Category Archives: Parenting

Poetic License for Bloggers is called Bullshit

Posted on April 18, 2013 | 12 comments

Poetic License – the distortion of fact or narrative to tell a story or evoke a feeling. It’s cool.

I mean, poetic license is cool when you are writing a poem. But blogging or a personal narrative? I call bullshit on “poetic license.” I call the stretching and fudging of truth and fact bullshit when you are telling a “true story.” And man… that is just too damn bad.

Sometimes when something happens to me I start to write a blog post in my mind. I ramble on in my own personal little stand-up routine. Occasionally I get to laughing and I realize that the “punch line,” the part that made something really, truly funny… it didn’t actually happen. And I am left with what could have been funny “if only…” But more often than not what makes it funny is if I stretch the truth about how I think or feel on a subject. A spider in my medicine cabinet can get really funny if I couple it with a crippling fear of spiders. But I am not scared of spiders. At all. It is kind of funny to realize that I am standing in my bedroom fresh from the shower and all the blinds are open if my neighbor moonlights as a cabana boy, not so much if it is the seven year old son of my best friend. You get the picture.

Today I tore open the top of a PowerGel with my teeth (because working out like such a bad mamajama that you require PowerGels means that you no longer use scissors! The brute force of your own teeth will work just fine, thankyouverymuch.) I squirted the Vanilla tasting snot-like substance in to my mouth, waiting for the promised immediate burst of energy and thought to myself:

PowerGels taste like shit. The horrific taste helps make me certain that it is entering my blood stream and getting shit done! Just like tossing back hard liquor – I wince and think good lord, that was heinous. And that is how I know for sure that it is going to fuck me up.

Only that last part is not true. At all. I might have been the only college undergrad that didn’t hate the taste of booze. Not even Scotch. Sure, I am not wild about the lowest of the low. The bottom-shelf, plastic bottle of rotgut and I are not fast friends – but I can guarantee you that it is not as horrible as a PowerGel.

But the trouble is the blog post that starts “So, I ate a PowerGel today and man, did I wish it was a mini bottle of vodka” isn’t very funny. Although, now that I have typed it out perhaps I am on to something. I can see how a quick shot of vodka midway through the bike portion of the sprint triathlon might actually kick my ass in to high gear. It would at least help me out in the fearlessness department. I have a moderate fear of riding my bike really fast downhill brought on by one too many late-night crash and burns in college. But I suspect once the shot wore off my run would certainly suffer – unless there was more booze and a pizza at the finish line. Again, I think I might be on to something.

I will be 37 in 19 days. 9 days before that I will swim 250 yards, bike 10 miles and then run 2 more. It’s no Ironman. Hell, it isn’t even an Olympic distance triathlon. But it’s further than I have moved my ass in a long, long time. And it is a first for me.

A few years ago at the bottom of a bottle of wine I confessed to Mike that I wanted to get married before I was 35 so we could try and get pregnant before I was an “elderly gravida,” a wickedly offensive term for a woman over 35 who is pregnant. We pulled it off. We got married 7 days before I turned 35 and I am fairly sure that we were pregnant by my birthday. Take a newlywed couple that has been living with their five year old daughter and give them a hotel room and an open bar and they can make a baby pronto. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

36 passed in a blur of breastfeeding and tears and sleeplessness and finding my groove. If 35 was the Year of the Newlywed and 36 was the Year of the New Stay At Home Mom, what I am calling 37? Beats me.

I can tell you this. 37 will not be the Year of the PowerGel because they taste like shit. I have a sneaking suspicion that in retrospect 37 will be phase one of Turn in to a Bad Mofo Before I Turn 40. I will continue to work on a catchier name. I have 384 days before it is over.

Sorry this wasn’t really very funny. Or insightful. Or poignant. Y’all seem to like the funny and the sad. You especially love the embarrassing. So, I offer you this. My pinhead is disguised by my widow’s peak ordinarily. I’m glad swimming caps are not required for all trips to the gym or my effort at picking up gym moms might be fruitless. I mean, would you go on a Mom Date with this girl?

12 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged birthday, Blogging, gym, health, Humor, Life, motherhood, sports, stay at home mom, triathlon

Becoming the Student

Posted on April 12, 2013 | 2 comments

Yesterday was the first day of my self-taught, self-guided and intensive course on the Art of Relaxing.

I did not hurry.

I made iced tea. Relaxed people drink iced tea instead of pounding down cups of black coffee all day. They probably do not use cold brew tea bags because they have all the time in the world to make sun tea but I purchased them earlier in the week when I was still in a hurry. Sue me. Baby steps.

I decided to try and water the grass. That was a disaster. Lucy had other ideas. She is not really in to relaxing. She seems more interested in hauling ass down the driveway. We ran up and down the driveway. We ran back and forth across the street. Some of us skinned a knee (or two) and kept on trucking. I did not think about how we were not getting “anything done.” Well. Maybe once.

Em got home from school and we tightened up the ship for a bit. We did homework. We got dinner ready. I ran around and picked up the crap that collected all over the floor of the kitchen and the living room while I was busying trying to be more relaxed. “Can we eat outside on the deck?” Emily asked.

“Sure, why not?” That sounds like something a relaxed person would say. We had dinner. There is no Lucy containing device on the porch so I asked MQD if he’d hold her while I ate and then I would return the favor. (I have been enrolled in a year long “Learn to Ask For Help Instead of Just Glaring At People Around You Like They Are Pissing You Off While Making Passive-Aggressive Comments” class. My progress has been slow but steady.) When it was my turn to hold the little wild one she wanted none of it. I stripped her down, let her shake her groove thing on the deck for a bit and then offered to go and give her a bath. I figured the man works hard, let him sit and enjoy the evening. I mean, what had I done all day? Relax?

I might have looked out the door when I was finished with Lucy’s bath and seen him leaned back in his chair, arms folded behind his head. It’s cool. I will just clean up a little. I picked up. I nursed and rocked Lucy to sleep. Sent Em up to take a shower. Nursed Lucy again. It is possible I glanced out on the deck a few (hundred) more times, noting MQD’s motionless body (and the dinner dishes surrounding him.)

I figured I would just start on the dishes. Surely he will clear the table any minute now. I mean, really. I have only been relaxing for two days and I can get it finished in like ten minutes. How long does it take? I looked up from the kitchen sink. Out the window I saw him. He was… SMELLING THE FLOWERS. He was smelling flowers, guys.

I live with a RELAXING PROFESSIONAL. This class might not be self-taught. I might have to enroll in MQD’s School of Relaxation. He smells flowers. And from the looks of it he loves it. The dude does not look stressed. This flower smelling fella lives with me and my crazy ass dog and my insane children and he has a new job and he lives with me (I said that already, didn’t I?) and he looks pretty relaxed. Blissed out, even. Sign me up, MQD.

2 Comments

Posted in Parenting

The Space to Breathe

Posted on April 11, 2013 | 4 comments

Some days are just like every other day. You wake. You go about your routine. You look at the clock and the time ticks by, sometimes quickly, sometimes painfully slowly, but the day carries on and before you know it you are brushing your teeth and preparing to climb in to bed and do it all again tomorrow.

Yesterday was an odd one. I did things I don’t normally do. Some of those things were very small but when I stepped back from the day and sized it up they all added up. And this morning, I feel different.

I sat down yesterday morning with a newspaper. I did not open my laptop and have coffee. I sat down with the paper. A real, live newspaper. I fear Chapel Hill News is suffering if they are delivering their paper for free to neighboring towns. I can’t count on this paper sticking around in printed form if they have resorted to giving it away but I will enjoy it while it lasts. A newspaper and a cup of coffee. That was unusual.

Later in the morning I met a new friend and her son and we walked and talked. I was late. I am never late. I cancel if I am going to be late. I was late. That is unlike me. And I did not take a single picture. I did not check my phone. Also not typical behavior. We walked and talked.

She mentioned the paralyzing freedom of having every day be so full of options. I’d not considered that fully before. The lack of structure that can be present in the life of the mother who chooses to stay at home – it can have an almost crippling presence. “But you can do whatever you want,” a friend might note. Not really. Somedays I do not do a damn thing that is “what I want.” And yet daily I am overcome with gratitude. I am all at once living the life that I have chosen, that I am deeply grateful for, and not actually very free at all some days.

Later in the evening I did another thing I rarely do.

I stopped and had two beers at a local bar in town. “Have a seat,” said a gentleman as he slid over and offered me a bar stool. It had been so long I almost said “Oh, no, no.” I couldn’t possibly sit down. I didn’t have that kind of time. I would just stand, drink a beer, and hightail it home before Lucy woke up or MQD called or … or what? I turned in to a pumpkin?

I slid in to a barstool and I felt my shoulders get lower. I felt my back get longer. I was relaxed, in my element. It had been too long. A man introduced himself, “I am Jerry, by the way.”

I smiled. “The ByTheWays, I know a lot of your people, a friendly bunch you are. I meet a ByTheWay almost everywhere I go.” He paused. And then he smiled. I apologized for my flip remark. “I spent a decade behind the bar and I have a canned response to everything, I am sorry. I haven’t been out in so damn long that that is all that’s coming to me now. Forgive me?”

We chatted about kids and our quaint little downtown. The fellow to my left interrupted me, eventually. “What are you now? Just a housewife?” I felt myself stand up straighter. “Yep. And it is fucking awesome.” I could see that he was disappointed. I think he’d been trying to rile me up and I didn’t bite. I threw him a bone. “You? What are you? Just an asshole? A prick? What name do you prefer?” He seemed pleased with himself, he’d gotten under my skin.

I smiled again and let him down easy. “I’m sorry… but you have got to be kidding me. “Just a housewife?” Come on, man, it is the 21st century. Cut the little woman some slack.” I turned to Mr. ByTheWay and said “It was really nice to meet you.” I turned back to my right and said “And you, watch your mouth,” flashing him a million dollar smile.

I joined my girlfriends outside and laughed some more. We talked about our kids. It was easy. It was awkward for me to realize that I actually enjoyed sitting at a table with a bunch of women having easy conversation just as much if not more than the jocular and sometimes acidic back and forth of strangers at a bar. While outside a friend mentioned a tattoo I’ve had for years. A devil-woman, nursing her baby. I got it ages ago to symbolize the union between the hell-raiser I had been and the mother I was becoming. A timely reminder that I do not have to choose. The comfort I feel at a table of women does not negate the entertainment of a seat at the bar.

It is good to do the things that we do not usually do. Read the newspaper. Turn your phone off. Go ahead and be late. Stop for a beer.

This morning I went outside to water the flowers and said “C’mon, Goose, we need to hurry up.” Hurry. Towards what? The next task? I stopped. I poured some water on her feet and she laughed. I took a picture of the snapdragons quickly and then I put my phone inside. We sat on the deck. I don’t know for how long.

If I am quiet in the coming weeks, do not be worried. I am going back to school. I have enrolled in a self-taught, self-guided and intensive course on the Art of Relaxing. Wish me luck.

4 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting, Tattoos

Tagged Art, beer, brushing your teeth, chapel hill news, Family, Friendship, Humor, Life, motherhood, Parenting, Relaxing, SAHM, stay at home mom, two beers

Kicking back

Posted on April 7, 2013 | 7 comments

A year ago, a Sunday afternoon in April, I was relaxed and kicking back with my little one asleep in my lap. My big girl was laughing in the yard and I wondered if it was as good as it was ever going to get.

This afternoon I started to have that same feeling again. Lucy Goose was down for the count.

As is normal for a Sunday afternoon Emily was outside, soaking up some sunshine. I sat down. Breathe in. Breathe out. This morning’s service at our Unitarian Universalist church was about Joy. I don’t have any trouble finding Joy. But I struggle with relaxing. I am in constant motion. Breathe in. Breathe out. I decided I would paint my toe nails. Maybe even read a book. I was going to relax.

Check once more on the little one. Still asleep. Pop outside and check on the big one. Painting a birdhouse on the front deck. I suggested she paint the bird house in the yard. “It is just so easy to spill, Em. I know you are careful. But why don’t you take your paints out in the yard?” Reluctantly, she agreed.

Now where was I? Relaxing, right? I am gonna do this up right. I was going to actually take off the old toenail polish, a luxury in the life of the stay at home mother. Gone are the days I would soak my toes in hot, soapy water. Cuticles were trimmed, nails trimmed and freshly polished weekly. These days I slap on some new polish over the old stuff. 90 seconds, start to finish.

Nail polish remover. Have you ever called out to a friend “Be careful the sidewalk is icy!” and in that very moment slipped on the ice on your stairs and fallen? No? That’s only me? I spilled the nail polish remover all over the kitchen table. I wiped it up. I cleaned it up. I willed it to be Fine. Sigh. It was not fine. At all. I’d have preferred to have birdhouse paint on the front porch, thankyouverymuch.

I’ll just sand the table really fast. A quick coat of water-based poly. It will dry in two hours. Sand. Another coat. Dry two hours. Sand, bring it inside, and one more coat and… table will be fine by lunch time tomorrow.

Sigh.

Toes are painted. I need to hurry up and relax. Nap time is almost over. Dammit. I need to get better at this relaxing. I have Joy pegged. I am a pro at Joy. Relaxing? I need to work on that one.

7 Comments

Posted in Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged joy, nonsense, outdoors, Relaxing, Unitarian, unitarian universalist

Spring Sprang Sprung

Posted on April 6, 2013 | 4 comments

From you have I been absent in the spring
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. ~William Shakespeare

Can you feel it now that spring has come?
And it’s time to live in the scattered sun.
Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun… ~The Doors

Pick your poison. Shakespeare. The Doors. Donna Summer. The Beatles. Elvis Presley. Springtime. It will make you run outside and sing and dance and fall in love. And if you have school-aged kids it might make you pack up some stuff and hit the road.

We didn’t go over the river. And we didn’t go through the woods. But the gals and I headed off to grandmother’s house. Ordinarily heading home to my mom and step-dad’s house in the Spring looks like this:

Opening Day at the Nats’ Game

And sometimes it looks like this:

Or like this:

And this:

We eat. And watch baseball. And drink wine. And eat some more. And take naps. I did all of those things.

Spring Break with the little ones is not so debaucherous. There is very little in the way of oil wrestling. The wet t-shirt contests have only one competitor, me, and only when Lucy Goose is having so much fun she skips a meal. But I ate cheesecake. And I drank a little wine. And I ate a bag of cookies. Spring Break was good to me. Add in a bonus Willie Roberston (of Duck Dynasty fame) sighting and Spring Break was a smashing success.

And all of that doesn’t even count Easter Egg hunts and this morning’s ColorMania 5K.

Yep. I ran every day but one while I was at my mom’s. I ran this morning and I am planning a trip to the pool to crush a 3000 yard swim this afternoon before dinner. My “Spring Break Vacation” was actually a good reason to hike up to my mom’s house to borrow her bicycle for tri-training. And now I am attempting to hand off a post filled with pictures and sonnets and song lyrics after having been quiet for a week. Forgive me? I warned you.

I hope you have had a colorful week.

4 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged 5K, Color Run, ColorMania, Duck Dynasty, Exercise, healthy-living, outdoors, Spring, Spring Break, triathlon, vacation, Washington Nationals

Just call me Norm.

Posted on March 28, 2013 | 28 comments

I remember when I used to have a bar. My bar. I went there almost every night. If I missed a night or even two I felt like it had been ages since I had been there. If I missed three days, forget it. I started to convince myself that there would be new regulars by the time I got there, a new bartender, even worse – a new doorman.

You guys are “my bar.” And this is my way of apologizing. Here. It’s my ID. I will show it to the doorman in an effort to say “Hey, I don’t expect you to know who I am anymore, I know it seems like I haven’t been here in weeks, but it has only been six days.”

What have I been doing? Umm. Nothing extraordinary. I have fallen in to a good routine. I have been to the gym every day. Even days that I did not want to go. At all.

I have read board books until my eyes have crossed. I have passed these rhyming nonsensical books off to my seven year old and asked her to read them. We all read and read and read some more. I love that my sweet girls like books. I do. But so help me, a day without “Goodnight, Moon” would not be a day without sunshine.

I made the most incredibly perfect sunny side up eggs. The yolks were golden and they required not even a pinch of salt. It has been well over a year since I have purchased an egg in a store.

I get my eggs from a friend. This week I met that friend for lunch. I left with two dozen eggs from Heritage Acres Farm and some knowledge. After lunch we took a quick stroll around downtown and she clued me in to the fact that there is an unbelievable little vintage shop near the post office. Uniquitiques. I am a sucker for vintage aprons and linens. A rack of cute dresses that probably won’t fit a girl like me with a nursing rack. But there was a book case of vintage boots. Vintage. Cowgirl Boots. Oh, hello. A sweet lady said “Oh, you like the boots, follow me.” We followed her through her maze of a shop.

And then my eyes fell out of my head and I dropped to my knees.

Row upon row upon row of boots, y’all. Rooms full of boots. ROOMS. They’re not cheap. But they don’t have to be. For the gal that wants an unbelievable pair of boots and wants to shrug and say “these old things?” when someone says “Good gawd, those are Gorgeous!” this is the promised land.

I took Lucy in for her 12 month well visit. Two months late. She is a-ok. She is long and lean with a freakishly large noggin.

I took myself in to the doc for my annual reminder that I have allergies. Some years my seasonal allergies rest in my sinus cavities and give me headaches that feel like dirty, dirty Mad Dog hangovers. This year I am feeling lucky to have an ear infection. I skipped a swim workout and opted for extra cardio instead. Lucy skipped a morning nap and we made up for late in the afternoon. A couple of hours of shut eye and we are feeling pretty super.

I have Easter lights up in my kitchen. The Easter Bunny will be stuffing plastic eggs with jelly beans and chucking them around the yard this weekend. No chocolate in the eggs this year, the weather is too outrageous. It was in the 30s this week but it could be 70 by Sunday.

So, that’s what you missed. A whole lotta nothing. I have fallen in to a good routine. Just in time to hit the road for Spring Break and mess it all up, but that’s how it always works, right? Get your kids and your house and your head in to a groove and then turn it on its head.

Speaking of heads. There was a day this week, maybe even two, that I did not hate my hair. I still long for my sock bun and I am sick and tired of sporting the “I am growing out my bangs, what’s YOUR problem?” face and accompanying barrettes. But just one day that I look in the mirror and think “Ok. So, that kind of looks like it isn’t a wig or someone else’s head.” Yeah. That’s not too bad.

How about you? What’s shakin’? I haven’t seen you in forever.

28 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged cooking, Emily, food, hair, Lucy Quinn, restaurants, shopping, stay at home mom, working out

Words Words Words

Posted on March 22, 2013 | 9 comments

By 3 o’clock in the afternoon I have read every single board book we own at least 137 times. Lucy loves books. She carries them around the house. If I sit down on the floor for any reason she will seize the opportunity to plop down in my lap with a book. It will be a cold day in hell when I tell a kid I don’t have time to read a book that is only nine pages long.

For that matter I am not even any good at turning down a chapter book that I can’t stand. (Word of advice: Stay away from Junie B Jones. They are horrible books. Terrible grammar, asinine characters, rotten, rotten books.) But books are books in my house. We are readers.

Readers tend to be a wordy bunch. We talk about words at dinner. We break them down and put them back together. Em and I spent an entire trip to the store yesterday talking about “the silver lining.” What does it mean? What is an example? I like to talk about language with her. She has a funny point of view typically. She is a smart kid with a rich sense of humor. We lucked out.

So, last night when she started abruptly chuckling at dinner we paused. “What? What’s so funny?”

We had been talking about Buddhists.

She made a face. “Buddhist? Boooood-ist?” She paused as if that was the punch line. “Like Artist? A professional butt person. A Boood-ist?” and she pointed at her butt. In case we didn’t get it.

This kid has been shaking her bootie since she as teeny tiny. She might be a Professional Butt Person.

9 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged buddhism, deep thoughts, Emily, Humor, nonsense, religion

How to Spot a Mom

Posted on March 12, 2013 | 14 comments

I was naked when she asked me the question. Maybe that was why it hurt my feelings. “You have kids?” She was smiling, maybe in her late 70s. There was no reason for me to find the question off putting, I suppose. It was casual chit-chat.

In the locker room at the gym there are lots of different kinds of women. I am envious of the older women that stroll nonchalantly from the shower to their locker. They are free, maybe even confident, certainly at peace with the body they live in. There are the younger women and the quiet gals that change in the “dressing rooms,” the awkward spaces with shower curtains that don’t quite close all the way. I fall somewhere in the middle. I have given birth twice. I came of age in a theatrical dressing room. I can surely get my bathing suit off in a locker room without demonstrating something just short of a magic trick to get my bra and underwear on before my towel drops to the floor.

But I am not yet free. I am not yet at peace with this body. It still feels new. I am not embarrassed, not really. “You have kids?” she asked me. Why? Is it my stretch marks? I thought they were fading, maybe there are some I don’t even know I have. Maybe it’s my stomach. But then I never really had much in the way of a flat stomach before I even had kids.

It took me by surprise, my reaction to such a simple question. Immediately, I wondered if my body was telling a story that I could not even see. Fresh from a long swim I was feeling long and lean and that three word question brought me to a place where I begin to wonder if I need to just settle in to a new normal and accept that this body ain’t all that bad.

I smiled and said “I do. Girls. One and seven. Lucky mama gets to shower today in peace.” She smiled warmly, turning back to her locker, unaware the spiral her innocent question had started.

I pulled my jeans on and ran a brush through my too short hair. I took a deep breath and put a smile on my face, knowing I was going to walk by a long mirror on my way out the door. I would smile at the woman in the mirror, maybe take it easy on her.

And smile I did when I saw her. Yes. This woman has kids. This woman with the Cinderella towel. She keeps her goggles and her shampoo in a hot pink Yo Gabba Gabba tote bag. Perhaps it wasn’t my stretch marks that gave me away after all.

Day 95 of This Book Will Change Your Life has me on the look out for aliens. It gives a helpful list of how to spot the extraterrestrials among us. I wish it would tell me how to spot the moms at the gym. Evidently Disney towels and Nickelodeon tote bags aren’t enough to make it obvious for me.

In my underwear, in the parking lot, 1993. High school was weird. I was not always uncomfortable in my underwear.

In my underwear, in the parking lot, May 8, 1993. I had turned 17 the day before. I was not always uncomfortable in my underwear.

14 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged beauty, gym rat, health, mental-health, motherhood, Pregnancy, SAHM, This Book Will Change Your Life

Hermit Crab Love

Posted on March 6, 2013 | 9 comments

Sleeping in her chick and bunny pajamas my little girl looks so vulnerable. Babies, by design, are fairly dependent little creatures. But when they are asleep I think they look like hermit crabs without their shells. Any moment she will rise up on to her knees and crawl in to a painted shell. She will cling to the side of a cage in the hopes that a 9-year-old girl on vacation will pick her to take home.

I watch my hermit crab baby sleeping and I think about how lucky I am. I watch my big girl ride down the street on her bicycle and I think about how quickly the time goes by. Almost 18 years ago I met a boy in a bar and then it turned out he was the cook at the restaurant where I got my first job as a bartender. Ten years after that my wondrous Emily June came in to my life. I moved to Chapel Hill and got reacquainted with some old friends who happened to meet a boy at a dog park. A year after that I needed a smile and they sent me out to dinner with that boy from the dog park. He became the man that would be by my side forever. I dreamt of the little boy that would join our family. And that little boy was Lucy Quinn. (!)

The world is so huge. Today’s challenge reminds us that there is 1 chance in 89 billion that life would have involved into mankind. There is 1 chance in 6 billion that your parents would have met. The book reminds us that we are all lucky to be here and suggests we show “cosmic humility.”

I am surrounded by reminders of cosmic humility. My three biggest reminders are walking, breathing, loving examples of luck. I want to believe that my children chose me. I want to believe that MQD is my soul mate. But in my heart of hearts I know that it was chance. In this great big, huge world these three are mine. They flesh out the living, breathing organism that is my house, my family, me.

Today I am in awe. Cosmic humility doesn’t even start to sum it up.

9 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged awe, Family, hermit crabs, joy, Life, motherhood, SAHM, This Book Will Change Your Life, wonder

Do the Right Thing

Posted on March 4, 2013 | 36 comments

I had one of those moments today where I was forced to make a choice in a split second. I had one of those moments when neither option is really what I want but the confines of time and the number of arms I have forces me to choose. I did the “right thing.” But it didn’t feel good. It did not feel good at all. And my heart still hurts.

fisher&grover

I have told the story here before of how I fell in love with Fisher. I have admitted that he sleeps in my bed with me. But I have never spoken of the way he tears my heart out of my chest every so often, mostly because I like to try and forget.

He will hop down from the bed and then be unable to move. Or he will be in the midde of jumping up on to the couch and he will collapse. A seizure, says the vet. They do not happen often enough to establish any kind of pattern. Blood work comes back fine. No known cause.

His legs crumble beneath him. He begins to pant and drool. His eyes look deep in to mine as if he is frightened. He doesn’t move. It lasts for a minute, maybe two. If I am alone with him I hold him in my arms and tell him that I love him and that he is okay, that he is safe. If I am with MQD or my ex-husband I bawl and sob and say “Is he okay? Do you think he is okay?” repeatedly until I am kicked out of the room. (I will wait here while you make a mental note – Kelly in a crisis, bad idea unless she is the only adult present.)

This afternoon marked the first time that Fish had an episode while I was alone with him. Alone with him and Lucy.

Fish and Lucy like to look out the window in the afternoon and wait for the school bus. When it is warm they stand at the door. When it is cold they stand and look over the back of the couch. Today we were all snuggled on the couch, Fish with his feet over the back of the couch, Lucy Goose right next to him. They were watching, waiting for the school bus. They might have stayed just like that for the thirty minutes it would take for Emily to get home. I considered reaching back behind me to grab my phone and take a picture of these two but I feared my movement would disrupt this quiet calm. So, I just watched them.

And then his legs folded under him and he curled in to himself. Lucy was quick to take advantage of this chance to climb on to his back. And this was my moment. My split-second “what the hell should I do now?” moment. I wanted to take my sweet ten-year-old boy in my arms and hold him, shh-shh him and tell it was going to be okay. He was scared, he is just an animal.

In that moment, though, we were all animals. All three of us. And I chose Lucy. I don’t think I should get a medal for having the presence of mind to grab Lucy and hold her away from my ailing dog. Anyone with a pet knows that a good dog, even a great dog can be squirrelly when they are frightened. I could pet his head. I could shh-shh him but I could not hold him in my lap. I could not hold him because I had this wild thing of a 13 month-old in my lap instead. And my heart broke in to a million pieces.

Those big brown eyes. The same eyes I fell so hard and fast for long before I became a mother they tore a hole straight through me. “It’s okay, big boy. I am right here. I am just keeping Lucy Goosey safe, baby boy, keeping her from bugging you, okay? But I am right here, I promise, I am right here.”

I must have told him in a thousand different ways that I wasn’t going anywhere and that I was just holding on to Lucy to keep her from bothering him. But I knew even as the words were falling from my mouth that it was not completely true. My big boy was hurting. And I was protecting my baby.

It was the “right thing.” But it did not feel good. It did not feel good at all.

Minutes went by and his breathing steadied. I sobbed the ugly tears on the phone and Fish calmed down. So, eventually, did I. The school bus came at 2:37 and Fisher jumped off the couch like nothing was wrong. Cautiously, I opened the door. He’d either take a few steps and slow down and I would know that this time, this time was different, or he’d leap off the porch to cover his big girl with kisses.

He leapt off the porch. I leaned against the door frame and watched those two run up the front hill, all zig-zag across the flower beds. Lucy pressed her face against the storm door waiting for them to come up the front steps. And just like that today was exactly the same as every other afternoon.

So help me, if these kids are not the death of me, this dog will be.