Poor Sick Baby

Poor Cali Girl has been sick. I knew it two days ago, when, after a perfectly normal day of typical rambunctious climbing-ness, she crawled into my lap at six o'clock and fell asleep. Fell asleep, I tell you, the child who never spontaneously falls asleep, and who has to be wrestled to sleep each night, which is something between an hour-long and an all-night ordeal. I woke her up after a few minutes because she I was afraid she would wake up at bedtime and not go back to sleep, and at first she seemed okay. But my initial instincts were correct. By nine or ten she was burning up, and then woke up and vomited profusely all over the bed. As I'm sure you other parents know, tiny children can hold quite a bit of puke. Poor baby.

I have to tell you, having a mildly sick child makes me feel such incredibly profound awe over parents of truly sick children. Tears spring to my eyes when my own feverish girl wakes up disoriented and glassy-eyed and says, with a desperately insistent voice "dog? dog?", then looks around and starts sobbing with confusion and misery. Then I feel so grateful and almost ashamed of feeling sorry for myself and my sick baby when there are so many children that are truly, horrifyingly ill. My heart just cracks open with pity and sadness when I think of it. And of course, there's that tiny grain of fear that lodged itself deep in my chest the moment I first became her mother, the basic fear that can't be put more simply than this: that she might die. It doesn't haunt me or take over my life, but it is always there. That other people actually have to experience the reality of this fear is something that is hard to reconcile in this world. I've been keeping those who have sick children in my thoughts these past few days, and my heart has been aching for them.

A Philosophical Question:

If one had a very small child who happened to learn how to say the S-word, and said it quite often, but mispronounced it so that it sounded like "ditsh", would that still make one an unfit parent? Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Ruminations While Driving

This morning we all woke up tired and draggy and I decided not to take Cali Girl to her morning swim lesson. This made me feel a little guilty, since it's only the second day of class, but not guilty enough to gather our still-damp swimsuits and swim diapers and all the other necessary paraphernalia and drive to the outdoor swim center and get into the water first thing on a cool foggy morning. Did I mention that Cali is decidedly unfond of her swim lessons, and that "unfond" is a nice way of saying "terrified"? (The lessons, as it turns out, are not really lessons as much as just a gathering of five moms carrying their babies around in the splash pool at the same time while a teenage swim teacher with unbelievably tan skin and a flat tummy sings "The Wheels on the Bus" and makes the rest of us feel pale, puffy and old. Really, it's kind of a waste of sixty-five bucks, in my opinion.)

So instead of swim class, we all went to Safeway to get bread and yogurt, since we are completely out of food at our house. And since there is a convenient Starbucks right inside our Safeway, I got one of those, too. Cali is convinced that there is a dog that lives outside the window of Safeway, right by the Starbucks counter, because we once saw one there two or three months ago, waiting patiently by the bike rack for its owner to come out. When we get to that part of the store, she starts questioning "dod? dod?" over and over and over and over again until you take her to the window to show her that there is no dog out there, which greatly perplexes her. Then we went home, and I did not clean the house, but instead sat on the couch with Cali and drank coffee and fed her her yogurt.

When Ricardo went to work, I decided to take Cali for a long drive and hope that she would take an early nap. She hasn't been sleeping well because I think she's teething again. At fifteen months she only has four teeth, so we're still in the thick of teething season. I drove up Highway 1, while the girl slept in her seat, looking at the pewter ocean and the golden hills, and noticing this one solitary farmer who was working his brussels sprout field right along the cliff edge above the ocean. This is a drive that my husband and I used to make all the time, back when we were in college and he was still my boyfriend, in his blue pick-up truck (affectionately named Bob), listening to this particular mix CD with a Cowboy Junkies song that I loved on it. I thought about how back then, all I wanted to do was become a writer. And this made me think about how much of the decade after college I spent struggling with depression, and how it makes you feel like you have cobwebs in your brain, and it keeps you from being able to imagine yourself and your life as anything different than it is at that very moment in time. It took a serious crisis after the birth of my baby to get treatment and to realize that feeling that way isn't normal or acceptable.

I'm grateful to be largely free of the intense burden I carried for so long. I'm not perfectly happy, or anything, but I finally feel like what I used to call a "real person". I'm glad to be writing again and enjoying my time with my daughter and planning for the future, but I have this nagging voice in my ear that keeps whispering that it's too late to accomplish the things I once dreamed of. That the last muddled eight years were my one chance to make things work, and now they are gone forever. I'm too old and tied down to think of finally finishing my nursing degree, and of doing humanitarian work with health organizations, and of maybe still writing a book, and of travelling again. Too late, too late cycles round and round my head, and I know this voice is not even worth listening to, but it's rather persistent all the same. So that's what I'm thinking of, and fighting against, lately. The urge to give up on myself, and settle for less than I once thought I could do. Is that a good thing? To be content with what you are? Or are you supposed to keep pursuing the things you feel that you are meant to do? I'm really not sure what the answer is.

When I was nearing home Cali woke up and was crying softly in her seat, wanting to be taken out, and saying "he'p me." I parked and got out of the car and went to get her, and she looked at me with huge tears rolling down her face, and I said "Oh, Cali, you don't need to be so sad!" And she said, in this tiny quavering brave voice, "I know." This is one of her favorite all-purpose phrases, and I don't think she really knows what it means, but she still always says it at the right time.

Do I look like the kind of person who doesn't know how to have a good time?

Pretend it's the Fourth of July and it's been cloudy all day and you find yourself without any real plans because your weekend guests left unexpectedly early this morning. And pretend that this lack of a firm checklist for celebratory enjoyment is making you upset and anxious and more than a little grumpy because you become inexplicably manic during holidays. You have an irrational need to have everything go exactly as you pictured in your head, which is generally pretty unrealistic, since the pictures in your head seem to resemble something between a Norman Rockwell Painting and a commercial for Summertime brand lemonade, and your real life resembles something between Calvin and Hobbes and the part of the infomercial where the person simply cannot manage to make a regular blender work without clumsily spraying its half-pureed contents all over the kitchen. You spent the day chasing your toddler around a decidedly adult-oriented barbecue and wandering aimlessly around the touristy area of your town, and now it is dusk and you have bundled your child into the stroller and left the house to try to see fireworks, because it is the Fourth of July, and you must see fireworks because that's just what you have to do, because it's fun, dammit, and someday your child might ask you "Mama, why was the Fourth of July when I was 15 months old so dreary and devoid of fireworks?" Because it is completely reasonable to imagine that she might remember this day at all.

So here, you are, walking along with your daughter and your husband, and your big toe is throbbing and possibly bleeding where you stubbed it on the wheel of the stroller, and you know you are greatly annoying your husband by going on and on about whether you are going in the right direction or whether or not you might miss the fireworks, and being generally neurotic, but you can't stop yourself. And you look down to see if your child looks cold or upset about the loud booming, and she's sitting in the stroller, blanket up to her chin, and her little round face has the most delighted and astounded expression on it, and just then another firework goes off, except this time she sees it as it lets go its loud BOOM, and she says "wow!" in her little echo-ey voice, with genuine awe. And your husband jokes, "I'll bet she thinks this is what happens every night after we make her go to bed."

And you take a deep breath and you notice the white foam on the surf glowing against the dark water, and the shimmery trails of red and yellow light shining across the bay from the waterfront, and the fireworks exploding in great glittery blossoms above the lit-up boardwalk. And there are families sitting on the cliffs with their children, pointing at the sky, and teenagers riding by on cruiser bikes, and one exuberant fellow who keeps yelling "America! High five!" (okay, that guy was a little annoying), and you wonder how many more moments you will almost miss because you are too busy trying not to miss them.

Cali in the Morning

This is my summertime Cali Girl sitting on the front step in the sunshine eating a juicy, juicy plum.



Here are some more things about Cali, guaranteed to counteract the melancholy of yesterday's post:

1. In the mornings Cali and I generally snuggle on the couch for the hour or two it takes me to become human (have I mentioned I'm not a morning person?). I drink coffee and mess around on my iPhone or attempt to read a book and Cali intermittently sits on my lap and runs around scattering toys and Cheerios and the contents of my purse around the house until she simply can't take it any longer, and then she brings me her shoes, hands them to me and says "doot!" (her word for shoes) very sternly, to let me know that it is now time to get off the couch, put on her shoes, and take her Out of the House. If my response is not prompt enough for her liking, she goes to the front door and knocks on it repeatedly, while saying "park? park?" in a pathetically cute and plaintive Oliver-esque voice.

2. (And, trust me, I am well aware that this does NOT paint me in a good light.) Lately Cali wakes up (ridiculously early, of course) sits up in bed and asks for the remote control. I am not kidding, people. My habit of blearily turning on Playhouse Disney at 6:30 am so I can sleep for 20 more minutes has seriously backfired. Well, not backfired, I guess, since it works exactly as intended. In fact, it has shamed me by working entirely too well. Having my one-year old wake me up by patting my face and asking " 'mote? 'mote?" has not been my proudest parenting moment.

3. On one of our morning couch-sitting sessions, Cali brought me her baby doll, Baby, so that she could sit on Cali's lap while Cali sat on my lap. I gave Cali kisses, Cali gave Baby kisses, and then Cali wanted me to give Baby kisses, too, so I did. Then I rocked both Baby and Cali and kissed them and we played the ny-ny game, where Cali and Baby lie down on the couch and Cali says "ny-ny", lies her head down for two seconds, pretends to sleep, and then "wakes up" and runs around the house laughing. (The ny-ny game should in no way be confused with the ny-ny battle waged nightly in my home which is not nearly as fun or cute as the ny-ny game.) I decided to play the part of Baby, and when Cali came back, I had Baby get all clingy and snuggly on Cali, and say "Mama, Mama, Mama!" Cali pushed her away and said "nyo!" So I said, "Cali, your baby wants snuggles and kisses!" Cali took Baby from me with an irritated look on her face, marched her to the other end of the couch, put a blanket over her and said "bye-bye!" I completely sympathized with her. Being a Mama is hard sometimes.

On contemplating another year half gone

Today is the first of July, which means that the year is half over already. This observable proof of the passage of time always gives me a sort of clenching feeling in my heart, half sadness because I can't hold on tightly enough to the beautiful moments that keep slipping through my fingers like beach sand, and half dread because that familiar anxious feeling that some unknowable Bad Thing is always just around the corner seems to reappear whenever I stop to mark the passage of time. Overall, though, those anxious moments have been fewer and farther between this year, which is a huge achievement for me.

Maybe it's turning thirty, which I did two days before 2010 began. For someone who drags her feet constantly during the process of, you know, living, my thirtieth birthday couldn't have come fast enough. I was so ready to leave my twenties behind. And it wasn't just the fact that 29 was, hands down, the most difficult year of my life. I mean, that was a large part of it, but it was also just that I felt a sort of completion, almost satisfaction, about being irrevocably done with my twenties. I could look back on even the best parts of that decade, and love them, without desiring to go back. The part where I was a barefoot hippie girl sitting on an enormous Roman ruin in a French village drinking red wine out of the bottle, and talking philosophy and life and religion and ambition with my equally hippyish friends. Or the part where I was a girl in love kissing my future husband on the kitchen floor of his college apartment, Nick Cave blaring from the stereo, and our roommates and friends dancing and drinking whiskey sours in the living room. The part where I was two people in one, a mother with my own little baby fluttering inside me and keeping me company through my long nights working in the ER. No, I don't want to go back there, even if I could. That girl was so filled with self-doubt and searching and sadness and longing. And me, well, I think I'm finally learning how to just accept myself, to know that this is it, this is who I am, and that's okay. No, it's better than okay, because who I am is actually really lovable and smart and unique and witty. Who knew?

I remember once when I was in high school, and I went to Mexico with my youth group for spring break to paint this orphanage. And it should have been this amazing experience, right? But you know what I remember about it? How a bunch of girls who I thought were my dearest friends had some bizarre mean girl intervention on me and told me that I was annoying because I tried too hard to copy other girls. Did you get that? Apparantly at age sixteen every other girl already knows exactly who they are, and feels no need to emulate her peers. Just me, the pathetic, copy cat loser. This is, of course, ridiculous. All sixteen-year-olds try to be exactly like their friends. I mean, have you ever really looked at a group of highschool girls walking down the street? They all dress exactly like their friends, like they're wearing some kind of uniform---a strangely out of season Ugg boots and denim mini skirt uniform. But at the time, I was absolutely gutted. It was like these girls had stuck a knife right through my soft underbelly and exposed the stark nakedness of my insecure teenage soul. I was grief-stricken that I had been found out! That I was a fraud, and everyone knew it! That while I was going along with everyone else, trying to act cool, everyody saw right through me, that I was just a nerdy, awkward, bookish girl who had never even kissed a boy. And some variation on that feeling dogged me for the next fourteen years.

And now, now I feel like I am finally starting to be free of that insecurity. Because you know what? Not everyone is going to like you. You're going to disappoint people, and you're going to make people angry, and people are at some point going to say mean things to you. There is absolutely no way to escape it. You have to just accept it and move on and live your life. Wow, you're all thinking, you should totally write a self-help book based on that astounding and completely unique revelation! Well, ha ha, everyone, but it actually is an astounding revelation to me. That people get mad at me, disappointed in me, say mean things to me and the world doesn't end. I keep living and enjoying my life and making plans and making other friends and being loved and that's it. That's life.

A few things I don't want to forget

How the other night, while sitting on my lap, Cali spied the tube of sunscreen sitting on the lamp table. She picked it up and started poking it in my face, using the poky bottom corner, and at first I was irritated. Then she put the tube down and started patting gently at my face with her tiny hands. Then she picked up the tube again and poked it at my arms, put it down, and then oh-so-softly patted and stroked my arms. I realized she was putting sunscreen on me. My sweet girl!

How last night I read her Goodnight Moon and when I got to the last line, "goodnight noises everywhere," she looked up at me with a happy expression, grabbed her nose and said "noh!" I am quite certain that she thinks the last line is "goodnight noses everywhere", and this makes perfect sense to her.

The way she says "cute" ("tyoo"), with the most delighted look on her face, when she sees pictures of herself or other babies. Or, every time I get her dressed, she runs to the room with the big mirrored closet doors, squats down in front of her reflection and says "tyoo, tyoo"!

How, one day, she was lying back on her dada's chest, looking up at the sky, pointing out the birds. "Dut!" she would cry, pointing at each seagull that flew overhead. Finally, she saw a jet airlpane fly overhead and looked at it for a long time before finally pointing at it doubtfully, and saying "dut?..."

How, at the park, when she climbs up the stairs to the slide, their smooth dark rubber warm in the summer sun, she saws " 'ot, 'ot!" and blows on them to cool them down.

The little siren noise she makes whenever she reads her Corduroy book ("uh-oh, Corduroy smells smoke") or sees a fire engine from her car seat. It's the tiniest little buzzing siren noise that she makes through pursed lips, and it's delicious. I want to just gobble her up like the little piece of candy that she is.