Fun with Free Association

As I lay in bed last night fighting a losing battle with insomnia, I let my mind wander to about a million things, one of which was what my own mom's tub-of-change-falling-on-your-head days were like. Despite her experience as a reporter for the Pulaski High News, she didn't write the inane happenings of her days down like I do, so I have no record of a particularly out-of-hand afternoon with which I can empathize.

And then I remembered the beanbag incident.

I was maybe ten or eleven and had just gotten off the school bus and walked in the house one weekday afternoon. My mom was at the time babysitting in-home for two little brothers, one preschool-aged and the other a toddler like my youngest sister. Mom was, to put it lightly, a busy lady of about 32--the same age as I am now.

I bounded down the stairs of our split-level house, probably to turn on the TV, and was dumbstruck by what I saw in the "play room" behind the couch. There sat my youngest sister and her tiny partner on either side of a deflated beanbag chair amidst a sea of itty-bitty foam pellets the size of popcorn kernels. No, they were smaller than popcorn kernels, actually, and there was an amazing number of them. And the kids were gleefully tossing them into the air like two pint-sized occupants of a giant exploded snow globe.

I stood feeling what I read in my kids' faces last week when, bothered by a young boy poking incessantly with a pillow at the newspaper I was reading, I whizzed the offending object across the room toward the sofa on which it belonged and hit the lamp instead. As it fell to the floor and broke into a million pieces, my children wore expressions of amusement, awe, and terror. They knew they hadn't done anything wrong--AND they knew the poo-poo was about to hit the fan in a big way.

(Note that I waited a while to blog that one. I wasn't quite ready to talk about it until now.)

Anyway, back to 1983. I stood bedazzled by the spectacle before me momentarily before fetching my mom, who was no doubt tending to one of the other four minor occupants of the house. She flew down the stairs and yelped like I've never heard before or since. Madly, she fished pellets out of mouths and scooped children out of pellets before going as close to ballastic as she ever went.

I don't remember what she said, I don't remember how she cleaned it all up, I don't remember whether she had a stiff drink (or three) that night. I was a kid--what did I care? And that's just how my kids felt yesterday about the plunger, the change, and all the rest. Interesting to observe while it's happening (even the parental outrage part), and then...bygones.

If only it were so easy for us.

Just One of Those Half-Hours...

This afternoon was a hoot.

Shortly after I settled our two-year-old girl, feverish since Monday night, onto the couch after she woke from her nap crying for food and drink, I found my four-year-old son sitting behind our swinging kitchen door, crossing his ankles and wearing a guilty expression. This is a sure sign that we're having defecation issues and that immediate action is needed.

I swooped him, protesting as usual that he DID NOT have to go, into the bathroom, where I situated him on the potty with stern instructions to remain there until things were settled, so to speak. Then I returned to the limp girl with the red-rimmed eyes to see what I could do for her.

"I want something to eat, Mommy," she wimpered.

From the bathroom around the corner and down the hall came the decree, "Guess WHAT, Mommy?"

I scurried to the kitchen to fetch a cheese stick for my younger as I hollered to my older, "What, honey?"

Then I opened the refrigerator door, and I'm not sure which happened first. Either: (1) our boy replied, "I made poop, and it's BIG!" or (2) just under 1 1/2 pounds of change came raining down on my head (yes, I weighed it on our food scale after I picked it all up). Wish I had paid more attention when I was on the phone just after lunch and saw my son on a stool messing with the tub of coins we keep on top of the refrigerator...

Breathing deeply to maintain my sanity, I peeled and delivered an orange to the bedridden one and rushed to praise the anal-retentive one only to discover that I would have to add the title "plunging technician" to my growing list of maternal duties, which already included "nurse" and "excretion facilitator."

At least I know that the next time I'm headed to downtown Appleton and need coinage for the parking meter, I can look under the pizzas and salmon filets in the freezer for dimes and nickels.

Mom the Mule

Blog-wise, I'm still catching up from vacation, and there was something I observed while spending untold hours in airports on our way to and from Tucson that cannot go unreported.

The first time I saw it, I thought it was a fluke. We were waiting to check in at the America West ticket counter in the Milwaukee airport when a family demographically similar to ours approached. The kids were each slightly younger than ours, maybe one and three. The mother, a small-framed blonde, was toting the smaller of the two in a front carrier while pushing a stroller occupied by the bigger child and laden with bags, presumably containing the countless items needed to keep a traveling kid happy.

And the father? He had a small gym bag over one shoulder, probably large enough to carry a single change of clothes (undoubtedly for himself), and--get this--one 8 1/2" x 11" Priority Mail envelope. Whoa, don't outdo yourself there, Pops.

This same scene was repeated over and over in Milwaukee, in Phoenix, in Tucson, and in Denver--mothers reminiscent of bag ladies with their overflowing shopping carts, pushing strollerloads of stuff and wrangling kids from arrival gate to departure gate, while the fathers walked a few paces ahead or behind, detached from it all physically and psychologically.

I'm happy to say that my beloved was not among the deadbeat dads and that he was not alone. Most of the men were indeed pulling their weight, at least in the figurative sense--but even in those cases, the mothers did so more close to literally.

The Man in the Yellow Hat Phenomenon

Regular visitors to this blog will remember my post about taking the kids to see the Curious George movie. Afterward, our son said that he liked the books better, swelling his mother's heart with pride.

A week or two after I wrote that post, my mother-in-law sent me a clipping from the newspaper in Rochester, New York. It was a letter to the editor written by a father who had taken his five-year-old boy to see the same show. He complained about how the Hollywood folks had turned a sweet tale of an innocent monkey and the adventures to which his curiosity led him into a love story focused on a jaded man and his thwarted career ambitions. I found the writer's perspective interesting but didn't go much beyond there philosophically.

Not until today, anyway, when my boy sat me down on the couch with "Curious George Rides a Bike." It had been some time since we'd read any books featuring the plucky primate, so free association took my mind back to that letter. As I read, I focused less on the monkey than on the Man in the Yellow Hat, studying his role in the story and his facial expressions, trying to learn as much as I could about him.

What I noticed is that I didn't have much opportunity for observation. Early in the book, the man presented a gift, laid down the ground rules, and disappeared. And that's when the fun started.

In the end, of course, the man returned, but not exactly to bail George out. The two come back together through happenstance, not through any intentional effort on the man's part to rescue his charge.

I thought about the 1950s version of the Man in the Yellow Hat as a parent, and about the Rochester father's dissatisfaction with the recent movie's elder-centrism. And then it hit me--that shift in focus is representative of the way so many of us parent today. We spend a lot of time navel-gazing (look! I'm doing it now!) with the aim of figuring out what WE need to do to raise our kids superlatively--with the BEST education, the MOST advantage, the GREATEST start in life. We spend a lot of time deciding how to orchestrate our kids' development and think very little about what our kids NATURALLY want because it will help them develop; that is, free play, attention, and answers to their questions.

I don't know about you, but I get awfully wrapped up in what I'm doing or not doing well as a mom. I make the movie about me. And it's so not about me.

Mr. Rochester is right. The Man in the Yellow Hat ought to get out of the way and let Curious George have his day.

A Saturday to Remember

Today was a generally unremarkable Saturday, really. Our youngest stayed in her pajamas all day, as did her parents. We did laundry, cleaned the shelves in the refrigerator and finally moved it away from the wall to retrieve an apple that had fallen behind it weeks ago, worked on the taxes...just lounged around, drank coffee, and got things done.

What made it feel miraculous was the children and their angelic behavior. We woke at 5:45 AM to the sound of a hurried trip to the potty followed by the lighter footsteps of a smaller sibling. Thinking this was a poor start to our first Saturday at home together in six weeks, my beloved and I pulled the covers up tighter under our chins and did our best to delay the dawning day. And we did delay it...for another hour and fifteen minutes! The kids played contentedly without a single fight audible enough to disturb us that entire time. Wow.

When we came downstairs to start our Saturday pancakes, they were having such a good time that they barely acknowledged us. As I cooked breakfast, I put silverware and a water spray bottle on the table and asked our eldest to wipe up and place the forks and knives where they belonged. And he did, with nary a word of protest.

From breakfast, we proceeded to uninterrupted devotion to the spring cleaning of the fridge. (How DOES it get so greasy on top?) What had happened to our scrappy, rivalrous children? They were absorbed in play and in each other. It was amazing and bizarre.

The blessed peace continued through mid-morning tax prep and lunch, which we ate picnic-style on the living room floor so as not to muddle the artfully arranged 1099s and W-2s. This was, without a doubt, shaping up to be the most harmonious day we'd ever had. EVER.

The kids felt it, too. When I came back downstairs after putting our daughter down for a nap, our son looked at me and said, "I love you, Momma."

"I love you, too, honey," I said and hugged him.

"I love you even more than you think I do, Momma," he added. "I even love you more than I think I do."

And that is the glory of a Saturday with nothing special to do. Even people whose entire lives are devoted to play revel in it. You don't need errands to run and formal family activities to make the day feel productive or special. All you need is love.

Where to Find Everything You Don't Know

Here's an exchange that took place in the car on the way to the mall:

Four-Year-Old Son (henceforth 'FYOS'): Is Arizona in the United States?

Me: Yes.

FYOS: How can it be so far away and still be in the same country?

Me: Well, the United States is a big country.

(Short pause for thought, apparently about the distance between Wisconsin and Arizona and all the people that reside in the intervening space...)

FYOS: How can God make all those people without getting tired?

Me: I don't know how. That's a very good question.

FYOS: We'll have to look that up in the dictionary when we get home. That's where you look for everything you don't know.

The Stepford Lives

Thus far, we are enjoying our stay in Sahuarita, Arizona. The weather has improved to the sunny 70s, which is about as good as it gets, in my opinion.

With the temperature change, we've spent more time outside. In fact, we spent the whole day yesterday lounging around or strolling through the compound that is Rancho Sahuarita. It's a "planned community" of closely spaced stuccoed houses in tans and mauves and greens situated around a strikingly large, shockingly blue lake. Also shocking is the fact that this lake exists at all in the middle of the Sonoran Desert--AND that it's seething with trout and panfish which are restocked every fall because they die off in the scorching summer heat.

It didn't, of course, show up there on its own. It was a case of "build it and they will come"--and they have, yuppies and real estate investors, mostly. You see the young homeowners making laps around the lake all day long. Pairs of men run together in the early morning in stocking caps and gloves; young mothers push elaborate strollers with a baby inside and a dog or two leashed to the frame. Around and around they go (the distance around is just over a mile), enjoying their beautiful scenery.

I say "their" because this community is a gated as well as a planned one. You need to know the code to get in, and once the gates swing closed behind you, the streets are eerily quiet and still. A second inner gate runs between the houses nearest it (of which ours is one) and the lake so that you need a key to gain access to it--if you're not game to climb over, which would no doubt be frowned upon.

There are public access points to the long, narrow lake at its two ends, but there is little parking to encourage people to drop on by and use it. Anglers do, and maybe some walkers, but that's about it. Otherwise it belongs to the residents of Sahuarita.

The yards and streets are, for the most part, pristine. I saw a pair of gents cruising around the lake on the sidewalk that skirts it, one driving one of those "Gator" mini utility vehicles and the other standing in front of its passenger seat, using a leaf blower to remove unsightly stones or plant matter from the path. You'll encounter the occasional pile of dog doo (and I noticed a large strawberry that's been in the same spot for two days), but other than that, it's, well, nearly perfect. Scarily perfect, I would say.

All the activity centers on the lake, which I suppose is what one would expect. Until the end of the workday, there is virtually no activity on the streets. It's an odd feeling to one who spends a lot of time mucking about the yard with two little kids. Without front yards to speak of, or even backyards of any considerable size, that's the way it needs to be, I guess. But it's still foreign.

Don't get me wrong. I'll take clear, sunny skies and a one-mile running loop around a lake any day. But I take it with a small dose of righteous indignation over anything that smells of exclusivity.

The Joys of Travel

Greetings from Sahuarita, Arizona, just a prickly pear's throw south of Tucson. We arrived here for our week's vacation a day late and about fifty dollars' worth of airport food and drink short, deciding that the AW of America West Airlines must actually stand for Always Waiting.

Our journey started with a relatively quick drive to Milwaukee, where we were to catch a 4:35 PM flight to Phoenix.

At about 4 PM, the gate agent spoke over the intercom, saying, "For all of you heading to Phoenix, we are looking for a mechanic for the plane."

We thought maybe she was asking if any of us wanted to give jet repair a go, but as it turns out, she was informing us that airplane mechanics are apparently in very short supply at Mitchell International. At about 5 PM, she let us know that a mechanic was on his way--from Chicago. He was due to arrive at 6:15 PM.

By 7:15 PM, we were boarding the plane. But at 8:15 PM, we were still sitting at the gate, with airline officials debating whether our big, fat, heavy plane laden with people and fuel could get to Phoenix and circle long enough to dodge the thunderstorms that were plaguing the area, bringing the rain that they hadn't had in six months.

The officials hemmed and hawed long enough that they booted those of us with connecting flights out of Tucson off the plane. With the rain and spring break, there were no hotel rooms to be had in Phoenix, so we would have been sleeping in the terminal until we could have caught a commuter flight to our final destination.

Off we headed to a Sheraton near the airport, arriving a good two hours after the kids' bedtime. It took an hour to get them to sleep, which wouldn't have bothered me that much--except that we were due back at the airport around 5:50 AM the next morning for our 7:10 AM flight. Ouch.

The 7:10 AM flight, it turns out, became a 9 AM flight. We had already taxied out to the runway before those crazy airline officials determined that headwinds and the plane's weight would forbid us from taking off. So back to the gate we went, where they ordered standby passengers off the plane and then sought volunteers to take a bump. But after pulling 600 lbs of fuel and apparently a whole bunch of cargo, they put all these folks (who by then looked extremely unhappy) back on the plane, and off we went.

By the time we arrived in Tucson (just making our connection after the two-hour delay), we had not eaten a meal that wasn't dry cereal, tortilla chips, or a muffin in more than 24 hours. I was having vegetable withdrawl.

But, ultimately, we made it! And the kids were great, considering we sat on various airplanes for almost nine of 12 waking hours.

So today we're headed to a cavern, since the temperature isn't expected to top about 62 F (the cavern is warmer at a constant 68 F). When we woke up this morning, it was 29 F! But we'll hit the high 70s F by week's end...I hope. :)

Another Question of Gender Equity

It was Sunday morning. As usual, our preparations for church were not going as swimmingly as one might hope. For one, there is never enough time on any given weekend morning, especially one on which you need to be somewhere by 10 AM. For another, getting dressed is never as simple as it seems, particularly for our little girl.

She's two, after all, and still needs some help with the process of donning clothes. Unlike her brother, who gets to wear whatever he's willing to put on himself, she more often deals with input from me. This is never more true than on church days.

You see, we have all these lovely dresses that grandmothers and friends have purchased for or loaned to us, and I feel it is important that she wear them. She, however, does not.

She let us know this in no uncertain terms on Sunday when Daddy wrestled her into a darling navy blue pleated courduroy dress with tiny red polka dots and appliqued strawberries. It even had a matching beret! What could be sweeter?

When I heard the mad screeching in the living room as I stepped out of the shower, I knew what was up--and that I had been wise to assign this task to my beloved. I rounded the staircase to find a grisly scene. Our precious gal was all but foaming at the mouth, arching her back and shaking her head violently in protest. Utterances reminiscent of the bowels of hell poured forth from her beet-red face.

With my reserve of calm (Daddy's was spent), I stepped in and asked what was wrong. As if I didn't know.

"I DON'T LIIIIIKE DRESSES!" she wailed.

"But this dress is so pretty," I said, fully aware I would never use this argument on her brother, who was wearing black cords and his enduring favorite, a black-and-chartruese skeleton t-shirt. "And the hat is so pretty, too," I tossed in for good measure, attempting to place it on her head as I spoke.

"DRESSES AREN'T PRETTY AND HATS AREN'T PRETTY!" she said with remarkable conviction, flailing her arms so as to launch the beret in my general direction.

This was one battle I wouldn't--and ought not--win. Why should I force her, at two, into society's mold of girlhood? Won't society do that soon enough?

I hope not. And I surely don't want to be the prime perpetrator.

Bus Drivers and Gender Equity

My son and I were reading "Franklin and the Tooth Fairy," a children's book about a young toothless turtle who envied his friends whose tooth losses proved they were growing up. I learned a few things from this book (like that turtles don't have teeth), and our little guy did, too.

On one page, Franklin was on the school bus with his species-diverse first-grade class. There was a bear, a snail, a rabbit--and TWO foxes, one pint-sized and one grown-up and driving the bus. This was something excitedly pointed out by our boy.

"Look!" he said. "Two foxes!" Indicating the driver, he added, "That one's his father...or mother."

I was so relieved he's tacked on that last little bit.

Then he asked me, "Which do you think it is, Mama? His father or his mother?"

I coudn't fault him for assuming the young fox was a boy. He obviously was projecting himself into the story. (At least that's what I told myself.) But I didn't want to give him the answer to his question and seized the chance to examine his psyche.

"I don't know," I said. "What do you think?"

He takes after his mother in not wanting to be wrong, so he said, "You just tell me, Mama."

"Well," I said, "I think his mama's a doctor, so that must be his daddy."

The little guy considered this. "But most doctors are men," he said.

"Your doctor's a man," I replied, "but mine is a woman. And so is your friend Sara's. Just because your doctor's a man doesn't mean they all are. Lots of doctors are women."

He accepted this and turned the page. And I continued reading with a smile (or was it a smirk?) of triumph on my face.

The Dietary Habits of Rhinoceri

Our two-year-old loves Fisher-Price Little People. This does not surprise me; I used to love them, too. They're different now, though, from when my sisters and/or cousins and I used to drive the round-headed figures around the Tinker Toy streets of our family-room sized town. Now, many of the people and their associated play sets come with VHS tapes introducing the multi-ethnic characters, ascribing to them personalities and interests. Sonya Lee loves animals; Michael is the intrepid inventor. It's both a little more interesting--and a bit stifling of creativity. But it's better than video games.

One of the things she loves the most about the videos are the songs which encapsulize in 16 seconds or so what each Little Person is about. The one that comes immediately to mind goes something like this:

Discovering Sonya
Who's gentle and true.
She's kind to people
And animals, too.
Discovering Sonya
And me and you.

She sings these songs constantly while she plays with her little people, taking a dozen of them for a ride in the green fishing boat I used to play with as a girl or piling them into a school bus for a ride around the dining room.

Two nights ago just before bedtime, she and I were playing with her peeps on the couch. I picked one I didn't recognize up and invented a little ditty about it to the tune of the Little People Anthem. Then she handed me another, saying, "Now this one!"

We went through the whole posse of children and beasts that were inhabiting the center cushion before coming to the final one. It wasn't technically a Little Person, but it was a member of the crew, so she insisted I make up a song for this one, too. It was a rhino.

Now, I don't know a whole lot about rhinos. In fact, I don't think I know anything about them. Do birds live on their back and pick nits off of them? At any rate, that's not an easy factoid about which to sing. And I'd already created eight or so songs, so coming up with something unique was going to be tough. I started with what I saw...

Discovering Rhino
Who's big and fat...

I paused for a moment, and then went on...

He likes to eat...

What does he like to eat? I had no idea. Had to go with the first rhyme that popped into my head...

Kitty cats.
Discovering Rhino
And you and me!

We both burst into laughter. I think it was the first time she'd really gotten a joke. She made me sing it six or seven more times, and by the fifth repetition, her lips were quivering with withheld laughter before I'd even finished crooning the first line.

She ran to the basement to sing it for Daddy, but it wasn't quite the same. And I was glad. It was our first private joke, and I wanted to keep it that way.