Laughter and Forgetting

ode to the kid

On Monday afternoons my son has short, one on one swimming lessons.

Last week the lesson fell on one of the colder days of the year, and the interior room where the swimming pool is felt strangely hot and humid. I helped L get out of all his layers and put on his swimming trunks. Then we took his goggles off and put on his new goggles with the the special farsighted lenses. They are not exactly his prescription, but finally, he does not have to become legally blind every time he gets into the swimming pool. It was a big development, as it has been very disconcerting to try to learn to swim while simultaneously not being able to see.

Then I sat and watched him for the next fifteen minutes, the length of the lesson. And it was lovely. L has become long and lanky in the last year. He is 95th percentile in height, but only 55th percentile in weight. From a distance I could watch his perfect skinny body poised to leap into the pool. His pointy shoulder blades sticking out like little chicken wings. The winter sunlight came streaming throught the window and gave the scene the feeling of a pristine memory; an idealized flashback from a movie.

L is not tremendously coordinated and tends to be tentative, so his jumps into the pool felt gangly and awkward. But he was so proud of himself. "Mom, look at me float all by myself!" "Watch me swim underwater." When he would pop out of the water he would concentrate so hard on blowing air out of his mouth and nose. I could see his confidence growing. His positivity warmed me and removed me from every other worry that I had.

Even watching L talk with his instructor was so beautiful. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was so sincere and animated. Their conversations were frequently peppered with high fives as each new miniscule milestone was passed.

As I sat there the word "elegiac" came to me. As though the scene was simultaneously a bittersweet ode to childhood and parenthood. But the definition of that word is more about sadness or death or loss. So elegiac is not quite right. But it's close.

******

I think this is why it's hard for me when people give up on having kids due to infertility and because "adoption is just not for them." Adoption is more complicated and it's harder (which is why the "just adopt" contingent drives me mad. Tell those people people that they'll need to shell out 20k plus, and have their entire lives scrutinized and then wait in limbo with no guaranteed time frame, and see how they feel about "just" doing anything.) As an adoptee I know that adoptive parents take on a special challenge. But so do parents with dyslexic kids, or ADD kids. Lots of kids present special challenges.

But to give up on being a parent (IF that's what you really want), to miss this opportunity to watch a child grow, to never have a child look to you with delight at their accomplishments - I can't stand that people will miss that experience. I realize this is very self-indulgent, because I am assuming that my view and my experience of parenthood is somehow universal. I realize everyone's experience is very different. . So I'll shut up soon. But I do want to say one more thing. When I delight in my son; in his mannerisms, his expressions, his joy and his pride, it has nothing whatsover to do with the fact that he is genetically related to me. I can't even see myself in him anymore, although on occcasion I do see my husband. But that is not where my love comes from. Instead it comes from enjoying the uniqueness of this little person, with his own character, and his own features, and his own personal experiences. He is himself, and that is what is perfect to me.

the other faith

Someone knocked on the door this morning at 7:45am. I was just out of the shower getting dressed. I was simultaneously helping my so-not-a-morning-person son get dressed. Then the doorbell rang. What the fuck? We weren't expecting anyone.

We hurried down to the door, and opened it to find two clean cut young men looking at me expectantly.

When I looked confused the guy in the forefront asked "Do you have faith?" huh? They did kind of look like mormon missionaries. I said "You guys are coming at this time of the morning to ask me that?!" They nodded simultaneously, with vague smiles on their faces and said "Yes." I turned to open the shades (It was very dark in our living room) and said, "You guys better get out of here, before I start cursing at you."

But when I came back to the doorway they were still standing there. I said "I'm serious..." and was just about to launch into a major tirade, when the looks on their faces stopped me. Instead I said, "Wait a second, who are you guys with?"

The first guy said, "Didn't you want a bid for your tile?"

Oops. They were LOOKING for Faith. Faith Johnson who lives one block over. The addresses are kind of screwed up in our neighborhood, and one block away there is a woman who has an almost identical address. Except that her address is a "North" address, ours is a "Northwest" address. This is not the first time that this confusion has occurred. The thing is, I totally forgot that her name is Faith. Even though we have uncannily similar addresses we don't talk much. In fact Faith and her partner, or roommate, or whatever that other woman that lives there is, are not very friendly. They make us pick up the mail that accidentally gets delivered there. Even though it would take less than two minutes to deliver it to our house. When Amazon.com had the wrong address for us for a while, Faith and co. sent us a nasty note, as though it was our fault that Amazon had dropped the W off of NW. As though we were intentionally trying to irritate her by purposefully supplying Amazon with the wrong address.

After apologizing profusely to the tile guys, I explained the situation and sent them on their merry way. I'm sure they'll tell Faith what a psycho neighbor she has. I'm just really glad I didn't say "You can shove your faith up your ass." Because I almost did.

Irritation. It sounds so much like what it is. Prickly and unsmooth.

When you're dealing with cancer and all that it brings, it seems reasonable to be irritable. Tensions are high, people are thrown together for unnaturally extended periods. The patient feels crappy. The family is worried and sad and trying not to show it. Yet it feels so WRONG to be crabby. It feels so petty.

So I thought I'd vent a little, and maybe I'll get it off my chest and then I won't be so pissy anymore.

My husband took his parents to Colorado for that high-tech treatment last week, and that was really hard. Much harder than anything I did at home. He made the reservations, did all the driving, scoped out the restaurants and found good food. He made sure his Dad had enough beer every evening. Basically, he was the tour guide for the Deluxe Cancer Care Package Tour.

By the time he got home he was understandably burnt out. And a little irritable.

It is not any exaggeration to say that my husband's parents grew up dirt poor during the depression and war years. They have some really sad but gory "when I was a kid" stories. Like going out to the countryside to dig up coal for heat. Or sharing half a can of Tuna between four kids for dinner. Or starting to work at twelve to help support the family. Due to their personal histories, they are incapable of throwing anything away. In their home refrigerator you find lots of rotten vegetables, because when they were near rotting they decided they might still be good. You also find things like multiple bowls topped with saran wrap that might have about two table spoons of yogurt or apple sauce, because dammit, you might want that yogurt tomorrow morning. You can find one slice of tomato, a sixteenth of a pepper, and a leaf of lettuce all mushed together in one plastic baggy.

It's not so much that they save everything. It's that their refrigerator and their counters are so filled with crap that you can't find anything and there is no counter space left to work on.

So when my in-laws came back from Colorado, they brought the depression food plan to our house for a few days. Much to my husband's dismay, his parents packed every single item that had been in their hotel room's mini-fridge. Including, but not limited to, the following: Soon to be totally rotted bananas, a half eaten turkey sandwich with horseradish on it that was loosely wrapped in plastic, (You can imagine how that smelled and how easily it could have and did spread onto other luggage items.) mini-cans of orange juice copped from the hotel's continental breakfast, packages of saltines, and, of course, a six-pack of beer - something that is always easily transportable.

Guess where all that shit ended up. Yep, in OUR fridge. The beer alone takes up a significant percentage of available space.

In no time there was so much shit on the counter that we had about 20 square inches left to cook anything. We have an old kitchen already, we NEED the counter space. I started to feel that the world was closing in on me. And it doesn't help that my husband really, really needed a break and was not getting it. It makes for an irritable husband and wife team. Not good.

Here's another thing. My mother-in-law is only one cancer patient, but she's a cancer patient with an entourage. Taking care of her is the easy part. It's my father-in-law, who, although I really love him, talks at twice the necessary volume at all times, and who never, ever cooks anything more sophisticated than toast. My brother-in-law, whom I also love and about whom I have very little negative to say, always goes where my mother-in-law goes since she's been really ill. This means that he sleeps in my son's room while his mom and dad are in the guestroom, and my son sleeps upstairs. However, my son's clothes and toys are still in his room, so I am constantly sneaking in there for a pair of clean socks or his warm winter jacket. Last week my sister-in-law (his wife) flew in from Japan, so we had yet another body in the house. Although, I will say that she is the most self-sufficient of the bunch, and is a fantastic cook. It's just a lot of people in the house, when were used to our compact family of three. It seems like we're running the dishwasher all the time. And, of course, emptying it all the time as well. My husband's sister periodically visits as well, usually bringing one of her two children.

Along with the family entourage, there are the daily, and nightly, calls from my mother-in-law's "projects." (This is the word that the rest of the family uses when referring to these women.) My mother- in-law has always been a magnet for those people, particularly elderly women, that are alone in the world. She seems to have a built-in sensor for those that are looking for a little human kindness and compassion. She takes these people to their doctors appointments, visits them, and most importantly, just listens. Oftentimes, you used to hear her on the phone, murmuring soothing and empathetic phrases to her little old ladies. "You poor thing." She would say, "Well, you have every right to be upset." "That darn doctor." "I'm sorry." "Well, thanks for calling, you made my day." My mother-in-law is a saint. A martyr too, but definitely a saint as well.

One or two of these projects call every day. They just want to hear that she will be cured. They want to know that the treatment "worked." I don't want to be the one to say that the doctors were pretty definitive about the fact that this is a palliative treatment. That this will not get rid of the cancer, but, we hope, shrink the size of the tumor so that she can eat solids again, so that she can speak without sounding like she has a frog, excuse me, a tumor, in her throat. So every night, I (or my husband) say the same thing. "We won't know for some time the effects of the treatment." "Well she's really tired and feels pretty crummy. She has a sore throat, so wait a day or two to call her." I know I can't wait to get off the phone every time, but I try to be patient and not sound like it. I don't think I am always successful, but I figure it's the least I can do for my mother-in-law.

I guess that's it for now. Writing a bitchy blog is probably better than taking it out on one's family.

The entourage went home to my in-law's house for few days, but the doctors would really like my mother-in-law to be closer to a hospital and medical facilities, so that the doctors can keep in eye on how the tumor is sluffing off. It is possible it could sluff into her throat and choke her. That would be very bad.

Okay. It's time to get recharged for the next round.