A Trip Halfway Across the Country - Part II (In No Particular Order)

We took our 27' recreational vehicle across 8 states with 6 occupants in 4 days before arriving in Missouri. Two of the travellers were under 4 years of age; one was over 60; another was a dog. The Partner drove. I sat in the front passenger seat, alternately reading, sleeping, and watching corn stalks whizz by.

The Boss's oft-professed hatred of Interstates did not articulate itself on the journey, except for one or two "I do not care for highways" that she threw in more as statements of fact than of complaint. Number Two kicked up his heels in his bucket car seat and only resorted to cries upon becoming hungry, a condition quickly alleviated when my mother would rush to his side with gifts of crackers and cheese.

We drove for more than 9 hours a day on the way out. We'd stay each night at a different state park or, on one occasion, at the home of friends. Each day got later, with the sun and moon competing for evening domination. The moon won out, as it always does, but the brighter ball of light put up a more valiant fight than it ever did back home in the northeast.

The rhythm of asphalt under 15,000 pounds of automobile set the tone to our days. The Partner and I were discordant in the front seats during arguments that went largely unheard by those in the back. My mother read to the Boss, or read to herself, or looked out the window for 40 year old memories in the form of defunct Indiana Army bases.

We saw things we don't usually see, like porcupines in the median, and Sonic Drive-Ins, and a river called the Mississippi. Most of all we saw this huge part of the United States that is integral in a way we'd never understood as suburbanized citizens of Connecticut.

The ride was long and uneventful. We drove for 1600 miles on the roads that drive us.

A Trip Halfway Across the Country - Part I (In No Particular Order)

The house sat on a lake in Kansas. Unlike Kansas, it was modern and glassy. Like Kansas, it sprawled. The place belonged to the daughter of my father's brother, and it was our first visit.

Uncle Sonny left Hartford for good in the 50s. He stopped in Topeka more than twenty years ago, setting up house in grand style. His daughter's place is grander still, built on the strength of her husband's endodontics practice in a town with lots of bad teeth and few practitioners with the two extra years of schooling necessary to root all those canals.

Not long after we arrived, my mother asked me if I'd seen the bathroom. "It has a window for a wall," she whispered. I raised an eyebrow at her. "A window," she repeated. "For a wall!"

Two Bud Light Lime's later, I saw it for myself. I closed the door behind me to find a toilet to my left, a sink like white art to my right, and an unobstructed view of the lake in front of me. The wall was floor-to-ceiling glass. A screen, which could be raised and lowered via a control panel next to the door, was in the descended position. I could see out, but nobody could see in. Not unless they really tried, anyway.

The grass rolled from patio to deck to beach. Two boats sat parallel on a slip. The Boss was a red, white and blue dart across it all. The Partner sat on an weather proof cushion under a tree as he pulled at a beer bottle while talking to the endodontist. I went about my business, more conscious than usual of my every shadowy move. I exited with my back to the door until the last moment, marveling.

After awhile, dusk fell. My northeastern nights are early; these were late and lazy. The sun was weightless in its last gold hold-off to night. The Partner suddenly nudged me from where we stood on the grass between the house and the lake. "Oh my God, I can see someone in the bathroom!"

I looked up one level and my eyes went buggy. The familiar stoop of shoulders like my father's, of a craggy face like Uncle Jack's, was centered in that clear square of glass. I looked away. "We've got to tell someone," I said, not waiting to lurch off toward the patio in search of my cousin, or the endodontist, or any of the family members in a position to do something (although I'm not sure what) about it.

Uncle Sonny is the oldest of my uncles. He's a sharp shooting joker with three children and a bevy of grands and greats. A year ago, or maybe two, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. There's medicine now to slow the progression, but his wife told me it's not working. The first night we arrived, he locked himself in his truck and couldn't get out. At a picnic on the fourth, he met an old acquaintance he no longer knew. My aunt says she can't get used to it, this evolution amidst the sameness of each new day.

"There's someone using the bathroom with the shade up!" I said to Andy, the first of my second cousins that I came upon.

"It's Uncle Sonny," The Partner added.

Andy turned back to the house and went in through the sliding doors. My duty done, I leaned against the deck railing. I thought of the shade's control panel right next to the light switch; I thought how the mistake could easily happen. I thought of the murkiness of the short-term against the clear view of a lake made to glisten by the tips of a fading sun. Below Uncle Sonny, his children and his brothers' children conversed, relaxed. Our own children played.

He looked over it all--caught inside that strange, contemporary enclosure of bodily functions--for all the world to see.

The Blue Glow

Sometimes at night, the tinted screen of the computer makes a haze that is the only evidence an outsider can see of life within my window.

This is me when I'm reading your blog, or clicking on the "newlywed" bulletin board I continue to visit without knowing why, or Googling "recurrent high fever infants" to find some reasoning behind the fact that Number Two spikes a temperature of 104 if he so much as looks at a bacterium.

Sometimes the calendar on the wall is two weeks out of date; sometimes it's a month. Sometimes my answering machine blinks with a message that I've already heard, being that I was sitting right in front of it as the caller left a taped proclamation of her desire to speak with me. Sometimes my desk is messier. It's rarely neat.

The glow is more fascinating than the reality. It's the not knowing. It's the imagination of children as they drive by houses on a summer evening, looking in windows while the warm air pushes through their own cracked glass.

It's always bluer on the other side.

***

Thanks to Mrs. Chicken and Lauren for inspiring this post.

A Precursor to Another Father's Day

I found The Partner's first Father's Day in an old blog of mine. It went like this:

Last night The Partner did the most amazing thing. He walked into the banshee's lair, placed his hand on her writhing back, and lulled her to sleep with his presence. The incredible part isn't that she calmed down so easily; it's that he reached out. The gesture was a year in the making. His hands-on approach toward swapping out car engines or turbo-charging lawnmowers never extended to the day-to-day maintenance of a baby. What he wanted from life was simple: cars, trucks, boats, cable television and pie. He thought a wife to hand him the torque wrench and laugh uproariously at his jokes would be quite nice, too. At 27, he was sure he had a few more good years of buying toys and watching Modern Marvels on the History Channel before Father's Day would be anything but a celebration of his own dad's role in his upbringing. At 28, he realized he was wrong. Much petulance ensued.

When I told him I was pregnant and he was unenthused, I pushed it to the back of my mind with the ever hopeful "he'll get excited when I start to show and it becomes more real to him." When I started to show, I figured he'd come around when he felt her kick from within. When her kick made him jerk his hand back with an incredulous "it's like a God damned alien in there," I was sure that her birth would be the moment of true acceptance. Unfortunately, I was unconscious for that and cannot make an identification either way. All I know is that I came to and there was nothing to indicate that the bond I was anticipating had been forged. Until yesterday. Until Father's Day.

The Partner was adamant that he didn't want any gifts. So I didn't get him any. But we had what turned out to be a nice visit to his parents' house and, on the drive down, I laughed a lot. He likes when I do that and I guess, yesterday, it was as good for him as it was for me. At his parents' home, we conversed and ate and ogled the happy baby. Our dog drank too much water and peed on their carpet. The ride home was companionably silent.

After I nursed The Boss and put her in her crib, she was too exhausted to sleep. The air was thick with humidity and with dust from the inaugural use of our big box fan. I laid on top of the sheets in my underwear while she cried it out. I heard my husband at the top of the stairs and saw the hall go black. I thought the creaking floorboards would lead him to our bedroom, but the doorway remained empty. Suddenly there was only the white hot noise of the fan. Several minutes later he padded into bed. He set the alarm for 7:30 a.m.

"How'd you get her to do that?" I asked the ceiling as he laid on his back beside me.

"I just put my hand on her back till she fell asleep."

"Oh." A breeze that wasn't light or heavy rustled through the curtains. I thought, this is why I love the beginning of summer. Things you have been waiting for so long finally start to happen.

Inscrutable

I don't know Number Two.

I know he likes balloons and baths. I know he's calm most of the time, except for when he's tired, or when I return from somewhere else and he suddenly realizes I was gone. Then his upper lip starts to quiver over a straight bottom one, and his eyes wrinkle a bit as tears wait for just one more crease to push them over the edge.

But in this one whole year, I don't yet know him.

His time is his alone. My time is for feeding and changing him; for meeting every ramped up demand of his big sister; for housework and homework. He plays by my side, or crawls fast around the first floor in time with the rhythms of our life. His moves don't elicit the attention that The Boss's every one earned the first time around. I don't force myself into his head the way I did with his sister. There are too many heads now. There is too much going on to figure it all out. He's happy to avoid analysis. He's content with a tickle and a big laugh.

When The Boss was one, I did not understand the shortness of twelve months. So I had to know her right away. I made it my business. Now I know a year is a blink--the kind of blink, like Number Two's, that finally makes the tears spill over--and that it doesn't have to hold all the answers.

I will know him soon enough. I'll know him well enough. Then, and for a short time, I'll know him better than anybody.

100 Things About Me - Part IV

76. After some job changes, and in yet another example of the efficacy of a liberal arts degree, I worked in a factory bending metal for several months during 2002.
77. The Partner asked my father for permission to marry me in a clandestine driveway encounter at my parents’ house while I sat oblivious in the living room.
78. My father told my mother, who promptly told me.
79. I get angry just thinking about it.
80. The proposal, slightly less of a surprise than intended, came on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, which was the site of one of our earliest and most romantic dates.
81. The Partner-to-be and I bought a house in sin.
82. There was a mechanical bull at our wedding reception.
83. The latter part of our European honeymoon was spent with my in-laws.
84. When I got pregnant three months later, we waited till the end of the first trimester to tell anyone, including my parents.
85. My mother expressed outrage at not being trusted with the secret.
86. The Boss’s birth was a medical clusterfuck, if you’ll pardon the expression. Proper English simply does not convey my meaning.
87. The Boss was such a good baby.
88. If only my hormones were as cooperative.
89. I am a stay-at-home mom in name only. The Boss and I prefer to go out.
90. I put 30,000 miles on the car that first year.
91. I love Cadillacs.
92. It wasn’t until I became a mother that really became myself.
93. I completed my first book project when The Boss was a year old.
94. When she was two, we moved to the home in which we hope to raise our family.
95. She did not take kindly to the news that she was to become a big sister.
96. The Boss sensed imminent labor before I did. Hours before my first contraction hit, she let out a shriek. “It’s not fun being bigger and older!” She threw herself face-down onto our bed. “It’s not fun!” She threw herself back. The Partner and I reached out to her in our last huddle as a family of three.
97. I gave birth to Number Two after fifteen drug-free hours, thanks to The Partner and our Fairy Goddoula.
98. My son’s first year was a blur.
99. I don’t expect that view to change.
100. I save moments in writing because my clarity comes from words.

All Rabbits Go to Heaven

Roxie was out of food. The Boss and I walked into the local dispensary of Wellness dog chow to stock back up. The store was filled with agricultural sundries as well as an array of gifts displayed around horse, American Flag, and lighthouse themes. Upon entrance, we were met by a collection of fowl pecking out at us from a multi-level enclosure.

The Boss watched for a few seconds, jumping back as one of the stringy chicks threatened to gouge out part of her anatomy. Then she submitted an interesting tidbit for discussion. "One of the animals in our class died. Fluffy died."

"Oh. Oh!" The sudden arrival of this moment, amidst caged turkeys at the feed store, caught me off guard. I knew it was important; I knew I should speak. But I've never been good under pressure. It's been accomplishment enough when I don't begin to flap my arms and hop around on one foot during a crisis situation.

"It's okay," The Boss told me. She was somber but sure. "Miss Kathy buried her."

"Oh. Oh!" I felt choked up by the loss of the white rabbit that had been a part of The Boss's daily life during her first year at school. I needed to say something to comfort her. The lack of words, coupled with my fierce desire to speak anyway, caused me to stutter a few times on "I."

The Boss stopped me. "It's okay," she repeated, more adamantly this time. Then she shrugged. Her arms were out at her sides, palms up, as if holding necessary weight atop each hand.

She thought for a minute, searching, like me, for words of comfort. I couldn't believe it. My daughter was trying to soothe us both.

"Fluffy is safe," The Boss said, finally. Her shoulders lifted again. "It's okay."


Note: Looking for the final installment of 100 Things About Me? Well, I guess it's not the first time I left you hanging. Numbers 76-100 will be posted shortly.