Crazy Day Ever!

I've lost the desire to blog.  I'm compelled to keep writing so that Emily has as many stories about herself to one day read as the boys do, but whenever I sit down to write, I just don't have it in me.  It's not that I've run out of material, per se, because children- all children- are endless fountains of humor and amusement.  It's just that it's started to feel repetitive.  This mommy blog thing is so played out.  The couple of mom bloggers I follow online generally follow the same sort of formula.  Kids are annoying, and we also drink wine.  I'm in the trenches with an army of beautiful morons.  Or it's a humble brag of winning at motherhood. That kind of thing.

So what do people think when they read *my* blog?  I've become hyper aware of that question over the past year, which is partially why I haven't written.  What do they think about ME?  That question becomes more nuanced when you whittle down your audience.  To family, to current friends, to former friends.  To those who are quicker to judge, perhaps, and who don't really like me that much to begin with.  Oh, there's Jackie with her stupid blog again.  We get it.  The kids are funny.  Whatevs.

Also, now that the boys especially are getting older, writing about them feels like stealing.  It feels like I'm sawing off a chunk of their soul and tacking it up on display.  They see the world, but they don't always want the world to see them.  "Don't put that on Facebook," they might warn if I take a compromising picture of them in their ratty pajamas with ice cream smeared on their nose.  "I won't," I say.  There's always Instagram. 

Yes, they are my kids.  I created them, they are essentially my property.  I get to catalog their adventures however I see fit because my name is stamped all over them with the copyright logo. But sometimes I think of writing a less than flattering tale about them which would absolutely KILL with my top four readers, and then I stop.  Because Andy would be pissed if the world had access to some of his darkest moments of deepest shame.  And I can't say that I blame him.  I'll choose to respect that notion, even if it hasn't been expressly stated.

I think I will suspend the blog for now, and make a new year's resolution to find a new avenue for writing.  One that's not focused on my children.  But, what should that look like?  Sometimes I dare myself to write a novel. Go ahead, you lazy coward, just do it.   Maybe I should start with a single short story.  Or a haiku.  It's been so long since I've written anything fictional, and I'm disappointed that that used to be something I wanted to do with my life, and now it's not anything. 

I title this last post "Crazy Day Ever!" because it was the post I started to write, which is something Emily says all the time whenever things go slightly awry.  If she discovers her shirt is on backwards, she'll look down, chuckle and mutter, "Crazy day ever."  She is easily charmed and amused by small things, a sweet little princess whose most entertaining moments I may just have to try my best to remember and retell one day.  And, so, that is where I'll leave you. 

Cast Away!

Would you believe Alex broke his arm again?  It's six weeks later, and he just traded in his awkwardly angled cast for a spiffy new brace, the kind that bowlers wear.  I will not be taking Alex bowling any time soon, of course, for fear of resnapping his arm bones.  "That's the biggest complication we see with these type of breaks," Alex's doctor has said many times.  "It takes a year for the bones to fully strengthen and straighten.  Rebreaking is a major concern."  His doctor relayed the same story twice, giving me the uneasy impression that he's only had one other patient besides Alex.  Another young boy broke both his radius and ulna at the playground, same as Alex.  Six weeks after the cast coming off, he got smacked in the arm with a flying soccer ball.  Bam!  Forearm broken again!  Sucks to be that guy.

What fun!  An ambulance ride.

Everybody knows how Alex broke his arm.  Every stranger and semi-stranger who has seen Alex bumbling around town in his bright blue cast has asked him, "How did you break your arm?"  And Alex has replied with the same rehearsed, oft-repeated, condensed story.  He speaks with the sort of resigned exasperation of a mother who is tired of saying the same thing all day every day but still has to keep reminding their kids of something super basic, such as putting their dish in the sink.  "I was at the playground playing tag and somebody went to tag me so I stepped back and fell by the fireman pole straight down on my arm and broke it."

When Alex fell, Andy screamed, "Mommy!  Come quick!  Alex is really hurt!"  I ran over, looked down at his completely bent forearm and screamed something unintelligible and shrieky.  And Alex, looking down at his completely deformed limb, said rather calmly, "Oh no.  I think I broke it."  And the boy that had been reaching out to tag him by the five foot opening of the play structure slunk away into the shadows, vowing to never make eye contact with anybody surnamed Berger again.

Alex had two casts.  This second one gave him
a thumbs down.

The doctor removed Alex's cast this past Monday, unceremoniously concluding Alex's treatment.  There is no follow up visit, which I find odd, since doctors love scheduling follow up visits.  It's their way of saying, "Shall we deal with this another time?"  Instead, "Let me see if I can get a brace for him," were the doctor's last words to us right before he disappeared down the hallway, reminding me of the young boy who tagged Alex right into six weeks of broke arm misery.  Their retreats were clouded by similar sentiments.  It's not my fault, but it sure doesn't look good. Alex's arm does not look good.  It's skinny and weak looking, obviously, from the casting, but it's also crooked.  Like, noticeably, freakishly crooked.  The doctor warned it would take a year to fully straighten out after such a bad break, but he didn't warn that my initial reaction to gazing at my young son's creepy, bowed out arm would be to swallow back my own vomit and avert my eyes.

The nurse gave us the wrist brace, and now I am imagining Alex growing up from within the confines of the brace, since he is terrified of taking it off.  Tonight I'm going to at least make him keep it off after his bath and throughout the night. But even good-natured Alex feels morose looking down at his hideous arm.  The black brace is soothing to him.  Anything could be under that brace!  Even a completely normal, perfectly straight arm!

Alex with his new brace, which
conceals his not so awesome arm.

I'm hoping Alex eases into using his bent matchstick arm with the same positivity that he adapted into having a broken arm in the first place.  Truly, I was much more upset by the break than the victim himself, as I saw all of our lofty summer plans vanish into the sky like smoke from an extinguished fire.  Last week, Alex and I were at the library when another stranger inquired about the arm.  Alex rattled off his summary of how he broke it, and the lady replied, "Well, that's a good way to ruin the summer, huh?"  To which Alex replied, rather snappily, "No.  I'm having a great summer!"  And finally, after so many weeks of lamenting his fate- our fate- I realized that he was right.  It was a great summer!  With a waterproof cast, we still went swimming.  We went to the zoo and strawberry picking, to parks, a baseball game, Great America, and the arcade, and to see fireworks, movies, and a magician.  We saw friends and played games and discovered new favorites- barbecued ribs, Radio Flyer wagon rides around the neighborhood, gas station slushees, the movies "Click" and (no pun intended) "Cast Away," tank tops instead of T-shirts, new stuffed animals from well-wishing friends, different things having to do with Pokemon.  He didn't have to play baseball anymore since his arm was broken- a silver lining for Alex, yay!  So was the summer ruined because of a radius and ulna snapped like strands of uncooked spaghetti?  No!  Not really.

And Alex will get through the rest of his recovery with that same can do spirit, I hope- despite the current state of nightmare arm.  I tried to summon a bit of that spirit as I opened the first of Alex's hospital bills, but I've always had more of an unleashed negativity thing going on.  Perhaps what I need in my life is a good Radio Flyer wagon ride, or an unhealthy interest in Pokemon.  Maybe a little more gratitude, the reminder that bones do heal, and we're all so very lucky.  So just put me on the payment plan, doc.  Automatic deduction, because I'm busy with my kid, looking right into his smiling face while trying to keep my eyes off his grossly misshapen forearm.

Chip Off The Old Block!

"I'm going to win!  I'm going to win!"  Emily raced alongside me in the rain, giggling and threatening to beat me to the entrance of the library.  I was holding her backpack, my purse, the bag of library books, and her pink puppy.  We were neck and neck in our fake race, and then her feet tangled up in their unstrapped shoes.  Down she went, hitting her face on the concrete steps.  The howl was immediate and terrible, and I knew what I would see before even dropping to my knees and looking.  A mouthful of brilliant red blood.  Shattered, jagged front teeth.  A shaking little girl, in pain and scared.

Oh my God.  Oh my God.  I juggled all of the things, including Emily, wiping blood from her face to the front of her jacket while digging through the backpack- no wait, my purse- looking for my phone, which would not turn on or work right, which did not contain the programmed number of the dentist, which did not have sufficient Wi-Fi to search the internet for said dentist number.  Emily stood beside me, screaming.  I told her it was going to be okay, but I could not look at her for more than an instant, the sight of her injury too grisly for me to behold.  I found the dentist number and jabbed at my screen with uncooperative fingers.  "It's an emergency," I told the receptionist.  "My daughter just fell and broke her teeth.  Please take us now!"

Emily was trembling when I picked her up.  Back to the car, I ran us and our bags and our bloody baby wipes and a bottle of water I had managed to unscrew and assist her in sipping.  I strapped Emily in to her car seat, my hollow reassurances filling the air. She quieted as I started the car and got us going, her eyes staring straight ahead, empty and dulled.

It's just teeth, I told myself.  She's fine.  It's no big deal.  It's nothing.  She's healthy.  It's just teeth.

But I remember my own just teeth, from twenty years ago.  I was much older than Emily, alone at the public pool when I smashed my face into the bottom of the deep end and chipped my front incisor.  Instant hysteria.  By the time I collected myself and walked home, I was a sobbing mess.  I yelled for my dad to wake up, as he had been sleeping after working the night shift.  "LOOK!  My tooth!"  I told him, and he stared at me for what seemed like an eternity through tired, worn eyes.  He did not say anything other than "Huh" as he examined my newly busted face, and I was suddenly awash with a horrific fear.  This is just how my face was going to look now.  Nobody was going to take me to get this tooth fixed.  I was fourteen years old.  I had my whole life ahead of me to live with a jagged, ugly smile.   Now I would never have a boyfriend!

"Call MOM!" I screamed at my father, his lack of action frightening.  "Call the other adult in this house!  PLEASE."

Emily and I made it to the dentist, my little girl walking into the lobby on unsteady feet shod shamefully in shoes with loosened straps.  The receptionist was calm when she greeted us, failing to acknowledge the urgency.  We were seated in a room after a few minutes, and the dental hygienist was also infuriatingly calm.  "I'm not sure what the dentist is going to do," she murmured.  "Sometimes we just leave them.  When you called, we thought the situation was a lot worse."

"Well, I mean, I know it's just teeth," I replied, squeezing my hands together.  "But we can't just leave them.  THREE of them are broken!  Her smile!  Her beautiful smile.  She's only two!  She's not going to lose these teeth for at least three years.  Heck, my almost six year old still hasn't lost any teeth and he falls straight down on his face literally once a week."

"I understand," she said.  "Let's just see what the dentist says.  Perhaps we've talked enough."

The dentist swooped in a few minutes later, a white blaze of straight toothed glory and lab coated confidence.  There was talk of bonding, of tooth repair, of making things right where they were now so horribly wrong.  To my dismay yet understanding, they asked us to leave and come back tomorrow for a full appointment.  I agreed, making the dentist promise that she would not close up shop in the middle of the night, taking all of her dental tools and associates with her.  I asked to see the office's financials.  I may have forced her to do a pinky swear.  My daughter's teeth.  We needed them fixed.

Baby's first dental appointment.
Not the way I pictured it.

We got back into the car, where Emily immediately stuck her thumb into her mouth for a quick suck.  "Ow," she moaned, pulling it back out.  "It hurts!  My owwie teeth hurt my thumb!  Oh no."  My heart ached for my sweet little baby, needing comfort now more than ever and not able to get it from her favorite source.

We spent the next twenty four hours in a state of waiting, with popsicles and cuddling and promises.  I did a thorough reliving of my own tooth bonding experience, of the many years of dental strife that followed.  And I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that parenthood is simply a retelling of one's own childhood, with different twists, turns, and perspectives.  A reinvention, perhaps.  I have been through most of these traumas before, in earlier chapters, this tooth disaster plus all of the others.  Things turned out somewhat okay for me.  I am trying to make them turn out somewhat better for my children.  I am trying to reconcile the relationship from childhood to parenting, constantly.

The next day, Emily's teeth were fixed.  I was so proud of Emily, laying there in the chair and following directions perfectly from the dentist.  Open your mouth.  Bite down.  Stay still.  She went through the whole procedure better than me at fourteen, and my heart swelled with too much love and protection.  "No apples," the dentist told me as we were paying, our ordeal having come to its relief.  "Don't let her have anything too hard."  And I nodded along and thought to myself, no submarine sandwiches from The Patio Restaurant in Tinley Park.  Because that's what knocked out my own bonding, years after the pool incident.  Of course, something will knock out Emily's bonding too, most likely, before she fully loses these baby teeth.  It won't be a submarine sandwich, probably.  But it will be something like it, and it will make a sort of parallel sense.