A writer's notes on family
Time for a teaser. Kristin and I are working together on a new project. We can’t tell you what it is yet, but we can tell you it’s going to be instrumental to the future success of both the United States and Canada as nations.
So far it involves table runners and candied orange peels.
And if that doesn’t pique your interest then we don’t know our demographic.
When I was a kid, I’d stare down the stop light from the back seat of the car and will it to turn from red to green. And it always did. I also made cats run away from me and dogs bark. Basically, I controlled my surroundings with my mind.
Nora did several things this weekend that reminded me of other weird stuff I did as a kid — or thought I was doing.
She put a cup over her mouth and then sucked hard enough to keep it there. Classic.
She stuck the straw from her apple juice on her one of her teeth like a fang. Love that.
Best of all was the Target parking lot. We used the main cross walk to approach the store. A car approached us, then took a right rather than wait for us to cross. Nora said, “That car was coming too close to us, so I made it turn.”
“I know you did, honey,” I said. “I know you did.”
When Nora was a baby, she had a deep aversion to sleeping in her crib. She preferred to take naps while being held, and the moment her little bum touched the crib mattress, she’d wake up and scream, so eventually I stopped trying to lay her down. Her favorite position was tummy to tummy. I’d sit on the couch and she’d sleep for hours on my chest.
There wasn’t much multi-tasking to be done during those times. If I planned carefully I’d have a magazine in easy reach, but most of the time I was still too mommy brained for that kind of forethought. All I could do was sit there and smell her. Every time I wanted to get up and do something productive I reminded myself that she would be little for such a short time, she wouldn’t always be able to sleep on me, so I may as well shut up and enjoy it.
It’s been a tough week at our house, as it always is when we’re off our routine. I’ve had to be at work early each day this week for a virtual training that’s on east coast time. So, Nora has had to be up at 5:00am instead of 6:00am and she’s transitioning out of her afternoon nap time. As a result she fell asleep in the car on the way home on Tuesday and we both ended up on the couch, her sleeping in her old position, but now her head rests on my shoulder instead of my chest and her longer legs must bend at the knee. She is so big now.
And my body remembered exactly what that used to feel like. And my brain became instantly quiet. And I was so thankful for this moment and it’s clarity. This little girl is getting so big, but she still needs us, and is still so connected to us. I’m quite sure her body remembered as well as mine.
Yesterday I picked Nora up early (my early training means an early quitting time) and we rode the bus home. She fell asleep on the first bus and I couldn’t wake her up enough to have her walk for the bus transfer. I scooped her up, sat her on my shoulder bag and carried her off the bus, then sat at the next bus stop with a forty pound girl draped over me. It was uncomfortable and precious all at once. Another rider signaled me that the bus was coming and I carried Nora on and found a seat. Incredibly, she slept soundly all the way to the stop near our house. When we got off, raindrops fell on her head and woke her.
She was trapped between baby and little girl for a moment, wanting to be carried, but feeling it was too clumsy. She chose walking — she chose growing up — and bravely trudged home with me in the rain.
We went to Minnesota for Christmas this year. There was not enough slow for sledding. There was not even enough snow for a snowball. We were hoping to make some memories by sledding and ice skating, but it was not to be.
So, imagine Nora’s joy when big fat flakes began to fall in Portland on Monday. It didn’t last long, but it was long enough to catch a few flakes on her tongue and scrape all the hard surfaces to collect enough for a snowball.
A snowball which now safely resides in our freezer.
Cautionary note: do not read this if you have a weak stomach or a sensitive nature.
On Friday, I was picked up from work by a husband who hadn’t eaten all day, a daughter who had not had a nap and the dog, who seemed fine. The husband and the daughter both had things to tell me and they both were telling me at the same time. I admit my mind fluttered back to my desk, noting how calm and quiet that space was in comparison.
Still, it was Friday, so things couldn’t be all bad. We could still turn this night around. The first thing we needed was food, so we stopped at our new favorite place, just about a mile from home to grab dinner to go. Things were looking up. But, we had forgotten one essential fact: it was Friday the 13th and our luck had run out.
A sudden retching sound emanated from the dog. I looked back from the passenger seat just in time to see him launch hot liquid vomit all over the back seat.
“What just happened?” Ben asked.
“Hoover puked,” I said as I started looking in my bag for something to soak up some of the barf.
And then the stench hit. It was by far the worst thing I have ever smelled in thirty five years on a smelly plant. It was the kind of sickly stench that made your good sense tell you to simply run. But we couldn’t run.
The stink triggered Ben’s gag reflex and he had to roll down his window and literally stick his head out of it while driving. Dangerous? Maybe, but there was no way in hell we were going to stop until we were at home and could do something about that awful stench. I rolled down the rest of the windows and opened the sunroof while Nora, who was nearest the pile, chanted, “It smells so bad, it smells so bad, it smells so bad,” in a sickened, yet fascinated tone of voice. Meanwhile, I was convulsing with the laughter of a mad woman. I firmly believe if I had stopped laughing, I would have barfed.
“Did he eat shit?” Ben asked in disbelief. He says now that he said it under his breath so Nora couldn’t hear, but I say in such situations, there’s no hope of shielding the girl from cussing. This is exactly the kind of situation swearing was invented to handle.
Thankfully, we were close to home. We all turned our faces toward the fresh air streaming in through the windows. The second we hit the driveway Ben and I sprang from the car, he sent the dog to the backyard (perhaps forever) and I released Nora from her carseat and set her on the lawn. We took deep gulps of vomit-free air.
Ben gathered cleaning supplies while I gathered my nerve. I had to be the one to clean it, or there would be human vomit to add to the mix. I had rubber gloves, several rolls of paper towels and a jug of enzymatic cleaner.
The first thing I discovered was that, yes, in fact, Hoover had eaten shit. And I can now confidently answer that eternal question, “What smells worse than dog shit?” with “Dog shit that has been eaten by a dog and then vomited up in a confined space.”
I cleaned for an hour in the twilight and then the dark. Occasionally, Hoover let out a woof of protest from the back yard, to which I thought, “Bitch, please.”
I removed the back seat, dumping at least half a jug of cleaner over the seat and seatbelt straps. I scrubbed the bare metal that remained. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed again, thinking all the while, it would have been so much easier if he had merely crapped in the backseat, rather than projectile vomited bile with turds in it.
When I was done cleaning, I set the seats in the backyard under the covered patio to air dry overnight. I re-entered the house a hero. Out of admiration and solidarity (and perhaps a bit of guilt), Ben had been cleaning the house the entire time I was cleaning the car. I brought Hoover straight to the bathroom for inspection, amazingly, he had not a speck of vomit on him, well, on the outside anyway. I briefly considered force-feeding him an entire tube of toothpaste, but decided to take the hottest shower of my life instead.
I then sat down to a cup of hot tea and dinner.
After dinner, Ben checked the car with a flashlight. He reported there were still several issues. “There’s clean, then there’s really clean, then there’s work-at-the-Mayo-Clinic-clean, then there’s work-at-the-Mayo-Clinic-and-have-OCD clean.” Guess which guy Ben is? Thankfully, at this point, the odor was knocked down enough to prevent him tossing his cookies, so he went out to put what we thought would be the final shine on it.
But Saturday morning the stench remained. We set to work again, removing the seat belts and the plastic covered insulation under the seats and scrubbed everything again.
Then I drove to Costco with no backseat whatsoever, just bare metal, and could still smell it. I thought I was imagining things until I got home and had Ben verify. It still stank.
By Sunday we were ready for Plan C. Throw out the back seat and get a replacement from the junk yard. However the only seat from the same make and model car was serving as a bridge over an oily mud puddle. Granted, that would be an improvement over one besmirched by dog shit and vomit, but only a slight one.
As of this morning, the car is still without a back seat. We are formulating Plan D, which may involve putting the engine from this car into a different, unsoiled car. But we have one fact to cling to: we are still alive.
Surviving something like this feels like a major victory and victories are never due to the efforts of just one person or family. So, we would like to offer our profound thanks as follows:
Our second winter in Portland, I taught Ben to play cribbage. This was WBN (Way Before Nora). We lived in a little apartment in a funky little neighborhood. We’d make a few cups of tea and sit at our tiny table (which Ben found in a parking lot) with a deck of cards and a small wooden board.
Ben was such a quick study, he proceeded to beat me eight games in a row and then retired as undefeated. He took the modified tooth picks he’d been using as pegs and taped them to the wall along with a little sticky note of victory. We had to create an alter-ego for him before he’d play again. We played many rounds of cribbage that winter, and we both look back on it fondly.
Nora is old enough to play games now. She plays Candyland and Hi Ho Cherry-O and Uno. She kicks butt in Uno. She may still be a bit young for cribbage.
It’s going to be a winter full of cups of tea and board games on the living room floor in front of the fire. It makes me all relaxed and happy just thinking about it.
Any good games to recommend?