Ode to my healthy baby

Replica of late Meiji Era Japanese postcard
courtesy of ambientfusion.

It was three weeks of hell,
but his bottom's finally well.
Tests done.
Positives? None!*
The cause is a mystery still.

(Although, he is allergic to eggs and nuts.)

To the point

Photo courtesy of wpholmes

My husband and I took the kids to Sizzler for dinner thanks to coupons from the library's summer reading program, and as I was packing the diaper bag I saw one of my 7-year-old's pick up his new pocketknife and slide it into the Velcro holder attached to his belt.

"Can I bring my knife, Mom, to cut my steak?" he asked.

"They have knives at the restaurant," I replied.

"Yeah, but can I bring my own?"

"No. Let's leave it at home until we go camping at French Meadows."

Reluctantly, he slid the knife and holder off his belt. The next day we headed up into the Sierra Nevada mountains. After a four-hour drive that led us through deep gorges, across Foresthill Bridge (which sets a California record at 730 feet), around at least 600 hairpin turns that prompted vomiting from the backseat, we made it to our campsite.

The door opened, the kids spilled out, and within 15 minutes, my first son was back at camp with a potential marshmallow stick and poised knife. Five minutes later, his brother came rushing back with his own. They whittled and broke tips, rushed off for new sticks, whittled some more. That night the marshmallows slid effortlessly onto the wooden spikes, were patiently turned over coals until toasted a golden brown and then slipped between two graham crackers and a chunk of Hershey bar.

I think they made a stick each night, but I'm sorry to say I can't be certain because each time I'd polish off one's gooey creation, the other would be standing at my elbow offering me S'more.

I deserve a merit badge

A Mama Merit Badge

I've spent the last three days in doctors' offices asking why my baby is sick. He's had diarrhea for 2 1/2 weeks, hasn't gained weight in over a month and suffers from chronic eczema on his cheek. I've cradled him during allergy tests and blood draws, and been sent home to fill five jars with stool samples. I feel as battered and bruised as he looks, and there are still no answers.

While the scratches and pricks broke my heart, trying to collect stool samples tested my sanity. Of the five jars, two had to be collected from the same stool, and a different two jars had to contain samples that were (preferably) one hour old or been refrigerated. In an effort to scoop poop, I covered the toilet bowl in a film of plastic wrap, wrapped his bottom in plastic wrap, and, finally, at 5:30 a.m., held the tiny jars up to his irritated bottom and filled them.

The jars and vials are at the lab, the allergy test results are on their way to the pediatrician, and now I must cap my fears (just like I'd like to plug his irritated little rectum with a cork), and wait through the weekend.

And while I've had eye and ear trained on my baby's red-faced grunts, I managed to get on the computer and, via a friend, learn about Mama Merit Badges, the brainchild of Amy Bowers. This Florida mom says she designed the badges in response to the "dearth of authentic recognition for the very hard work of mothering. Overly sentimentalized depictions of motherhood belie the actual daily duties that alternately feel like drudgery, brave political acts, and absurd performance art."

This week I earned my first badge.

Passion for a pocketknife

Norman Rockwell painting, Museum Syndicate

My 7-year-old sons spent the day at Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge learning about ducks. Greenwing Day, sponsored by the Nevada Waterfowl Association, knew that teaching to boys must involve action: They fired a shotgun, took two rides in a motorboat, learned to make a duck call, and won pocketknives. And while my sons can explain the dangers of a coot (sharp claws) and describe the bite of a black fly (terrrrrrible!), the highlight of the day was becoming the proud owners of pocketknives. Here's what one son said in just one hour the next morning:

1. I just can't believe I have my very own knife.
2. Mom, can I show you the bottle-opener?
3. Do you have some string I can cut?
4. Do you think this is my fish scaler?
   
5. What is a fish scaler?
6. I just can't believe I have my own pocketknife. It even attaches to my belt.
7. Dad, I can open a beer with my bottle-opener. Do you want a beer? (Asked at 10 a.m.)
8. I have a saw, too.
   
9. What can I use this saw for? (My reply: Scale fish.)
   
10. I know what my big knife is for, for sharpening sticks for marshmallows.

Want to take a guess how many sticks will be whittled on our camping trip this coming weekend? I'll report back next Monday.

Fashion, part one

The upscale mall in town, The Summit, sponsored a camp for girls, ages 6 to 16, this summer. The whole concept -- a day-camp destination for children interested in shopping, accessorizing, make-up, decorating and entertaining -- has been sitting like a tiny pebble in my Birkenstocks since I first spotted the advertisement. I finally figured out how to write about it:

The mall's calling all girls to camp
to teach them to twitter and vamp.
Gloss lips.
Swish hips.
Individuality replaced with a stamp.

***

A summer camp of fashion and glitter.
Send my daughter? Naw, I'd rather hit 'er.
The hairs on my head
stand up in dread,
as feminism goes to the shitter.

Feel free to add your own limerick!

A penny for your thoughts

Photo courtesy of Daniel Y. Go

"The memory manages to be found, like a dollar bill crinkled up in the pocket of old clothes. She fondles this memory a moment, a few seconds' worth, no more."

I love the above sentence written by Laura Valeri in "Furniture," published in Glimmer Train's, Summer 2008 edition, and was compelled to document a memory-in-the-making involving my children and money:

For every year my children have lived, they receive a quarter in allowance. This means my oldest, at age 9, gets $2.25 a week -- the value of a day's hot lunch at school, a pittance in a world where her classmates own cell phones, but (and I shrug here) it's all a large family can afford on one income. My daughter would be quick to point out that the "week" part of the above sentence is "weak," and I have to agree. Her father and I have been lax in filling their small hands with their even smaller allowances, and this may have contributed to their different attitudes toward money. I have a:

1. Hunter -- Eyes peeled for pennies on the floor and dollars behind the couch. Regularly checks the insides of washing machine for wayward change.
   
2. Hoarder -- Stashes money not only in the piggy bank, but also the bottom of the underwear drawer or the spare book. (When asked how this money would be retrieved, I was given an elaborate answer involving monetary amount equating to page number and letters in the title of the book.)
   
3. Habitual Forgetter -- Money rarely makes it to the bank. Usually relies on the goodwill of others for any spending.

The wails and shrieks that occasionally ricochet off the walls often have to do with money: Who stole it? Where is it? And why isn't it here on the floor where it was left six days ago? The yells are followed by heavy, angry footsteps thumping down stairs to report the infraction and demand that I do something. For awhile I tried, but their memories are tangled balls of string and the more I pulled, the more frustrated and tense we all became. So, now I hold out my hand, they turn over the disputed dollar (which is placed high upon a kitchen shelf for safety), and I tell them to come back when they've worked it out. Within a half-hour they usually return to report their resolution and ask for the money. Or the dollar sits on the shelf, forgotten, until I put it in my pocket and recycle it a week later as allowance.

A chance encounter and a yummy rum recipe

Painting courtesy of freeparking

I don't remember the old woman's name or her appearance or even the house I was in when I met her almost 20 years ago. These trivialities, the mundane facts that we put into a story because we think it will make it real, don't exist anymore. In fact, she probably doesn't exist anymore, either.

After all, she was maybe 80 and I 20 when we met. We were both drinking hot buttered rum at the same holiday party. She was there because she was relative of someone. I was there out of politeness to my boyfriend's parents. Maybe she was glad to be there, but I sure as hell wasn't. I don't like small talk and dislike the upper middle-class even more, and this was a party filled with both.

So I probably approached her because (one) she was old and therefore not intimidating, and (two) because she was old, she might be more interesting than the rest of this crowd decked out in bell-jingling holiday sweaters. Again, the niceties can be ignored because what I'm trying to get at is a feeling, an "Ooh!" that's never dulled.

I had thought I was going to be entertained with tales from long ago, but instead found myself swapping experiences about growing up in Nevada without running water, without electricity. Old woman and young, we leaped across the generation gap and embraced as girls.

In response to Sunday Scribblings writing prompt: Chance encounter.

***

Aside from the lingering memory, the other thing I took from that party is a love of hot buttered rum. Now, I know it isn't something that comes to mind on a smoky day in July, but save this recipe for when Old Man Winter arrives.

Pour 8 to 10 cups of cider into a pot and bring to simmer. Meanwhile, melt 2 TB. butter in a pan. Add 3/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1/4 tsp. cloves and allspice and stir. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar, stir and remove from heat. Combine butter mixture with cider. Pour cider into mugs, add 2 to 3 TB. rum and stir with a cinnamon stick.

My oldest friend

Photo courtesy of Seb Przd

It was fifth grade and we weren't friends.

She was part of a group of girls who developed a music number for the school talent contest that involved dancing to the thumping rhythm of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." I performed a solo -- singing Pinocchio's song "I Got No Strings."

She had curves and feathered hair and boyfriends who were too old and too fast. My body was a series of angles and plains, glasses and braids. The thought of ever having a boy's penis inside my vagina was disgusting.

She lived in a trailer with her father, a morbidly obese man who used the CB moniker "Big Mac" and rarely moved from his seat in front of the TV. I lived one bus stop away, across the railroad tracks and down a stretch of dirt road in another trailer, crowded with kids.

But inside both of us was a black hole, a giant, empty thing that echoed with loneliness, and somehow -- despite our differences -- we recognized that and became friends. She pulled me out of books and invited me for sleep-overs and afternoons listening to her record collection of Styx and Michael Jackson. In return, I shared my innocence. Between classes in junior high we passed notes filled with loopy handwriting and signed BFF -- Best Friends Forever. In high school, together we struggled through chemistry and pre-calculus, and sewed our own dresses for senior prom.

We were two planets circling a shared sun, but after graduation our orbits swung wildly apart. She moved to Los Angeles and, within two years, was married and had a son; I was in college. She had her second child and I was a budding journalist, intent on my career. When her third arrived, I was newly wed and planning a move to Europe.

Now, her youngest son is entering seventh grade, mine is 7-months-old. While I'm tied to young children, she is experiencing the freedom and choices I tasted in college. Although the time between our phone calls and letters has stretched to years, the elliptical paths of our lives continue to cross and recross as we share, albeit delayed, experiences.

So she remains my friend, forever.

The funniest thing I've watched in a while

"Business Time" by The Flight of the Conchords

Jemaine Clement also stars in "Eagle Vs. Shark," which is a fabulous and weird film. Watch it.

In response to my sister's question

Photo courtesy of moominsean

There once was a woman from the city
Whose dreams of the desert made 'er giddy
Her spouse wouldn't lie
"Dear, sand's in your eye."
So she settled back down and wrote a ditty.

***

Still unclear on Why I Was Wrong About Silver City, check out Maakies comic on Home Improvement Hooch. It's good!

Silver City

Historical picture of the Nevada mining town, sometime after its decline in 1869.
photo courtesy Nevada Historical Society

Her silver tarnished,
this old mistress of the mines
is bedecked in junk.

***

Silver City is a decrepit mining town, pocked with holes, studded with splintered shacks and adorned with rusted cars, glittering in the late afternoon sun. It's a ghost town that's been revived, so why think about living there today?

Because its tiny population -- a smidgen of the 1,200 living there in its heyday -- knows one another. They're raising their children together, which is why kids were camping in the park on a weeknight, and the city's summer program is providing lessons to a teen garage band.

Because it's hills are shades of coffee, its air is perfumed with sweet, pungent sagebrush, and the night sky sparkles with stars. Living there is a conscious choice to be grounded in location, tied to the land, to know a place.

This is what my parents gave me when we moved to Silver Springs in 1980. I wish I could give it to my children.

Two mothers on missions

My children and I experienced a modern version of this classic story on our way to the grocery store today. A mother Mallard and her babies were crossing McCarran Boulevard as cars whizzed past going 50 miles per hour on the four-lane road.

"Mom! A mama duck and babies, Mom!" Max yelled from the rear.

I hung a U-turn and hopped out, trying to get the traffic's attention. Cars slowed, drivers smiled and waved, but no one else stopped to help this little family cross the street and get over the concrete wall to safety. As we held our breath, the ducks made it to the other side but when they discovered the barricade, started to re-cross.

"Mom, what's going to happen? Are they going to get hit?"

Cars swerved and honked their horns, so I hung another U-turn. By the time I hit the hazard button and hopped out, the mother and two babies had crossed, but the other ducklings couldn't hop the curb and were trapped in the gutter. This caught the attention of a worker mowing the shopping center lawn, so he scooped them into the grass while I blocked traffic with my car.

"They're looking for water and there's water here with all the irrigation, so maybe they'll stay," the man said.

We called animal control and left them to finish our errands. As I tossed cans of lemonade into the grocery cart and wove my way through the crowded store, squawking at my own brood tailing me, I couldn't help smiling at the similarities between the Mallard family and my own.

Here's the intersection near the ducks' crossing. If you head east on North McCarran Boulevard, you'll pass a Ross clothing store and the lawn where we last saw the ducks.


View Larger Map

A night with bats

The biologist was a slip of woman with long, dark hair streaked silver the shade of moonlight. She waited on the casino rooftop for the bats to arrive as dusk faded and night's long shadows wrapped around her.

Nearby was a small electronic box waiting to help her with identification by recording the bats' high-pitched clicks and chirps, and circling her was a casino security guard, waiting for her to unexpectedly plunge off the side. But she wasn't going to jump. She was going to count the number of Spotted Bats, rare and solitary creatures found in just one location in all of northern Nevada, and that was here, circling the towers of the Grand Sierra Resort.

The biologist worked for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, documenting animals found living too close to humans, and sometimes this brought her into contact with bats. But she sought out this animal in her spare time, too: Following the growth of a female colony raising pups in her neighborhood, and mimicking the mother bats' chirps so the babies would skim her head in curiosity.

Tonight, as she stood on the roof high above Reno, it was she who was curious. The electronic box was picking up bat sounds, but they were far away, flitting above the casino's putting range and pond. She held her flashlight and waited. The casino's perimeter lights clicked off and the night around the towers grew denser, drawing the bats closer to her.

Her flashlight sliced through the shadows and struck a bat as it tipped its wings and exposed its furry backside. She counted and smiled into the night.

My thanks to Jennifer Jeffers from the Nevada Department of Wildlife, for sharing her stories and love of bats, and to Silver City's summer youth program for sponsoring the talk. If you would like to help count bats, email Jeffers at 423-3171, ext. 234.

Chapter four: What happened next

Photo of Mike Cockrill's art by C-Monster

When she woke the next morning, she looked around for the charred bed springs and singed carpet, but the only sign of the night's combustion of words was the soot beneath her eyes. Warm buttery sunlight melted on the bedroom floor. She breathed, and her relief caused the mobile of paper butterflies to dance and twirl above her head. The days that followed were flights on gossamer wings. She danced and sang and smiled as the sun shone, but at night she plunged into the flames like a moth on a suicide mission, only to rise again in the morning to dance with dark rings under her eyes.

"Something is terribly wrong," she told a friend over tea.

But the friend was blowing on the tea to cool it and didn't hear her.

"I've been cursed," she told her husband over the telephone.

But the babies were crying, and when her husband asked her to repeat herself, she threw the phone instead, shattering it against the door and leaving a hole that resembled a small, hungry mouth. Picking up the tiny voice from among the broken pieces, she fed it to the door, which swallowed it and began reciting long passages from "Moby Dick" until her daughter came along and silenced it by taping its mouth shut with Band-Aids.

Certain book read in a certain place

Field Tested Books, 2008 edition

I've been thinking a lot about books and places, and the bond that can be forged between the two. The idea that there's a connection is the impetus of Field Tested Books by Coudal Partners. From the introduction by Jim Coudal:

"We had this notion that somehow through experimentation we could identify how our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe it’s possible to determine how a book colors the way we feel about the place where we experience it.

"We know, without a doubt, that book and place do affect each other, and that they are bound as a single experience in our memories.

"Complicating the quest for a tidy conclusion is the fact that sometimes the place where we read a book is not just a geographical spot but also a psychological one. In fact, the most compelling Field Tests in this collection are the ones in which a book, a physical place, and a significant emotional moment collide."

There are many books I absolutely love, that shaped me as a child and teen, but only one that I can remember exactly where I was when I read it. Here it is:

The 2006 edition, "The Illustrated Jane Eyre."

I scan the school bus for empty seats and spot one in the middle -- a good seat. Location is important: Too close to the front and I'm sitting among the scumbags and dirt-heads -- the kids who smell like B.O., pick their noses or are in special-ed class. A seat too close to the back of the bus and I'm an easy target for the older, bitchy girls who drink cough syrup on the way to school in an effort to get high, and the guys who laugh and make rude gestures at their crotch when I yawn.

But today I find one in the middle. I slide in and sit near the window, dumping my backpack next to me as a sign that I don't want to share the space. I rummage around inside the backpack, searching with my hands for the felty soft pages of "Jane Eyre." The cover had been lost long ago and the rest of the book was held together by tape. It first was my mom's -- a required text from her days in Catholic high school -- and in the back it held the notes she had written to herself: "Helen Burns -- friend (died, Jane 10 yrs.), Lowood -- school, Miss Temple -- nice woman, Mr. Rochester -- owner of Thornfield."

I huddle down in the bus seat, creating a wall of vinyl green around me, making me, for all practical purposes, invisible, just like Jane. I wiggle and breathe a happy sigh knowing exactly how the heroine felt as she huddled in her own window seat, reading in secret and safety. I love Jane Eyre. As a marginalized teen struggling to define myself, I grok this "poor, obscure, plain, and little" orphan who challenges the bullies and the brutes, shapes her own fate and commands her own destiny. Jane speaks directly to me, she acts for me.

The emotional connection I have with this worn and musty smelling paperback edition doesn't make sense. It just is. The book is my guide through adolescence, because Jane's efforts to define herself mirror my own. It's comforting to know that when life is particularly lonely and difficult, Jane is there too, insisting on finding her own set of values and enduring punishing exiles because of it.

For an hour I sit hidden between the bus seats, miles away inside the book. I don't check the time or glance up to see where I am on the route. After years of riding back and forth, I can feel when my stop is coming up: a lurch at the railroad tracks, a right turn onto a washboard road, and I pull myself away from Jane and the English moor. Stumbling off the bus, I stand on the side of an empty dirt road, dazed and squinting under a hot desert sun. Alone.

My thanks to Write Now is Good for sharing information about Field Tested Books, and issuing the challenge to write about book and place. More essays on the subject can be found there.

Chapter three: Her very own hell

Photo courtesy of Smileykt

Because her luck died in the bedroom, it was here she felt the first lick of fire and sizzled skin. The bad luck curled through the room like smoke, choking and strangling her until she woke, smothered by the blankets and babies and man. (There were too many penises!) She clawed her way out of her claustrophobia and went in search of her daughter. The tiny girl was sleeping nearby on the floor, and, sighing in relief at the familiar shape and smell of the girl's small body, she lay down and slept again.

But under the dark cover of sleep, her breasts were discovered by her daughter, who nuzzled and greedily drank the milk, as sunny and sweet as ripe strawberries. Waking to the gulps and tugs, she slapped the girl away and ended up waking her cherubs too. First one and then the other sent up sharp cries of protest when they discovered their milk missing. The husband woke and cursed. The children wailed. She yelled. And the balls of words smoldered and exploded in flame.

Throw some spice in that sentence

Photo courtesy of another sergio

I can set my clock by the curses and obscenities heard along Fourth Street every school day. The trickle begins at 2:05 p.m. and quickly turns into a churning river of spicy language and sluggish teens that dries up by 2:40 p.m.

I love it.

There is something wonderful in spying on these young teens migrating home in packs. They hold hands, block foot traffic for awkward kisses, and try on and throw off language like they do clothes. It reminds me of a story about my littlest sister, who, when she was 12 or 13, was caught standing with a friend at the busiest corner of our small town yelling "Fuck you!" to cars passing by. She was just trying the words on for size.

"If you're using the word in a way to heighten the impact of a sentence or season the stew -- they are after all great seasonings ... they have a proper place in language," said comedian George Carlin in a 2004 interview on Fresh Air. "And in my case, I just like them because they are real and they do have impact and they do make a difference in the sentence."

Another who knew how to pepper her sentences was my grandma. This rotund little woman loved fine meals, gay men, and Cadillacs with the air-conditioning so cold it froze her grand-babies. But nothing brought her more joy than knowing she shocked people because she was a blue-haired woman cussing a blue streak.

So today I honor the many foul-mouthed people in my life, and comedian George Carlin, who loved the English language and its seven dirty words. He died Sunday at 71.

A haiku for my husband

Photo courtesy of Shira Golding

The short-order doc
at the In-N-Out snips and
then shouts, "Order up!"

Chapter two: The blame

Photo courtesy of ichangedmyname.

Wherever she went she was told how blessed she was, how lucky to have a beautiful little girl and twins (twins!). Women envied her, wished for sets of their own, their covetous fingers lingering too long on her cherubs' rosy cheeks and full tummies. But by then she knew her luck had turned, and she'd smile politely and mutter "idiot" under her breath.

When had life turned wretched? Why, after so many years, was she cursing and spitting like a wet cat? She played back the time leading up to the birth of her babies and gave herself a migraine trying to remember the hazy days that followed in the hospital. And though she knew luck had flown away with her cherubs' arrival, she dared not point a sharp, blaming finger at her babies.

In truth, blame (if any could be found) lay between her toes. It happened one night in the sooty darkness of sleep. A cockroach had spied her luck curled up in its soft nest of dust under her bed, fallen in love with it, and, weaving tales of an exotic nightlife, convinced the luck to run away. At that same instant that her luck was wrapping its thighs around the roach's hard brown shell, one of her cherubs woke her with a round, empty belly wail, and as she stumbled out of bed and went groping for the crib she squashed the cockroach and her luck.

Chapter one: The fall

Photo courtesy of fturmog

Her luck had turned sour and curdled even as the abundant supply of sweet, nourishing milk sprayed from her breasts and was gulped down by the two little cherubs in her arms. Really, it didn't surprise her, because for years her wishes bore fruit. She liked to believe her luck involved a bit of magic from the gnarled pomegranate tree that she and her husband had made love under one desert night. They fucked each other so hard the fruit fell from the tree and onto their heads, but they kept going, their sweaty bodies rolling over and squashing pomegranates, staining them red. And when they were done and lay staring up through the tree's branches at the ocean of stars, she licked the juice from her arms and nibbled on the jeweled seeds.

She liked to believe that for years afterward she carried her husband's seeds and the pomegranate seeds inside of her, and that this was why two times her belly grew round and full, skin taut and crisscrossed with pale red stretch marks. That it was the pomegranate tree that gave her three children, and two of them twins (twins!), when doctor after doctor said there would be none. But if, she figured, there was no magic, if luck were as predictable as the economy's rise and fall, then she knew her time to plummet had come. And so she fell, tumbling and crashing into the depths of her own hell, the fires burning so hot inside of her that it surprised her that her milk spray wasn't a hiss of steam that scalded her babies.

Prompted by [Fiction] Friday's challenge to sketch out a character with wildly bad luck. Make it a character you like, as we will use her again.