Flu and Me

For weeks, we have been knocked down but my friends, we keep swinging. The straight-up flu came for us. There were rounds and rounds of temperature-taking, batches of ginger tea, and bouts of coughing so hard that my eyes actually hurt. When it first came on, we were at friends' house for dinner. Benicio slowly began to withdraw, he had a persistent and baby-like desire to sit in my lap even while the Bakugan collection and Ugly Doll collection sat idly by. And then the virus permeated the house, room by room. Our two humidifiers, one penguin and one Hello Kitty, stood night watch as our kids lain in their beds, dreaming the types of dreams that only fevers bring. When Manny got it, I was loathe for him to miss school. He had worked SO hard to get those Valentine's written.

The best gift that sickness brought us was the way we were down in the trenches together. There was a day when Clara, Manny and I watched Rogers and Hammerstein and old Disney movies ALL DAY, all idle and feverish day long. At one point, Clara looked up at me, while I lay immobile and fetal next to her. Another afternoon, Manny and I were on the futon, in and out of sleep and sips of water. I said to him, "You used to live in my tum, you know." Usually, he says, "Mom, stop!" That time, her reached out to me in his sleep, his gangly seven-year old arm, sprang out across me in a beautiful octopus-like half-hug. Even in my feverish state, I treasured that one.

We have emerged separately, and Clara's warrior-like attitude seems to have proven strongest. When preparing her ibuprofen, Clara, rosy-cheeked and glassy-eyed rebuffed it, "I TOLD YOU, I AM NOT SICK!" Unmedicated and three days later, she has returned to school potent and present as ever. The baby and me, however, love to milk it. Calliope stands at the top of the stairs, "I'm cold. I'm cold. I'm soooooo cooooold...." until someone comes for her. This is how I am, my parents came on Saturday morning and I lay fetally next to my mother asking if she needed to take my blood-pressure or look at my throat with the flashlight.

Energy-Share

When we were first married, we lived in a little shoe-box of an apartment in Boston. We drew this curtain around us, no tv, no home-internet, no computer for that matter, and no call-waiting. We were working at the food co-op, trying to bike to work even in the snow. As that first year passed, we began to expand the curtain, Geoff picked up a vcr at a yard sale. And then we obtained a 9 inch color tv from his parents. And then a little later, we tried to set up my college computer. The computer was the last straw. The little apartment's circuits seemed energetically over-loaded. If were on the phone, of course, this affected the computer. I even felt that listening to Chris Lydon's radio show as obsessively as I did was somehow interfering with my sewing machine. It was as if, we had to keep all the electronic-use in balance.

After a day of Church, a birthday party and more than nine innings of baseball with 7 year olds, we were feeling our energetic limit. Then, last night, after returning from dinner with friends, we put the kids to bed. I thought, no table to clear, no dishes. This should be a fun little evening for us. I said, let's build a fire, drink some tea and catch up on New York Times. Somewhere after the article about Maggie Gyllenhaal and a few of the wedding announcements, I promptly passed out on the couch. Geoff laughed, I had the caffeinated tea. It hadn't taken me 20 minutes to completely short-circuit and narcoleptic-like go face down.
I think I had given my energy to Geoff who read his news, filled out the majority of the crossword puzzle, and even had time to update his website.

B-Word

One thing I love about our nursery school is that it's a cooperative. This means for all intents and purposes, we all have our hands in it. We each have a stake deeply dug into the place. And this also means that we work there. So you end up reading stories, cutting bananas in to one-inch rings, wiping noses and zipping coats. I have a firm belief that the more you serve, the more you come to love. In this way, I have come to see my children's friends as my friends and this I hate to say, my kids' tensions and conflicts as my tensions and conflicts.

Manny graduated from three years of this nursery school and after a year of homeschool is now at Plymouth Friends. For his intents and purposes, Plymouth is a cooperative where he feels open to dialogue about injustices even when they don't directly involve him. Yesterday, my friend whose family belonged to the nursery school with us, warned me that she witnessed some conflict in Manny's classroom which involved Manny being outraged that one boy called another boy a name.

In the car, Manny told me that gym class was "stressful" because some boys were accusing another boy of cheating. His description came to a crescendo, "Mom, I got so mad because they called [friend] a B-word!" B-word? What? My mind spun-- bitches? Seven-year olds calling eachother "bitches?" Seven year-old boys? What? "Bitch" is a word used by more ego-wounding situations, unheard of and grievous to hear at this age and isn't it used more appropriately for females? Words, as you know, mean everything to me. So it began to possess me, this need to know if in fact first-grade name-calling had come to this grievous point. My dear friend who serves as my eyes and ears in the classroom (We both think in the style of the co-op-- I feel for your kid like he is my own.) tells me that she's blown away at Manny's sense of justice. How he wanted a resolution and it was beautiful and sad to see him enraged. How the teacher was trying to help him let up on some of his anger.

I, however, was stuck on the B-word. "Manny, honey, what was the B-word, was it bully? Was it bone-head?"

A curt retort, "Mom, I can't say it. I don't want to get in trouble for saying it. It's too mean. You wouldn't want me to say it!"

I put Benicio on the case, who was as riveted as me, "Oh, I know. Was it a potty-word?" Manny said no.

I let it go, knowing I would just blow it out of proportion but I brought it up at knit-night. Out of three of us, one of us voted definitely no, it was not "bitch." Not at this age, at that school. However, there was a yes vote, which was backed by the most hilarious and fervent monologue I have heard in months. I won't embarass her but she has a beautiful penchant for swearing and it comes out at the funniest times. The monologue went something like, "Oh, you can't even run, your so girly, you bitch." The crassness and the imagined scenario I found wildly funny.

Geoff, who does not have the cursing-gene and is generally non-plussed by movies with great cursing (scene from Knocked Up, when the older sister is described as "old as F" makes me double over with laughter), asked me to drop the subject before bed. However this morning, I called back my insider-friend, "Are you sure you didn't hear what the B-word was? Would you see if your daughter knows? " No dice. She suggested that maybe the bad word was literally "B-word?" I had not thought of this.

Finally, casually, I said, "Yeah, I can't believe they called him a 'B-word! How do you spell that again? " Benicio suggested, "B-U-T-T?" Manny said, "No, B-R!"

That was it. The horrible, unspeakable word was BRAT. I wrote it on a scrap of paper, held it out to Manny. He nodded fervently, lips pursed tightly.

More Overheards and So Much to Remember

"Where is that book with the instructions for the car wash, that Martha Sweetheart book?"--Manny

"Benic, I can tell you my top 5 on-time favorite songs on itunes." --Manny

Geoff: Please don't draw on your cast, what are you doing?
Benicio: I was just going to add some detail.

Mia: Clo, what did you do with my Frieda Kahlo bookmark?
Calliope: I throw it in a trash.
Mia pretends to cry.
Calliope: S'okay, s'okay. (She pats my face.)

What I want to remember about right now: Our White House Cake that we made for our Inaugural Ball. We invited folks on our street over for soup and chats. It was sincere and fun. The cake was a model of the White House facade, including powdered mini-donuts in stacks as pillars and American flag toothpicks. We had black licorice for windows but the kids thought these tasted horrible. We sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" because no one knew Hail to the Chief:: Walking in Chinatown to celebrate the Year of the Ox, our camera froze:: On the afternoon of the inauguration, my sister said to me, I pictured you in your family room nursing and weeping in front of the tv. I responded, "HOW DID YOU KNOW?"::Benicio coming back from a date with Manny and my Dad and him saying it was the best day of his entire life. (They had gone to the movies, fast food, and the toy store.) Geoff teaching the kids the phrase "in this dojo" as in "There is no whining in this dojo." and "We follow through with our jobs in this dojo." The kids then saying to eachother, "There are no stinky babies in this dojo" from Clara:: The surreal image of my Mom moshing and pogo-ing with about 10 of her grand kids. My sister's dining room had become a tri-generational discotheque. The kids were swung around, laughing and sweaty. Even Manny, who these days exhibits a fair amount of bored derision and loathing, was break-dancing intensely. I served as lifeguard/photographer, "Clara, I challenge you to dance without touching anyone but also could you jump like that again for a sec?"