding the unsolicited advice, of course.  Some of it’s good and some bad.  In other words, you have to weed through the briars to get to the fruit.  Or something like that.

That’s when I realized, I really have nothing of substance to offer this new mom-to-be.  I almost did the most pretentious of all self-serving acts and said, “Read my blog.  I now know how to get kids off the binky.”  But I resisted that urge.  I do have my own stories, my field research, but none of it qualifies me to tell her what to do in her specific situations. That’s something she’s going to have to figure out on her own, just like I did.  The truth is, I feel extremely unqualified to give advice. All the internet articles, the books, the magazines and friends’ advice didn't help me at 3 in the morning, comforting a colicky baby.  So I thought about an honest answer to her question, what would really help, what I would like to hear another parent say to me, and after much deliberation, I emailed back my response. “My best advice is this, no matter what happens, don’t be hard on yourself.  Remember that everyone deals with the exact same thing you do and you’ll be fine.  Say it over and over again until you feel it’s true.  Say, ‘I’ll be fine.’”  And that was my best parenting advice. 

She wrote back the next day.  “That’s great Carrie, but what diapers do you use?”

The Year of the Cat

I have a friend who unofficially runs a halfway house for stray animals.  She didn’t choose this occupation, it chose her.  She is the only person I’ve ever heard of who can pull up to any street, anywhere in the city or county, on any given day and stray animals will literally jump into her car.  No kidding.  This has happened to her more than once.  She is a lighthouse to neglected or lost animals and her spirit unknowingly emits a foghorn that only cats, dogs, and more recently, squirrels can hear.  She is the patron saint of all lost-cause pets.  She takes them into her home and puts the word out and somehow, she convinces people to adopt these forlorn animals.  Her generosity and openness are irresistible to animals and people alike.  So of course when I told her, without any agenda I might add, that I had to get rid of my cat, she made me promise I wouldn’t take him to The Humane Society or the APA, fearing that a four year old cat with “issues” wouldn’t be adopted out and whose fate would be doomed after a year or so.  She said, I’ll take him.  So last night, we dropped off our sweet kitty Pickles at our last resort, his very own kitty boarding house. 

I feel guilty having taken on the responsibility of a pet and then ultimately handing that responsibility over to someone else because I couldn’t deal with him anymore.  I understand now why it was so hard for my mom to give up that awful no-named kitty squatter.  When I begged the universe (in a previous blog entry) to stop giving me anthropomorphic cats to deal with this year, I was actually being serious.  But here I am once again, ashamed and upset over another one of those darn cats.

Pickles started out as our baby.  This is why all of the blame should be placed solely on my husband and I.  We adopted him about a year and a half into our marriage, when we were dreaming about having children but got a pet instead.  We lavished him with attention and gave him all of our affection.  He was the king of the castle, the master of his domain.  Then we had a baby.  He still received his fair share of attention and affection, though understandably not as much.  He seemed okay for a good two years.  Then when our world flipped upside down, his did too, and overnight he turned into a nervous wreck.  A perfect storm brewed in our house, one which turned our sweet cat into one anxiety ridden tornado of bad behavior.  Our son turned two and while becoming increasingly brave and mobile, would follow poor Pickles around the house for hours and corner him, get in his face, and try to grab him.  Pickles was used to having a certain amount of control over his environment and could no longer find any safe hiding places in the house to escape the unpredictable energy of a toddler.  After all of the events of last year, my husband and I barely had attention and affection left over at the end of the day for one another, much less for the cat.  The week that my father in-law had the stroke was what really set it all off.  Pickles sensed our anxiety and dealt with it like a lot of us do, he had abnormal bowel movements.  Only he pooped on the living room floor.  This seemed to be his favorite spot until he pooped under the dining room table, behind the couch and eventually, on the floor in front of the baby’s crib.  We took him to the doctor.  Then we tried to reason with him.  We tried to make him feel the proper amount of shame one should feel when one poops outside of one’s proper fecal boundaries.  Right now all of you cat people are laughing, because you know all too well that it was a futile attempt.  Cats feel no shame.  In fact, a cat is a lot like a political radio talk show host, he’ll spew crap all over the place because he thinks he’s right.  Tell him that he’s wrong and he’ll just spew more crap in even more inappropriate places just to spite you.  No, our kitty was not ashamed.  Our kitty was very smart.  He was sending us a very clear message that he was not okay with the way things were going in our house (yeah, join the club) and the you-know-what figuratively hit the fan, but literally ended up in our bed and eventually in our son’s bed.  

He had to go.

I am proud that we’ve been able to handle and overcome a lot of stressors this past year.  But one thing I can’t handle is a pet that poops in my bed. 

It was hard to let him go.  We were teary eyed as we said goodbye to him, our guilt mixed with worry.  We worried how he would handle his first night away from his family.  And that’s what pets become, like family.  When he wasn’t pooping in our bed, he would sleep with us, nestled in the space between our legs.  Our first night without him was brutal.  There were no nocturnal kitty noises, no playing, no meowing at the first crack of sunlight and no greeting us with purrs, begging us to pet him before the baby wakes up.  I know, I know, he’s just at my friend’s house about fifteen minutes away, at the most.  I can hop over there anytime and see him.  But he’s not here, in our house.  He’s not a member of our family anymore.  His presence is one that, even though was practically ignored before, is noticeably absent now.  My husband swore as we left my friend’s house that we will never get another pet "ever again."  I’m not as dramatic or resolved.  I know someday we might risk it and adopt another pet.  But there will only be one Pickles.  Our first family pet.  I will miss the little poop-smith.  I know that in the recently celebrated Chinese New Year, according to the Zodiac, 2011 is the year of the Rabbit but in my heart, it’s something else.  You know.

On the way home my husband recalled our night time prayer ritual with our son, who routinely thanks Jesus for Papa, Gaga, Mama, Dada, Pickles and the doggy next door.  “What are we going to tell him when he asks, Where is Pickles?” my husband lamented.  My answer was quick, almost too instinctual.  “We’re going to have to lie to him like all good parents do.”

Don’t tell me you’ve never done it.  According to a study in the UK, the average parent will tell about 3,000 “white lies” to their growing children.  “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”  No, it doesn’t.  “Santa Clause is coming to town.”  No.  He’s not.  “Your eyes will stick like that if you don’t stop crossing them.”  Nuh-uh.  “You’ll go blind if you don’t stop touching that.”  Not even close. The entire male population would need seeing-eye dogs if that were true.  If I told my son we gave away the cat because he pooped in the bed, I have a feeling he would be so fearful that he'd be constipated forever, literally scared poop-less. 

So far, thankfully, it hasn’t come up.  I guess he just assumes that Pickles is hiding.  Or, maybe his easily distracted two year old self just doesn’t care about it today, since he gets to go play at the mall with Dada and Papa.  But I’m sure it will come up.  I’m sure he will ask, “Where’s Pickles?”  And here’s what I’m prepared to say, which ironically, is the truth.  “Pickles is staying at Aunt (so and so’s) house for now.”  What I’ll really have to lie about is if I get asked a “why?”  Because the truth is, I don’t entirely understand the “why” myself.  But I guess I’ll say something like, “Because he likes it better over there.”  Which I hope will turn out to be the truth.