I hate darkness. Every year I think I’m going to be able to avoid wanting to kill myself in the winter — “It’s just darkness, there’s no reason to get all miserable” — and yet, every year, come mid-January, I feel like I’m trapped in an oppressive suffocating lifeless colorless airless pressure chamber that mutes all my senses and pushes me down, down, down inside myself, down into the earth, so it doesn’t matter if my eyes are open or closed but at least closing my eyes allows me to pretend it will be gone when I open them. It’s daaaaaaaaaaark!! It’s BLACK!! To quote my fellow SAD-sufferer Cousin A., the darkness is invading my soul!
(Heehee, see what I did there? I hope it comes out right.)
Ugh.
So since my light box is a little bit broken, and since there’s no convenient place to keep it and the cord is too short, I went online and purchased the cheapest full-spectrum lamp I could find that didn’t look like total junk, and I unwrapped it and assembled it and turned it on and stuck my face directly under it, and you know what? I think it might be total junk. But at work, my boss found a different one for me — an awesome one, a super expensive fancy one, and now it’s on my desk, and I have it on while I’m working, and I LOVE it and I complain every time I have to leave my desk. (There’s always a reason to complain.) And my colleagues don’t like it because it shines down the hallway and hurts their eyes, but I believe they’re just jealous, because wouldn’t you be?
The twins’ report cards arrived. Their English teacher gave YS an A- in reading comprehension. Insert rib-splitting laughter here. This is a child who scored on an 11th-grade reading level during first grade. My guess is that the teacher doesn’t understand what YS writes, and hence assumes it’s wrong. R, in the meantime… heh. Let’s not go there. Let’s instead jump off a bridge. Oh, speaking of R and going places, she wants to make her wish, and she’s going to wish to tour Buckingham Palace wearing a princess gown. She also wants her sisters to wear princess gowns. I’ve been procrastinating calling the wish granters; guess why? Because I have no interest in touring Buckingham Palace and no interest in flying overseas with my five children unless we are going to Israel which would be the only thing that might make such a trip worthwhile. If I knew for sure that it would be sunny and warm in England, then sure, let’s go. But to the best of my knowledge it is rarely if ever either sunny OR warm in England, so what do I need this for? And princess gowns? Seriously? Pah-LEEZ. Three more dresses that will clutter up my house and then the girls will outgrow them, and then what do I do with them? Feh. Just send us to Israel, you silly fools.
Have I mentioned that winter makes me grouchy?
Speaking of grouchy, someone emailed me today to ask my advice on how to keep grouchiness in check when interacting with people, and how to avoid biting people’s heads off. HAHAHAHA. I have no idea what made her think I have any knowledge to share on that subject.
My kids’ summer camp closed down. Like the one RS has been going to for seven years and the twins have been going for five years. We were maybe going to send the Boy this year too. Everyone else has been scrambling like crazy, trying to find alternatives, whereas we have been pretending this did not happen and that another solution will present itself forthwith.
I discovered that my computer, by which I mean the computer my job gave me to work with, which means it’s their computer and not mine, has a webcam. I’ve also discovered that webcams do not offer flattering presentations of me. Or of my son. Want to see?
We’re both so totally much cuter than that. And look, I’m wearing one of my old camp t-shirts, see the B’nei Akiva thingie? So ST and I made a video anyway, and it mostly consists of me trying to get her to look at the camera and say “hi,” and I sent it to my mother. Next step: getting my mother to get Skype.
Do you speak fluent German, by any chance? Let me know if you do; I need a favor from someone who speaks fluent German.
RS turned 11 years old a few weeks ago, and apparently this means we’re supposed to start planning some sort of coming-of-age celebration. Ok then. Bagels and cream cheese in my basement, everyone. Please ignore the crunching of the toys and centipedes underfoot.
What’s that thing people say? Would you rather be rich or thin? You can never be too rich or too thin? Would you rather be too rich or too thin? Here’s what I want to know: Would you rather be happy or successful? Or would you rather your child be happy or successful? Or more specifically, would you rather your child be happy or that she succeed in school? Last year when R didn’t have friends I kept saying I didn’t care if she ever succeeded academically, I just wanted her to be happy. Now that she (thank God thank God please please please) appears to have a few friends, all I want is that she succeed academically. Glass half empty. We’re never satisfied, are we.
I don’t even know what “succeed” means. She doesn’t have to ace everything and breeze through all of it and love to play card games and logic puzzles the way her sisters do. Maybe I’d settle for her having the first idea of how to play a card game. It doesn’t have to be Texas Hold’Em like her sisters play. Or even Spit. Maybe I’d settle for Go Fish. Maybe I wouldn’t care what grades she got, if only they actually reflected some level, any level, of learning and growth, rather than reflecting her ability to sometimes — but not always — retain minute (that’s “minute” as in my-NEWT, not MIN-it) (“A newt?”) bits of information from one nanosecond to the next.
Why are we even doing this? What precisely is the point of forcing her through twelve years of hell? Though she’s in fourth grade now, so I guess she only has eight years left. Eight years left where we can finish the job of making her feel like an absolute failure. Eight years left of forcing her through a system that was not designed for her, in a place (i.e., school) where she does not belong, so she can be held up in comparison to people who are not like her, who are able to do things she can’t do, so she can watch them succeed over and over again while she continues to fail. What is the point? Why are we doing this?
She’s already changing because of it. She’s already polarized herself, in frustration, rebellion, and defiance, to the opposite end of whatever spectrum has “mainstream-student-who-fits-into-a-mold” on one side. “No, I HATE reading! I don’t WANT to read!” “Ew, new books. I don’t need books, YS, you can have them.” And she bounds off to play with her new collection of repulsive dolls (barf), or to beg me to let her watch TV or play on the computer. Which might be fine, except she didn’t used to “hate” reading. She didn’t love it the way YS does, and it never came naturally to her, but she didn’t used to rebel against the very idea. She didn’t used to “hate” thinking up stories. She used to seek out projects and empty sheets of paper, usually to draw but sometimes to write. And now she hates it, hates it all. And we did this to her. We did this to her by sending her to school.
Once upon a time she wrote a few things. We found a few of those stapled-together “books,” in her old handwriting. There are no words to describe it. Digging through mountains of kaka in what used to be my study, beginning the shoveling process so we can convert it into a teeny tiny closet-sized room for RS. Sifting through heaps of years’ worth of school projects and non-school projects produced by all three of them. Picking up that illustrated story of the girl getting the haircut, reading through it and realizing with horror — horror — that it wasn’t written by RS or YS. It was written by someone else, Before. I don’t know what I did with it, I hope I burned it, I hope I buried it somewhere, but I have a strange habit of keeping things even when they cause me pain. I hope I didn’t keep it, I don’t ever want to see it again.
So maybe she used to do some of those things even though they didn’t come naturally to her, but maybe after years of being forced to do them, over and over, even though it’s too hard and it keeps getting harder for her while it gets easier for everyone else, and after months and months and then years it isn’t any easier and it doesn’t make any more sense and her time working on it is more torturous instead of less, and she can’t put any more effort into it than she already does, and the amount of effort doesn’t matter because it still makes no sense, and she still doesn’t understand the world around her but everyone else does — well, what is she supposed to do? Keep trying to fit in to this incomprehensible place that only frustrates and confuses her? Or turn her back on it and try to carve out her own place? If she can create a place where she can assert what she understands and what comes naturally to her rather than try to force it to turn into something else, then why shouldn’t she do that? So I ask again — why are we doing this to her?? Why do we send her to school? Because she isn’t frustrated and bitter enough? Because she doesn’t feel badly enough about herself? This is her third year. Her third year of knowing she’s “different” and feeling like she doesn’t belong. Being cooperative and cheerful has gotten her nowhere. Why are we doing this.
Because that’s what we do, that’s why. We send our kids to School. Because That’s What People Do. You know what? That is a CRAP answer. If everyone else threw their kids off the Empire State Building, would I? Hey, maybe I would, what the hell do I know. But it’s still a crap answer, so maybe I’ll be the first one to defy it. Maybe I’ll be the one to dig in my heels and announce that I Am Not Going To Do This To My Daughter. That she Does Not Belong In School. And that I’m not going to continue to torture her. Instead, I’m going to… what. What am I going to do.
There are things we can do, of course, and we try to do some of them, of course, but we can’t seem to do all of them, because we just can’t. And I judge myself and I blame myself and I hate myself, because I’m failing her, I’m doing this to her, and it’s all my fault. If I put in the right amount of time and effort and commitment I’d be able to help carve a place for her and I’d be able to help her help herself and if I were Proactive and Gung-Ho and a Powerful Advocate I’d be able to blaze trails for her to follow and feel like she belongs. If only I would do more, if only I didn’t keep pretending it’s going to fix itself, that one day she’ll come home from school different and happy and we’ll pull out her long division and she’ll remember, on some level, what it is she’s supposed to do, and she’ll suddenly be able to do it. If only I didn’t keep pretending it’s going to be fine, or ignoring the fact that it is not fine, if only I got creative and mobilized and powered through all the obstacles like a crawler tractor, if only I Paid Attention and Did My Job, she’d be happy and confident and wouldn’t mind that things get hard sometimes, but it isn’t like that and it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault. I don’t even know where she belongs. I don’t even know what could be best for her. I just know that if this is what’s best for her, then what’s best for her sucks, and that if I were a Good Mother, I would find it somehow, and I would know. And I can’t have these same conversations anymore, these meandering discussions that go nowhere and leave us right where we were before. And now I want to change the subject but how do you change this sort of subject?
Cute things that ST does:
- Says “hi” and “bye” and other more random things, often in a throaty, hoarse voice that suggests she might like to be an Ewok. We are pretty sure she does this voice on purpose. It’s hilarious.
- Mush herself into your shoulder when she’s happy to see you.
- Hold books open and point to random places and fiercely say “BaDAHbaDAHbaDAHbaDAHbaDAH” etc.
- Scoots on one side, sort of like the Boy used to, but using both hands instead of one.
- Points to things she wants and yelps and babbles loudly until she gets them.
- Say “Beebee! Beebee!” when she sees pictures of babies (she only did this once, as far as I know, but she still did it).
- Holds out her hand almost as if she’s greeting someone in the name of the Fuhrer (GOD FORBID) and waits for you to lean forward so she can put her palm on your face or on your head, as if she’s a priest conferring a blessing.
- When you say to her “Where’s ST?” she puts her hands over her face, or occasionally whacks herself on the top of the head.
- When you ask her “Where’s this little piggy?” she grabs her toes.
- When you say “Yaaaaay!” she claps her hands.
- Like all of my kids used to do, she grabs phones, or other things that she pretends are phones, jams them against the side of her head and says “Hi.” Then she pauses, and then babbles, pauses, babbles, etc. Often she’ll slam them into the side of your head, too, if you get too close, and says “Hi,” because she wants YOU to say hi. I have gotten bruises from this. I recall the Boy used to give me bruises in a similar manner.
- Stands up and beams proudly while waiting for you to clap.
- Shrieks loudly whenever she sees me, because she wants me to take her. I think we’re done nursing, however.
- Opens her mouth and plunges her face in the direction of whatever food or drink she’s seen that she wants. She’s like a little eel (what, eels don’t do that?). She ate half a pound of fish fillets the other night, and would have kept going if I hadn’t eventually redirected her towards the couscous after realizing that the other kids were going to need dinner too.
- Kicks her feet madly when she’s excited about something, but this is not new; she’s been doing this practically since she was born. It’s amazing her heels aren’t permanently bruised. She has some serious foot thing going on; she’s the only one of my kids who ever grabbed her feet with both hands or put them in her mouth when she was a smaller baby. Now she just kicks, and removes her socks, and tries to put her socks back on. It’s hilarious.
- Plays with clothing and other fabric objects. This is her favorite kind of toy. We played in my room with a bunch of fabric scraps for more than half an hour the other day, and she was more animated and excited than I think she’s ever been. Bizarre. Like I often say, I only give birth to lunatics.
So cute. She is so cute.
Cute things the Boy does:
- Misuses the word “very” the same way R did at his age, i.e. “I very like it!” and “I very very want it!” and my favorite: “You want to very see it? You are going to VERY see it, ok?”
- When he wants something or someone, he’ll often say “because I love [it/him/her/etc.] so much.”
- Says “Alleh-boosie” for “I Love Lucy.”
- Finds any video he wants on YouTube using my phone.
- Calls Babysitter Allison on the phone, often without anyone telling him the number.
- When I call G “rabbi” (I do that sometimes) or “Abba” in an attempt to get his attention, the Boy has been known to correct me, as follows: “No, Ima, you say G!”
He does many, many more cute things. Just can’t think of them right now.
You know how when you hit a point where you can refer to something as having happened “ten years ago,” and you remember that thing very clearly and you’re all freaked out that you remember something so clearly that happened ten years ago? Then the same thing happens for “fifteen years ago” and “twenty years ago”? Well, I quite clearly remember this day 20 years ago. Good Lord. Twenty years. Yikes.
Our 16-year-old Subaru died. Maybe it was 15? It was a 1996, not a 1995 as I first said. Sorry, I know I said I’d never lie to you. So, that didn’t last long. It was a decent purchase; cheaper than it would have been to rent a car for seven months. So, meet our latest disposable car:
Purchased via ebay, of course. The plan is for it to be slightly less disposable than the Subaru. It’s a 2002 Honda Odyssey, and it cost an actual “real” amount of money — and, now we have TWO minivans. What’s up with that? What are we, suburbanites with five kids?? We don’t even drive carpool, not really. Well I suppose we do in the morning. But still, two minivans? What do I look like, a soccer mom? But get this — this one ALSO has a DVD player. So now we have two minivans with DVD players. ?? Hello?? Anyway, I haven’t driven it yet, but G says it’s fine. Climate control, even. Ooh-lala. And it’s white. I used to eschew white cars, but I also used to eschew 16-year-old cars. Desperate times call for less eschewing.
My Elder Sister and my big brother and two of my outerboro nephews came for Shabbos last week (ויגש) so my biggest nephew could lein. Or layn. Chant the Torah portion. Just like last year. And just like last year, I missed it. He talked to me a little bit more than he did last year, though, but I think I annoyed him the same amount. My littlest outerboro nephew was adorable and hilarious as ever, and we all missed the middle one, who had stayed back in Staten Island because he had to lead groups. “Lead groups.” There’s a phrase most of the world probably doesn’t use very often. My Elder Sister came bearing gifts, by which I mean several garbage bags of clothing for myself 
and my son when he gets bigger, and a night table that used to belong to my grandmother, so we’re just going to go ahead and wish I didn’t have it. And Baby Sissie and her family are currently in Israel where my neuro-brother’s sister got married last week, and they’ll be passing through NY tomorrow evening and have elected to spend the night at… my house. Either because they love us and want to see us, or because they do not love us and they wish to inflict three miserable jetlagged children and two miserable jetlagged parents upon us immediately after they spent 12 hours on a plane. Regardless of the reason, I’m totally psyched to see them all. I think I forgot to tell my kids they’re coming. Surprise! At least it’s a good surprise.
Anyway, it’s cold in my room, but don’t let that make you complacent about global warming, there were people playing basketball on my block in tank tops yesterday.
Good night.
Because next thing you know, while looking up something so you can confirm some dates/facts, one thing will lead to another and you’ll end up suddenly, without planning it, watching video footage of the Lodz ghetto, which is bad enough in itself — but, if your baby happens to be sitting in your lap at the time, you might ALSO end up trying to teach her to say….
…a very bad word.
Heh.
She didn’t say it, and hopefully she won’t say it, but that isn’t because I didn’t tell her to.
Why in God’s name would I watch that? Note to self: Never, ever edit Holocaust memoirs. Never, ever go to Holocaust websites. And do not click on video footage of ghettos.
Not like I didn’t know that before I started.
Get this — my son kicked my nanny on Friday morning when she was trying to change him. And he broke her rib. I kid you not. What am I supposed to do with that?
Friday no one was sick. They all went to school. G was all happy and feeling relieved, under the impression that we were finally about to experience some stability. I of course knew better, and smiled to myself as I went about my business, calmly waiting for the next ‘thing’ to happen. The broken rib looked promising as the next thing, but a kid still had to get sick, because it had been one day with no sick kid, and we haven’t gone more than one day since before Rosh Hashanah.
So thank goodness, the Boy developed a fever tonight around dinnertime.
Lack of stability is its own form of stability, you know.
I could make one of those cheesy lists that starts out “You know you have five kids when…” and then I could enumerate items such as “your baby wipes her nose on various pieces of clean laundry and you don’t care,” and “you only brush your 3.5 year-old son’s teeth around 40-50% of the time,” and “you aren’t toilet training said 3.5 year-old son because being able to stop everything and take him to the bathroom is completely out of the question, whereas with your other kids it was an irritating inconvenience, but not absolutely impossible.” But I won’t make a list that starts out that way because these ailments are not necessarily universal to those who have five kids. Hey, some of my best friends have five kids, or more, and that list wouldn’t apply to them. So how about “you know you have too many kids when…” But I don’t like that either, because that suggests that I don’t want my kids, which is not accurate. I want my kids, but I want things to be about 10,000 times easier. So… “more kids than you can handle”? But is that really true? Depends on your definition of “handle,” I suppose. I mean, they’re all reasonably healthy, fed, tended to, etc., as well as outrageously adored, and thank God they know it. So how should I start my list? “You know you need full-time cleaning help when….” ”You know you need a live-in nanny when…” Or maybe “You know your name is iMiriam when….”
Feh.
Hey, if she wipes her nose on the clean laundry, that means I don’t have to wipe it for her, you know? Which means fewer open tissue boxes scattered throughout the living room, fewer crumpled up dirty tissues littering the floor, and my hands are free to fold some more laundry. So she can yank it out of the basket and use it to wipe her nose. I’m sure there’s something wrong with this picture, but I’m not sure what it is.
Want to know what else? Last Monday I flew to St. Louis to be with my mother while she was sitting shiva. Not to be confused with the Boy’s imaginary friend Shiva, or with his other friends Oshley and Evatzin. Oshley is his “best friend,” though other people, imaginary and otherwise, are often called that too.
Anyway, when I landed, a text came in from G. He had to go to pick up RS from school because she had a fever. She’d had a fever for four or five or seven hundred days, but we thought she was better, but she wasn’t — and, the nanny had called to tell G that ST felt hot and that stuff was coming out of her ear. So, off to Dr. S. Sure enough, ruptured eardrum; copious amounts of kaka oozing out of the ear. So, begin antibiotic. Amoxicillin you say? Ha. She’s going to be allergic. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know. Because I’m allergic to penicillin. And YS is allergic to penicillin. I blame YS for my allergy, actually; I was never allergic to penicillin my entire life until after those twins were born, so I figure YS passed her allergy on to me while in utero. And I’m allergic to sulfa, and ST is allergic to sulfa. So she’s going to be allergic to penicillin, which Amoxicillin is, you see? Why are we even trying this? But fine, give her Amoxicillin. She’s going to break out in hives in eight days, you mark my words.
So, I came home from St. Louis. I don’t remember who was sick and who was healthy when I got back. I don’t remember anything anymore, except I’m pretty sure we haven’t gone for more than one day since Rosh Hashana without at least one child being sick (seriously). So sure enough, Thursday evening YS and the Boy both offered forth a nice happy fever. And so it was on Friday. And Shabbos. And Sunday. And yesterday. Yesterday, being Monday, was my day not in the office. I was a paradigm of nurturing patience and calm while home with my baby and my two sick children, until such time as any of them wanted anything, at which point I had to try very very hard not to explode. I only sometimes succeeded. So there I was changing my baby’s diaper, and… look at that… little red dots… all over her belly. And her back. And her chest. I yanked her pants down; rash on her legs. And as I was looking at her face, the dots appeared there as well. What day is it again? Monday? So, what day is that since she started the antibiotic? Ah yes; day eight.
Told you so.
“Hello, Dr. S? Yes, it’s all over… spreading while I watch… well I don’t know if it’s hives, the last two times I was positive someone had hives it turned out I was wrong… ok… yes, I’ll do that… How much Benadryl? Ok, thanks.” I text G with the doctor’s instructions, which among other things include giving ST one more dose of Amox (don’t ask, I’m not getting into it). The rash doesn’t go away. Yep, allergic reaction alright. And let’s check the two feverish ones. Yep, fever still there. Anyone else? Not yet? Swell. Oh hey, Old Navy has 35% off, only online and only today! I’ve been waiting for this. I already have a full shopping cart; I know how November works. Of course I had assumed it would be 30%, not 35; I mean, wow. When does this happen?? Hey RS, come here — you need shirts, right? And the Boy needs pajamas… and I need all sorts of things. Sweaters, skirts, scarves and vests to wear over my 7,000 long-sleeved shirts that I purchased when I used to be skinny; easier to accessorize than to do a total wardrobe overhaul, in my opinion… oh yes, and tights. Brown and black and navy. Because I have no tights, I have pantyhose, because no one wears tights, right? Oh what’s that you say, BFFD? Everyone wears tights, and no one wears pantyhose unless they’re over 50?? Years old? What are you talking about?? When did this happen, and why wasn’t I notified? I just bought a bunch of pantyhose, and they aren’t even returnable. Feh. Ok fine; I’ll buy some tights. Black and brown and navy. But I don’t need to buy any maroon or green or purple, because guess what, I still have them from the last time people wore tights, I think when I was in college. I never threw them out because I KNEW they’d come back one day, so HA. I win. Except I have no black or brown or navy, because they all got destroyed, and I also have no maroon or green or purple clothing… maybe I’d better order some to go with my tights? All this time I was ordering clothing, by the way, I wasn’t doing laundry, or wiping noses, or toilet training. Because if we don’t have clothing, we won’t have laundry, and then where will ST wipe her nose, see?
So when I woke up this morning my head was slamming against itself and my throat was on fire. Heh. Oh crap, no. I am NOT getting sick. Text arrives from nanny; her baby is sick and she can’t come today. (Her mother is also in the hospital and possibly dying. Whoa. ) Super JM to the rescue, thank God. But I feel awful, so I email the boss, go back to sleep and wake up around 12:45. Heh. Slamming headache and sore throat gone; caffeine withdrawal headache very much alive. Came downstairs to relieve JM and try not to scream when I see my baby, who is covered all over with flaming red splotches and could probably be named poster child for the Allergic Reaction Freak Show. Oh. My. GOD. I told you so. I freaking told you so. Boy appears better, YS still feverish, day 6. Appointments for ST and YS tomorrow. Check my work email; apparently I missed a super-important meeting with my team, and… the Big Boss. This has never happened. The Big Boss doesn’t meet with my team, ever. I’m not talking about the Super Big Boss, mind you, who not only never meets with my team but never comes to the New York office; I’m talking about the local Big Boss. He met with my team to talk about mission, vision, strategy, etc., and I missed it. I freaking missed it. I. Cannot. BELIEVE this. 
I emailed my boss all upset; of course she downplays the whole thing, but I know better. I know all about her trying to emphasize the positive and make people feel better, especially when the annoying crap that’s happening is due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. So it’s nice of her and all, but oh my God, I missed the meeting with my team and the Big Boss. Not the end of the world though, right? I mean, at least I’m not sick, so I’ll be able to go to work tomorrow and finally, finally, for the first time since before Rosh Hashanah, resume normal operations….
Oh no. You’re kidding me. This week is Thanksgiving. I can’t believe it. I’m abnormal, right? I mean, most people look forward to vacation days and long weekends, right? But I can’t take this craziness anymore. I realized a long time ago that there’s always going to be something “insane” going on; there’s always going to be at least one sick kid, or some other kind of upheaval demanding all of our attention and causing us to say “It’s been really crazy lately.” Heh. “Lately,” my eyeball. It’s always going to be crazy, in one way or another; such is the nature of things, at least around here. I realized that a long time ago. But this last two months has been insane even beyond our usual standards. It’s been thing after thing after ridiculous thing. The extent to which I do not have time to do anything — including advocate for my special needs child, for whom we never received the proper forms from the board of ed for this academic year — simply defies all reason and experience. Every microsecond that I do anything, such as sneak up to my room to compose a blog post whilst children shriek loudly downstairs, is a microsecond that I stole from something else. My house is in chaos. My head is in chaos. The things I turn to for stability and grounding, even in my mind, are in chaos, or inaccessible, or dead. My grandmother’s dead, for example. It isn’t working for any of us. My mother — one of the most fiercely independent (as well as stubborn) people I’ve ever met — is like a lost child. This doesn’t shock me, as I’ve seen it before, but that doesn’t make it better. My sisters aren’t pleased either, and I keep finding myself confused and crying every time I remember. I keep thinking I’m going to call her to tell her one thing or another — like that I wore her scarf, or her ring, or the kids are using her collapsible tray table thingies while they watch DVDs — and then I have to remember that she’s dead. And in fact that’s why I have her scarf and her ring and her tray tables; if she weren’t dead, they’d still be with her, where they belong. But that doesn’t make sense; she isn’t dead. That’s not how it works. That’s not who she is. You’d think we might have been expecting this or something — she was 86 years old and stuff — but we weren’t, and it sucks.
“Yeah, you really needed Savta to come live with you.” That’s what my mother says every time I inform her, in a calm, not-at-all-whining manner, about the total chaos of my existence. She says that because I desperately wanted Savta to come live with me. I knew that was crazy, I knew she shouldn’t leave Baltimore, and at a certain point I realized that she wouldn’t exactly be happy in my rather noisy and action-packed home, either. But I wanted her to live with me anyway, against all rationality and reason, and yes, though my mother says it to be sarcastic, that is, in fact, what I really needed.
Feh.
In other news, ST pulled herself up and stood unsupported for a second or two yesterday. It was absurdly cute. And my son has reached the stage of development that includes total freewheeling imagination — Shiva, Oshley and Evatzin are only one example (or three) — and I absolutely love it. I wish I could write down everything he says. And, the day my grandmother died, November 9, was also a day that something took place that was of monumental significance to the iMiriam family, particularly to R. Remember how Make-A-Wish wouldn’t give her what she wanted? Well, what she wanted was to meet a particular person who lives in Israel. This person happens to be the Super Big Boss of the non-profit for which I work. So Make-A-Wish wouldn’t send us to Israel, for reasons that are ludicrous and don’t support Make-A-Wish’s own logic, but whatever. So my office, in particular my boss and the local Big Boss, stepped in, and R, along with the rest of us, was treated to a private meeting with her “hero,” which is what she calls this person. If you’d like to know who her hero is, I’ll tell you this much — my son calls him “Tansharansky.” That might help, at least if you’re my age or older. If you aren’t, email me and I’ll give you the actual name, and you can look him up. Also for the older crowd, this might help too:
Hee. Notice her rapt expression. It was truly the greatest thing that ever happened. Though Savta Ruth had already been dead for two hours, but we didn’t know that yet. So this meeting was a great experience for all of us except perhaps the Boy, who is going to be QUITE embarrassed (I hope) when he’s older and we tell him how he behaved. Heh. At least he didn’t tell Tansharansky to his face that he doesn’t like him; he only told us, hopefully when Tan couldn’t hear. But if he could, I’m sure he’ll survive. Dude’s been through worse. And if you’re wondering how such a person becomes the revered hero of a eight (now nine) year-old girl — well, most of what I can say is, meet R. Meet my daughter R. That’s the kind of person she is.
Tags: Keeping house (or not), New Baby, New job!, Relatives, The Boy
I don’t do this well, I don’t think. BFFZ does it well. When her grandmother was dying she wrote this, and when she was dead, she wrote this. BFFZ does everything well, BFFZ is magical, a goddess. All I can say is that I don’t believe it, I will never believe it, I just saw her, how can this be happening. Surely I’m going to call her today to wish her a good Shabbos, surely I’ll make my usual threats that I’m going to come get her to spend Shabbos with me and she’ll laugh, and surely if I go back to that soft brown patch of muddy earth and crawl down inside it I’ll find her waiting for me, and I’ll be able to see her again.
Tags: Relatives
Before I say anything else, here’s my effort to be civic-minded, a team player, etc.:
http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/AuctionHome.action?auctionId=138046654
You should totally bid on stuff. And I offered them a whole boatload of scented candles, but they didn’t even reply to my email. Feh. So if you wish you had some scented candles to bid on, let me know, and I’ll cut you a deal. (the deal is that you have to take everything I tell you to take)
I think I might be a werewolf. This is because my hands are shaking. In those teenage books that I scoff at and to which I have serious objections and yet I keep them all next to my bed and have read them each several times, the werewolves’ hands shake when they’re about to transform. Maybe I’m about to transform into a giant wolf. That would be cool.
I think my hands are shaking because of my grandmother, but it might be because of R, but more likely it’s my grandmother, because they weren’t shaking before this latest development. (BFFD: that’s “development”)
Last Sunday, October 30, my grandmother had a stroke. Haha! Remember those? But we aren’t afraid of strokes. Strokes are minor little nuisances. They don’t signal the end of the world. Here’s the thing, though; yes, they do. But the difference is, my grandmother is 86. What’s wrong with an 86 year-old woman having a stroke? And did you know there’s supposed to be a hyphen after the 86? It’s supposed to be 86-year-old, not 86 year-old. I learned this at work, but I still don’t believe it.
So sure, it’s not like I don’t mind my grandmother having a stroke just because she’s 86 as opposed to — um — six, like the last person in my life who had a stroke; I mean, it’s not like it’s ok with me since she’s an old lady instead of a tiny little girl who happens to be my child, but still; she’s 86 years old, and we have to expect that things will happen, and a stroke is a semi-um… normal? expected? thing to happen when someone is 86. It shouldn’t be a shock, like it is when someone is only six. It shouldn’t completely paralyze (ha) my mind and make me shake all over. But it does, because I don’t want her to have a stroke. I don’t want her to die and I don’t want her to change. What I want is for her to live in the house that was cleaned out and sold eight months ago, and be healthy and be herself and be the person who I want to have in my life. She’s not just my grandmother, she’s one of my best friends, and I have no interest in her changing or ceasing to exist, only she probably will do both of those things at some not-too-far-off point, and so my hands are shaking, because I saw her over Shabbos and it wasn’t her, and there’s a chance she might come back, only now I just heard from my mother and there’s more crap happening in her brain and she’s going back to the ICU. So it’s over. It’s probably over. “It” being me having the person who I want in my life. She may not die, yet. She may not be alive-but-gone, yet. But she may be, and if not now, then some time, maybe even soon. And I don’t want “some time,” I want never.
Do you know what else? Why does it have to be a stroke? Can’t it be a heart attack? Can’t it be anything else? You know what Dumbledore says about fear of a name? How it increases fear of the thing itself? Is that true? If I could get myself to not be afraid of the word “stroke” would that make me not afraid of strokes? And am I afraid, really? Is it fear that I feel when that word shows up? I think so, but is it old fear or new fear? Fear of the past or fear of the present/future? Am I really afraid of strokes, or am I only afraid of that stroke? The stroke?
I’m definitely afraid of that stroke. I’m afraid of what it did to her and I’m afraid of what it’s still doing to her, but it’s all the same fear. The paralyzing terror of those two days, and of the other two days, never stopped and never went away. I figured that out a long time ago. Your immediate consciousness might forget things, but your brain doesn’t (unless it has a stroke, I suppose). Time doesn’t heal. It only covers and distracts. I moved on from that terror because there were new things to focus on, things that piled on top of the terror like the first layer of a blanket as it’s being folded, and then the next layer, and the next layer, and the layers keep coming because the blanket doesn’t end, but that doesn’t mean the terror isn’t still lying under there. Something just has to poke it, and suddenly it’s back again. It either shoots straight up through all the blanket layers or it shoots out sideways from under it, but suddenly all the other things are gone and you’re right back where you were on July 7, 2009, as if no time has passed. All that progress you thought you’d made was nothing. It was only insulation. Your best friend/grandmother has a stroke and you realize the terror has been alive and healthy in your mind all along, and it just takes the word “stroke” and the insulation is shunted aside. No one is healed. No one is recovered. No one is better, and now Savta Ruth might get taken away from me too.
Yes, me. Taken away from me. Like my 6 and a half year-old daughter was taken away from me. (Yes thank you, I know she isn’t dead and she’s now nine years old, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t taken away from me, and if you don’t know what I mean by that, then you haven’t been reading my blog carefully enough.) It’s all about me, and what I want and how I feel, and how afraid and helpless I am against the march of time and weakness that causes strokes in old ladies, and against the march of whatever it was that caused the stroke in my little girl. Or at least it’s about me when my hands are shaking and the beast crawls out from under the blanket, because my grandmother had a stroke and my child had a stroke, and now she has pneumonia again.
Heh. Weren’t expecting that, were you. Yes, she has pneumonia again. See, last Sunday when my grandmother was having a stroke, my daughter R was battling a virus with a fever, as usual. Nothing new. When doesn’t she have a virus? But then it didn’t go away, and it didn’t go away, and she went to the doctor once, twice, and lo and behold, send her for a chest x-ray, I hear something in her lung. And I said I’m about to go to Baltimore to see my grandmother; should I stay home instead? And the pediatrician said no, you should go, this is just to see whether or not she needs antibiotics. She said something about doing this for any kid who’s had a fever and is blah blah for blah blah many days, and it was quite obvious that R was nowhere near as sick as she was that Other Time, and I kept telling myself there was nothing to ‘worry’ about, but please. Yeah right. Go on, say that again. Nothing to worry about, Miriam. She’s missed a week of school, just like last time. She went for a chest x-ray, just like last time. It was even Friday, just like last time, and it’s even November. But she isn’t as sick as last time and this isn’t the same thing. It isn’t the same thing, it isn’t the same thing. She’s going to take antibiotics and they’re going to work and it’s going to be fine, and it’s going to be just like any other kid, and even though they did see pneumonia on her x-ray it’s just a stupid little blob of pneumonia — in her left lung, like last time, but it’s just a stupid little blob. It isn’t a snowstorm. Her entire lung isn’t blocked out with no breath sounds at all. Her entire torso isn’t heaving up and down and she isn’t in the emergency room groaning as she struggles to breathe with a mask and a gown that are too big for her while we wait for the transport to Columbia. This isn’t November three years ago and she isn’t on three types of broad-spectrum IV antibiotics and none of that is going to happen again. But it’s already happening again, you know why? Because she has pneumonia, and that’s all I need in order for it to happen again.
November is a good month now, you know. It’s a great month, an awesome month, because last year my new baby was born on November 8. She’s going to be a year old tomorrow. Want to see how cute she is?
That’s her on Saturday night at BFFA’s house in Baltimore. BFFA took that picture with her iphone. I totally need an iphone, because I can NEVER get pictures like that, because my phone takes 97 years from the time you press the button to the time it actually takes the picture, and by then ST has completely stopped doing the cute thing and has begun instead to scoot towards you because she wants your phone, or to look away from you and start reaching for something, and so your picture ends up looking like this:
Feh.
So anyway, she’s going to be a year old tomorrow, and I have to say, she is the cutest, most delicious, greatest, cuddliest blanket that ever was. And she happens to be crying right now, so I’m going to go ahead and get her out of her crib. And then I’m going to wake my daughter R, because she’s sleeping on the couch, but I need to take her temperature, so I can make sure the antibiotics are working and the stuff doesn’t spread and block out her lung again. And then I need to ask how my grandmother is, because you know what, she had a stroke.
Wrote most of this Saturday night, post Yom Kippur, between the hours of 12 and 3 AM.
We made it. RH and YK are over and we aren’t dead. For those of you who don’t know what’s been happening around here, that may not sound so impressive, but it is. By the way, I’m posting from my phone, which you may recall I tend to do only when I can’t sleep, so pardon my comparative lack of eloquence.
By the way, ST turned 11 months old today. Oh. My. God. As usual, the awesome amazing months disappear in the blink of an eye. Unlike the months of hell/pregnancy, which did not disappear at all, though I suppose they’ve been over for a while. Oh hey, speaking of which, my twins turned nine (on the solar calendar) on the second day of RH. Sigh. Speed of light, I tell you what. (Hey, that’s funny — solar calendar — speed of light — get it? Ha.)
Speaking of the second day of RH, allow me to fill you in. Thursday night of RH I could not sleep. This was because of reeaaally bad pains in my joints, and because I was freezing cold, and then because I was boiling hot… etc. Oh yes, and it was because of the baby who recently moved back into my room in spite of her still not sleeping through the night. Yes, that’s right. Still. Trying to be supportive of the fact that my husband, being a pulpit rabbi, has a lot on his mind/plate on Rosh Hashana, I didn’t wake him to take care of the baby until I really couldn’t take it anymore. But I didn’t sleep. And I was in pain all over. And I felt… awful.
So I didn’t go to shul. Since we were hosting two families for lunch, I did stagger downstairs briefly during the meal, but I honestly don’t remember much of it, and I did try to tell the guests that it didn’t count as having them over. I was a little better the next day but still pretty bad, so I didn’t go to shul for Shabbos Shuva either. Recall that pulpit rabbis tend to have a few things to do on both Rosh Hashana AND Shabbos Shuva, and what with the five kids and all, it may not have been the best time for G to have his wife be totally out of commission. Just saying.
So. I was a little bit better on Sunday, but still bad. And then… wonder of wonders… G felt sick… and he took his temperature… and it was 101 point something. And so it was on Sunday. And Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. Thursday he went to the doctor; nothing. Gave him antibiotics anyway, not expecting them to help. In the meantime, I did not get better. The thermometer claimed I had no fever as of Monday, but this made no sense. What do you mean I don’t have a fever. Of COURSE I have a fever. I know what fevers feel like, and this is it.
Monday is the day I don’t go to the office. It’s also the day I don’t have a nanny. Babysitter Allison recently took something called a “job” (feh), and she didn’t believe me when I told her Monday was National Bring Your Neighbor’s Baby to Work Day. Monday was awful for both G and me. (Probably wasn’t the most fun day ST ever had, either.) Tuesday was awful. Wednesday was awful. Thursday was awful. I didn’t go to the office all week. Emailed my boss each night with my desperate hopes to see her in the morning; emailed her each morning and told her I was dead. G also did not get better. Eventually he stopped forcing himself to go to his two day jobs and accepted that he had to stay in bed, especially if he was going to have a chance of being ready for YK. It didn’t work. He didn’t get better. I didn’t get better. Somewhere in there RS, YS, ST and the Boy all had elevated temperatures of varying intensities; only RS’s required that she stay home from school. R remained blissfully unaffected, and is still bragging to everyone that she was the only one who didn’t get sick. No one (thank God), including RS even when her temperature was over 101, felt anywhere near as sick as G or I did.
Thursday I developed a new symptom: crippling nausea. Strangely, it appeared to be a result of the smell of turkey cooking. ?!?! What. The. I am not pregnant (don’t worry, I’m not). Why am I becoming horrifically ill from the smell of food.
Insane or not, I was horrifically ill. I had no choice but to barricade myself in my room and curl up in a heap and hope to God that I would either barf, or become unconscious. Neither happened. I stayed in a heap and moaned. G had to take care of all five kids. Alone. Thursday night, erev Yom Kippur. On his fifth day with a 101+ fever. This is a joke, I texted some friends from my fetal position on the bedroom floor. This is like a sick joke.
G handled it, somehow. I made some cameo appearances and helped whenever I could, then fell back into the heap. Once again I didn’t sleep all night. I hadn’t slept all week, but this time it was because of the nausea. I hobbled back and forth to the bathroom, desperately wanting to throw up. Please God get it out. Get whatever is making me feel like this out. Please. Not this time, Miriam. It stayed where it was. Eventually I fell asleep.
Friday. Nausea somewhat less crippling but I couldn’t eat. And I couldn’t drink. Liquids made the nausea worse. It is about to be Yom Kippur and I can’t eat or drink. I tried to force feed myself Gatorade. Couldn’t take more than a few sips. G was slightly better and thank God was able to work on his stuff. One day, however, is not quite the same as a whole week… but it’s something. He was still weak and shaky and awful. I was still in my room most of the time. G managed to assemble a seudah from Rosh Hashana leftovers that were still decently edible despite having sat in the refrigerator all week. I couldn’t eat. I made myself drink. Gatorade made me sicker so I stuck to water. Discussed with G under what circumstances, should I start puking or anything, it would be advisable to break my fast. Told G it would be insane for him to daven Kol Nidre. He insisted he’d be able to do it. The girls went to shul. Babysitter Allison brought the Boy to shul. I did not go to shul. I was MAD. I am not pregnant! Why don’t I get to go to shul for Kol Nidre?! Feh.
You know, writing this when we’re not better yet (we’re not better yet) doesn’t carry much of a triumphant post-battle high. It’s a gripping story, though, isn’t it. “Chilling.” “Shut up, Chuck.” (don’t ask)
Anyway. It’s Sunday morning. I didn’t sleep last night. When was the last time I slept? We aren’t better yet but we made it through Yom Kippur. My nausea was mostly abated yesterday morning, probably because I hadn’t eaten, seeing as how it’s back now. But you know what else? G managed to do everything. I don’t understand how, especially because he couldn’t sleep at all on Friday night, but watching him in shul during the day, it was as if he wasn’t sick at all, and I heard it was the same on Friday night. He davened Kol Nidre and spoke Friday night; during the day he spoke before Yizkor, gave all the explanatory/etc. bits throughout davening, made all the announcements, spoke before Neilah, and davened Neilah. Knowing how sick he was, and having seen him during the post-Musaf break when it was abundantly clear how sick he was, I have no idea how he did it. It was surreal. And I actually didn’t feel much worse than I usually feel on Yom Kippur, which was equally surreal. I wasn’t able to stand much of the time, and my mental state was somewhat altered (I know this because I viciously bit off someone’s head after havdalah, in a way that shocks me now), but I made it in one piece. And my husband made it in one amazing, phenomenal piece. Thank God. Thank you God.
But here’s the thing; we are both still sick. Ugggghhhh.
In other news, as of about a week ago, ST also says “Bah. Bah” when she’s waving bye-bye. She is also, as you know, really, really cute.
Ok; time to hobble off to do some laundry, and/or collapse once again into my friendly heap. Grrrrroan.
I so totally can’t take this anymore. I have to post or I’ll DIE. Summer trip? What summer trip? Yeah, writing about that would be nice. Birthday? Nope, no birthday here. I sure as hell am not 37, I can tell you that. Fourth grade? Fifth grade? Two of one, one of the other? Yes, we have some of that going on as well. I think. I can’t tell anymore. I don’t know what day it is, much less the year. But suddenly once again there’s homework all over the place, and apparently it’s about to be Yom Tov, and I am NOT going shopping in Monsey this time, so don’t try to make me, ok?
ST waves bye-bye. It’s soooooooo cute. She started last week. First she was just doing it to imitate us, but now when you say “Bye-bye!” she’ll smile at you and start flapping her hand. She’s also started moving a little, on her cute little hindquarters, but it isn’t so purposeful… yet. I suspect any moment now she’ll start zooming across the floor, and thereby wear out the seats of many pairs of tights and pants as her sister R did before her. ST also loves to eat. But when she doesn’t want any more food she starts spitting like crazy and spraying baby food into your face and all over your clothes and her high chair tray. It’s hilarious (seriously, it is). I crack up laughing every time. She’s been doing it for months already, though it didn’t always mean she didn’t want more food, but now it does. Oh boy does it. Heeheehee She also STILL doesn’t sleep through the night (she’s ten months old), and doesn’t sleep at all unless she’s with me, and she nurses all night as well, and I have had so many beyond psychotic total meltdowns from exhaustion that G announced last Sunday, when I had turned into a snapping snarling grizzly bear who bit the head off anyone who approached her, and I finally had to lock myself in my room because I was not fit to be around people, that he was going “to change ST’s patterns, come hell or high water,” and that he’d spend the nights with her in the guest room and teach her to sleep by herself, goshdarnit. So he’s been doing that, and as a result I’ve been sleeping more at night, and as a result I feel like a regular exhausted human being instead of feeling like a deranged rabid hyena who’s been trampled by a bull, and also as a result I miss my baby so much that I feel like I’m not even her mother, because I don’t see her all day and then she’s not cuddled up with me all snuggly and warm and delicious and keeping me awake at night anymore, so I’m never with her anymore and she isn’t really mine. Feh.
I love my job. Just saying.
The Boy started sleeping in a bed last week. Contrary to RS, who took I think two months to realize she could climb out of her bed if she wanted to, he was out of his bed and in my room on the second morning. At 6:30 the second morning, in fact. Heh. When he slept in the crib he always refused a pillow and never wanted to be covered with an actual blanket, but only wanted to be covered with his blankie, specifically “the blankie with the stuffies,” by which we mean the formerly quilted blankie that is ripped open in many places but still has some twisted, matted wads of stuffing inside. So now that he’s in a bed, he does accept an actual blanket, but he STILL wants to be covered with his blankie with the stuffies, AND — and we have no idea how or why this started — he wants to be covered with a striped bath towel that he seems to have found in his room. Last night when I was tucking him in he was giving me the sort of very precise instructions he is accustomed to giving, and he said he wanted to be covered with the towel, “Because that’s gonna feel me SO comfy.” Heehee. And this morning, he had to stay home from school , because they think he’s sick , but he isn’t , but he had to stay home anyway, and he couldn’t find this weird necklace-type thing he’s been wearing around his neck lately (leave me alone, he has three older sisters, what do you expect), and when he found it and put it on he went running to my nanny and said “You want to see me so cute?” Heeheehee.
Ok, our time is up. I’m so bleary-eyed and incoherent I’m not even going to read through this and try to make it make sense or change it to English, ok? But I will say that in addition to all the cuteness, etc., two people whom I love very very very much got very very bad news in the last 1.5 weeks or so, and it sucks, and other people whom I also love got very good news and/or are about to embark on extremely exciting and awe-inspiring life changes, so yay for that. Good night now, before the hyena comes back.
Starting this post on Friday afternoon at about 1:30. I suspect I won’t finish it until much later. Indeed, it is now Sunday night, or perhaps Monday morning, since it’s 1:13 AM. And we are no longer in Cleveland, but in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But pretend it’s last Friday while you read.
Any other natural disasters want to hit the east coast while we’re away? We missed the earthquake, and now it looks like there’s going to be a hurricane. Hello? Hurricane, seriously? Like the actual hurricane, not just the leftover rain from the edges of the hurricane? I thought we lived in New York, not Florida. I’m so relieved that we’re away, and so freaked out that this is going to happen, away or not. Not only because I have no interest in coming home at midnight on Monday night after a day in Hershey Park (please God) to find a flooded house without electricity, but because there are other people there who are not away. The mental health facility at which my Elder Sister is employed is evacuating farther inland, for example, and since my Elder Sister is all senior and important, she has to evacuate with them, over Shabbos no less. Heh. Good luck with that. That’s what you get for working in a care profession. Me, I don’t work in a care profession, plus I’m on vacation. Meanwhile Babysitter Allison went to my backyard and brought in the bicycles and might bring in the grill. Can she bring in the trees, too, so they don’t come crashing down? Shudder. Thank God we’re away, and everyone else is in our thoughts and prayers.
Since we last left our heroes (my family), they went to the Gateway Arch, and rode to the top. This is our seventh summer road trip to St. Louis, and if I recall correctly we have only gone to the top of the Arch ONCE. -??- Hello? It’s St. Louis! What gives?! Well, what gave last year is that I was (if you recall) dying pregnant, so I sure as bloody heck wasn’t going “up” anything; also, if you recall, last year it was over 98 degrees every single day that we were in St. Louis. Even so, my family did try to go to the Arch without me, and to make a long story short it didn’t work, but they did end up being outside in the horrific heat forever and ever, without ever actually making it up. Heh. Not the best memory, even though I didn’t go. So, this year, we planned more carefully, avoided last year’s problems, and… we went up the Arch.
Here’s what Dave Barry’s Travel Guide has to say about my home state in general and about the Arch in particular:
Missouri is called “The Show-Me State,” because that was the winner of the Dumbest State Nickname Contest, narrowly edging out “The Nanny Nanny Boo-Boo State.” The largest city is St. Louis, which features a 630-foot-tall stainless-steel arch, a monument to the early pioneers who came west with nothing but their wagons, their guns, their dreams, and their 630-foot-tall stainless-steel arches. Visitors may ride to the top of the arch, where, high above the Mississippi River, they will experience the thrill of wanting really badly to get the hell back down on the ground.
Heehee. So in the past, I thought that was a little uncalled for. I mean, sure, the little tiny egg-shaped elevator pods they send you up in are claustrophobic and frightening and were done in that 1960′s space-age way that makes you feel like you’ve just boarded the Enterprise, only (a lot) smaller, and they jerk and bump all the way up, and then when you get up to the top the floor is all curved and when you look out the window you get a spectacular view of… the brown Mississippi River and some super ugly rotting factories in Illinois, and on the other side, lovely downtown St. Louis, which really is lovely, though if you look too far you might miss it — but so what? It’s still a big giant arch, and it’s still cool. So I thought Dave Barry was being unnecessarily rude. Until this year. Apparently, being almost 37 years old, and being someone who can no longer ride roller coasters without needing to sit unmoving with my head between my knees for about six hours, doesn’t agree with going up the Arch. The vertigo hit the second I got out of the elevator pod, and got worse as I walked back and forth across the curved floor, and when I got back to the ground and was forced to immediately climb the stairs from the elevator area to the lobby, it was so bad that I went immediately to the nearest bench and sat down with my head between my knees and did not move for about 30 minutes. Whoa.
But I’m still so glad we went. It may be just a giant arch, and they may be trying their darndest to drill into everybody’s heads that the whole place is actually called the “Jefferson National Expansion Memorial” (whatever), but it’s my giant arch, and it’s my Museum of Westward Expansion that I don’t think has changed in 30+ years (seriously), and I adore it, and it was very nostalgic and fun to bring my kids there. Though the Boy was far, far more enamored with the elevators, and (especially) with the bank of black telephones (the kind you can use to listen to explanations of pictures and stuff you’re looking at; there’s a bunch of pictures and stuff with phones under them in the waiting area before the elevators, and the Boy was in heaven) than he was with the Arch itself. Though he did call it “the ouch,” which was funny. Here, have a nachas picture:
Yay. That’s my Arch. (um, and my three big girls)
So, once we got the hell back down to the ground, we committed the extreme blasphemy of not watching the thrilling suspense movie about how the Arch was built (will they be able to fit in the last piece? or will the heat have made the steel expand too much? stay tuned!), and instead saw a movie about Lewis and Clark. You know, westward expansion, gateway to the West (that’s St. Louis), etc. The movie was great, and the kids loved it (especially YS), and amazingly the Boy was quiet the entire time (?!), and I learned a lot, and I was extremely impressed with the way in which it was not just a pure celebration of Lewis and Clark and the ‘pioneering spirit that built this great nation’ or whatever, and that instead it presented a somewhat balanced (in my opinion) picture of the activities of the explorers/colonists on the one hand, and the effects on the indigenous tribes on the other. As I told G, as much as I love America, when we get back to the early history and start waxing proud about the pioneers and the spirit of blah blah, my feelings of contempt and disgust sort of dwarf everything else. I’ve somewhat felt that way for a long time — since I was a teenager, at least (I think) — but wow did it increase when I was preparing to teach European history. Oh my God. What a bunch of maniacs. So this movie didn’t downplay or try to whitewash the, ah, questionable moral value? or whatever of what the “white men” did, and I appreciated that. Though part of me does wonder how long it’s going to work for us to talk out both sides of our mouths about the building of this great nation. Was it a criminal act by racist murderers, or… not? Are there really gray areas when it comes to something like that? It’s like being a little bit pregnant, isn’t it?
Anyway. Mental meanderings/possibly immoral underpinnings aside (heh), it was much fun at the Arch, and I love the Arch and I love St. Louis and I feel so blessed to have brought my five kids to a place that’s such an icon from my childhood. Even if the Museum of Westward Expansion is just as boring today as it was when I was a kid. Oh, speaking of which, when my inner ear had recalibrated and I got up to go join my family in the museum, the Boy came running to me, bursting with excitement (as he usually is), and told me that he saw “a horse, and a bear, and a Ken!” The horse and the bear I know very well — they’re the same taxidermied (that’s not a word) horse and bear that were there when I was a kid (ick), along with (I think) a long-horned cow — but I didn’t know what “Ken” meant, until he showed me — the larger-than-life-sized statue of Thomas Jefferson. Heehee. My son called it a Ken. You know, like a Ken doll. Insert your ribsplitting laughter here. I thought that was darn funny.
So that was Tuesday, and we could have gone to Citygarden (that’s apparently how it’s spelled, as opposed to City Garden) afterwards — weather was perfect — if G and I had bothered to pack lunches. But we hadn’t, because we were in a rush, because we had tickets for a specific elevator ride at a specific time, and if we missed it we might not have been able to go that day. So we were all too hungry, so we had to go back to my parents’ house, and then it was still too early in the day for the day to really be over, but there wasn’t enough time for another activity, so we just sat around being antsy and the kids watched the Cathy Rigby version of Peter Pan for the 10,000th time (my mother has it on VHS), or perhaps they watched Swiss Family Robinson; who remembers. I was annoyed with myself for not packing lunches — the day was perfect for a picnic (in the shade, anyway) and Citygarden would have been perfect afterwards, and RS even commented that it would be so nice to sit under the trees in the park around the Arch and have a picnic, and it would have been an amazing, amazing day — but as it happened it was still a good day, and I’ll take as many of those as I can get.
So that was Tuesday. Wednesday we left. Back to the same hotel, and the same pool, in Indianapolis; back to Columbus on Thursday, to my aunt and uncle’s house where we go for a meal every year on our way home (I say “a meal” because we usually end up getting there at about 3:30 or 4:00, so what meal is that?); and then… to Cleveland. To my baby sister’s house. You know, the baby sister who used to live near me, but who does not live near me anymore, but instead lives in Cleveland with my micro-neuro brother (don’t ask) and my niece and TWO nephews. And that’s where I was when I started this post (hence the title), though we’re no longer there, but are back once again in the Dead Rabbit Hotel in Carlisle, PA, in preparation for our trip to Hershey Park tomorrow. We went to the zoo on Friday and had Shabbos at my sister’s house, and we left this afternoon and stopped in Pittsburgh, and after a nursing stop on the side of a random road, which turned into a major play session by all four of my older kids, we made it to the Dead Rabbit Hotel (remember? ) at about 9:30 and (duh) the girls and I went to the pool at 10-something and came back at 11:30, and now it’s 12:50 and I’m still awake because I wanted to finish writing about the Arch. But I also want to write more about the other stuff I just mentioned, and I’m afraid I won’t because there’s going to be so much more to write about after tomorrow, and God willing we’re getting back home very late tomorrow night and will presumably have to clean up our basement, which presumably flooded during the hurricane, though thank God Babysitter Allison says we have power, and our dryer never got fixed after it broke again, so there’s going to be so much to do, and I won’t get to write everything or post all the pictures I want to post, but here, have one picture of my baby nephew, who is so ridiculously adorable and who grew this hilarious mop of black curls at some point during the last four months, and I knew nothing about it until I saw him, but oh my God the mop is so delicious. And true to form, he and ST look about as alike as the Boy and my older nephew do, so once again there’s no visible evidence that any of them are related. Anyway, this is him. Or this is he. Good night.
Tags: Summer road trip 2011
Started this post when we got to St. Louis Tuesday night. Added to it a little bit here and there.
We’re here in St. Louis. Can barely keep my head up, but I want to try to post because I like posting about our road trips, because that way I’ll remember them better and there will be a record for posterity. By which I mean, myself. But still.
Guess what? My baby has a UTI. Yesterday [um, last Monday] we woke up in Wheeling and I spoke to our pediatrician and decided we’d bring ST to a doctor in Columbus, through which we’d be driving that afternoon on our way to Indianapolis. So we went to the zoo in the Oglebay Resort in Wheeling (remember Oglebay?). The zoo is called the Good Zoo. Seriously, it is. I think it’s named after someone named Good. Luckily, it was actually a decent zoo, or we might have had to start a letter writing campaign to force them to change the name. Though most of the bottom floor of the indoor part positively REEKED like a bathroom. I couldn’t handle being in that part for too long, and when I needed to use the bathroom I used the one upstairs. Ick.
So, at the indoor part of the zoo, we saw a lot of things in cages, including a big fat parrot, some snakes, poisonous frogs, leeches, some really cute monkeys, and best of all, naked mole rats. These things are so incredibly cute. But whatever you do, don’t Google them, because the pictures are horrifying. Trust me, they are much cuter in person. There were also a lot of activity tables, and the Boy and YS and R were quite occupied for quite some time. After a while we went outside, and we saw the backs of a few sleeping bears, and we saw some otters, but more to the point, we saw… a train. You know, one of those zoo trains with the wooden seats and the red canopy and the reaaaaally loud whistle, the kind of train that costs money to ride and which has no purpose except to go around the zoo in a circle so the small children riding it can wave imperiously at the lowly pedestrians. So the Boy saw this train and went berserk. “Train!! Choo choo train! I want to go IN it!” Jump up and down; cue fanatical gleam in the eyes; “I want to go INSIDE the train!!” etc. It was one of the cutest things in the world. The girls, however, were less enthused, so we assured the Boy that we’d go on the train soon, after we looked at a few things. Yeah. Try to get a three year-old to internalize the concept of “soon.”
So we went to check out the sleeping animals, and we encountered a playground, and as the Boy and a few others went shrieking onto the playground, the others of us sat down on some benches to observe, and… slowly but surely… clouds appeared in the sky… and before we knew it we were running for cover under the measly little awning that stuck out in front of the bear and otter place. And oh my GOD was it pouring. After a few minutes the kids decided to go out and dance around in the rain, and immediately got soaked even though they were wearing raincoats. Finally the rain stopped. In the meantime the Boy had not stopped yelping about the train. “I want to go IN the train.” At some point he changed it to “I want to go in the train with the bus inside.” I’m not sure what that meant, exactly, but the general point was clear.
Ultimately we went to buy train tickets, and then we stood for some time and attempted to explain to the Boy that we had to wait for “the man,” by which we meant the train driver/conductor dude, to show up and start the blasted thing. Then it started raining again; then the girls started whining; eventually “the man” showed up and we rode the blasted thing, and the whistle was so painfully loud that I think I saw ST’s head vibrating. Then we made the compulsory trip to the (INDOOR) gift shop, where, among other things, we entered a raffle to win this 7 foot-tall stuffed grizzly bear. By which I do not (thank God) mean an actual grizzly bear that had been stuffed; I mean a fake grizzly bear made out of plush or whatever. But still, seven feet tall. We discussed where it will go when (when!) we win it, and I voted for the front hallway, where the curio cabinet is now. Which would you rather see when you enter the rabbi’s house? A curio cabinet that displays a big menorah, a black and peach havdalah candle that looks like it cane from a haunted house, and a bunch of glass besamim bottles, or… a seven foot stuffed grizzly bear? Thank you, that’s what I thought. Hopefully we’ll win.
So we entered to win the bear, and the girls bought their dinky little souvenirs, and the Boy ran around the store yelping to G and me that we should catch him, and we left. Then we drove a lot, and since ST had seemed completely fine all day and we had no idea how we were going to work out this doctor-in-Columbus plan, we drove straight through Columbus — waving at the children’s hospital, which is visible from the highway (they even have a pediatric stroke program there, which is always a plus) — and decided that if ST’s fever came back we’d see a doctor in Indianapolis. Then we continued driving and made a necessary visit to a rest stop about an hour from Indianapolis, at which I discovered that ST was, once again, burning up. This is when I freaked out. I decided that not only did she obviously have some incredibly rare and obviously fatal illness (God forbid), but that when we finally got her to a doctor in Indianapolis they were going to decide we’re unfit parents and have social services take her away. I was pretty sure that second part, at least, was delusional, but that didn’t stop me from losing it completely and texting many friends in a panic as we made our way to the hotel.
At the rest stop, by the way, R and YS, who were eventually joined by RS, made up a ballet, and performed it for us. Most of the time we were there, RS fed pieces of bread to the birds, while the Boy ran around ecstatically, because, being three years old, that’s all he really wants to do. Every time a bird came and took a piece of bread, RS and the Boy went crazy. Then we watched the ballet, which was lovely, and a few of us petted a geriatric dog. All this fun at a rest stop. I tell you, who needs theme parks?
So, we got to Indianapolis — same hotel we stayed at last year, when they messed up and didn’t have our adjoining rooms — but they had them this time, and more to the point, they had a pool, and a hot tub, which were open until midnight. Within about three minutes of getting out of the car, the three girls were in their bathing suits demanding to go to the pool, and whiningly asking why I wasn’t ready yet. G and I had a quick conference and it was decided that the three girls, the Boy and I would go to the pool (it was 9:30 at night; who needs sleep?) and he would feet ST dinner (a late dinner) and then decide whether to take her to the ER then, or wait to see if her fever went back up. Because hey, she once again seemed fine, which clearly meant the rare and fatal illness was gone, right? Instead of it meaning the Tylenol had kicked in?
So, we went to the pool, at which I was able to… inaugurate my new bathing suit.
.
.
.
Oh.
My.
GOD.
I can’t believe I have spent the last 18 years going into the water, on those odd occasions when water was available to go into, wearing a jean skirt and a t-shirt. I don’t know how many of you have tried this. But it sucks. A lot. T-shirts and jean skirts are clothing, see, and clothing is not made to be worn in the water, and when it gets wet, it gets heavy and clammy and horrible. But you know what doesn’t get heavy and clammy and horrible? Bathing suits, because they ARE made to be worn in the water. So I wore it, and it was unreal. I’d completely forgotten that feeling. Though my head covering did come off immediately after I went under the water, as I knew it would, so it’s not a perfect world, but you know what? It came close. So I swam with my girls, and then G showed up with the Boy and left him with me while he went to deal with ST, and the pool was too deep for the Boy to stand in so I had to carry him the whole time, but the hot tub was a good size for him and we spent some time in there too, and we came up with a game wherein he got out of the pool and threw his Crocs into the water and then we got back in the water and swam over to retrieve them. He laughed like a hyena on speed, and can you blame him? Retrieve the Croc, folks. We were playing Retrieve the Croc.
So we swam until about 11:00 and then we ate deli sandwiches and everyone conked out, and in the early hours of the morning… ST’s fever came back (duh). So G brought her to the ER at Riley Children’s Hospital; they diagnosed the UTI and prescribed the antibiotics, and there was much rejoicing, in addition to the necessary guilt and self-flagellation by the parents (well, just one) (me) for letting her suffer for so long. Feh. Though we had brought her to the doctor over the weekend, before we left, and this was only Monday night, and no one else seemed to be blaming us for anything, and the ER didn’t report us or take her away, and she was immediately better after the first dose, so I suppose all’s well that’s fever-free.
G returned to the hotel at about 1:00 PM, and the girls promptly voted to skip the Indianapolis Children’s Museum and hightail it straight to St. Louis to Bubbe’s house. And Zayde’s house. But we almost never remember to say “Bubbe’s and Zayde’s house,” and we’re evil for never remembering, but it’s because the kids spend our whole visit playing and hanging out with Bubbe, who always has a bunch of special treats and movies and activities and plans waiting for them, whereas Zayde spends most of the time asleep in his wheelchair, and we’re lucky if the kids are able to share a two or three sentence conversation with him. Feh. Can we blame anyone for considering it Bubbe’s house? We don’t mean to, but it keeps happening that way. Sucks. Though last year they did play a raucous game of cards with Zayde AND with my mother, and this year RS and R each spent some time playing Chutes and Ladders with him, and ST has spent much time sitting on the table babbling and cooing and beaming at him, and he’s spent much time beaming back, so that’s all good, and the Boy chats with him on occasion, though he spends more time chatting with Vanessa, my father’s caregiver. Last year he also had a big crush on Vanessa, and toddled around the house after her yelling “Wessa!” I don’t think he remembers her from last year, but the admiration and the following are still going on, and Vanessa indulges him, for which we’re very grateful.
So. As I was saying, the girls voted down the museum in favor of hightailing it to St. Louis/Bubbe and Zayde’s house. As it happens they’ve been to that museum before, in 2005, on our very first summer trip. See, I have proof:
That’s them at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, sitting on a big statue of a chef. Good God, they were so little. Surprisingly, they don’t remember that trip, but they still favored hightailing it to St. Louis, so we did, though we stopped in Terre Haute at the playground and ate lunch, but then we hightailed it to St. Louis, and the girls freaked out as usual when the Arch came into view, and I started a loud clapping chant about the Arch (“Arch, Arch, we see the Arch!”) because we had to wake the Boy so he wouldn’t be a half-asleep mess when we arrived at my parents’ house, and we got to my parents’ house and the absolute most magical irreplaceable moment of every summer trip took place, wherein the girls go running like lunatics up to the front door, and my mother throws the door open and they leap into her arms. There is nothing in the world like that moment. Sigh.
So, there was all kinds of euphoria and so forth, and we had dinner and settled down and all that jazz, and on Wednesday we went swimming at AR’s pool and on Thursday we went to the mall/arcade and on Friday we went out to lunch and then to the Transportation Museum, and it was ridiculously hot but I think it was mostly fun, and then we had Shabbos, and by the way G got sick and had a low-grade fever for a few days, which was no good at all. So on Shabbos I saw some old friends at shul, and some friends who are old, and some people came for lunch and it was all fun. Then yesterday (Sunday) I had one of my things wherein I was forced by my body to crash and take a nap in the middle of the day. Feh. It’s so profoundly unfair. How come some people get to live on six hours of sleep (or less) every night, but if I have less than eight for any length of time, I quite literally collapse? It’s really not fair. So, I collapsed, and G and the kids stayed home and since it was my father’s birthday, RS and YS and my mother baked him a cake . See?
It tasted even better than it looked, if you can believe it.
After dinner and the birthday party, the girls, my mother and I got ready for an outing, to a lovely little local theater that was showing a musical production of The Secret Garden. It was really good. It was no Mary Poppins at the Fox, but it was pretty good anyway. Though they added a weird plot twist wherein the doctor, who in the play was Archibald Craven’s brother (was that the case in the book?), had been in love with Archibald’s (dead) wife, and it was implied that he had been keeping Colin sick on purpose as revenge against his brother for the fact that the wife (Lily; was she named Lily in the book?) had never loved him back. I don’t know about you, but I sense perhaps a wisp of Harry Potter influence here. Furthermore, in the play, a big to-do was made over the fact that Mary had Lily’s eyes, and both Archibald and his brother were quite affected by this. Hmm. “Lily’s eyes,” eh? Now where have I heard that before?
So, that was yesterday, and then today we went to AR’s pool once again, because she’d called to say it was available, and when the pool is available, who wants to go to City Garden? (I do) Who wants to go to the zoo? (I do) Not my girls, no sirree. Swimming? You mean we can go swimming!? Hallelujah!! Life is good!! (eyeroll)
So, we went swimming, and then we came back and made ice cream with my mother’s new ice cream maker, but my mother wasn’t able to participate because she’s sick (feh), and there was much watching of television and much chasing of the Boy, which has been taking place quite a bit. It’s sort of sad, actually. He’s three, and ST is a baby, and the other girls are ten and almost nine (and almost nine). There’s no one for him to play with. Kid needs a twin. I try to step in, and the girls also step in, and so does G, but not, like, all day. And he needs a playmate all day. Watching him go from person to person asking us to play with him (“Want go outside with me? No? How about Abba?” Oy ) is just so pathetic. I was well aware when the girls were younger that we, and they, were ridiculously blessed that they had each other. All three of them. There was a 22-month age difference, but it really didn’t matter. It matters a bit now, however. Heh. Anyway, the Boy has no one, and it makes me sad, and you know what? I’m almost 37 years old, and in appalling physical shape. I can’t run around all day pretending to be a three year-old boy. Give me 20 minutes of catching him and carrying him upside down, and tearing from one end of the house to the other and back again pretending to be chased by “a yucky mouse,” and I’ve had it. Spent, I tell you. Spent.
Anyway, here are a few highlights from some of the things we’ve done:
- First day at AR’s pool, the Boy said “This is a great pool!” Heeheehee, he’s cute Today at AR’s pool, he was bobbing up and down like a cork, wearing this flotation vest, and he said to me “This is so comfortable.” Heeheehee, he’s cute again.
- ST has become a Cheerios fiend. She will sit in her chair all day scarfing them down. Her other tricks include looking back and forth among all the people who are beaming at her, and beaming right back at them in turn. She’s also begun to playfully shake her head from side to side when she’s being coy. Delicious.
- The Boy went on a bunch of rides at the arcade. He shrieked in ecstasy the entire time, and every time one of them ended, he cried out “Again!!” He loved Hershey Park last year, and boy oh boy, he is going to love it again this year. I can’t wait.
- At the transportation museum, there were a whole bunch of train cars, and I had to force my party pooper girls to climb up on one of the locomotives so I could take a picture. As they climbed up, RS, the consummate
anxiety freak of natureworrier, said “Is this thing strong enough to hold three people?” To which I responded, “RS, it’s a locomotive.” G cracked up, as did I, but the girls didn’t quite appreciate the humor. By the way, my son loves to climb. Loves. The fact that he refused to climb anything at the museum and instead just kept begging for milk should demonstrate to you all just how incredibly hot it was that day. Uggh.
Ok, I’m sure there will be more. Please enjoy the following picture of ST, kicking madly like a little swimming frog while G supported her on her belly in AR’s pool. If you’re good, maybe I’ll post the one of me holding her in the pool whilst wearing my full bathing suit regalia. Not that you can see much of it, of course. Ok then, good night.
Tags: Summer road trip 2011
