blogthecat

Learning on the fly

Let me begin this one by admitting that Craig and I fit the mold of first-time, older parents to a T.  We’ve read all the de rigueur parenting books. We get mushy over anything organic and can’t wait to register for signing class. We visit the alternative pharmacy to stock up on breastfeeding tinctures and teething relievers. We persist in reading earnestly to the young prince though his only interest is in eating the pages. That’s just a sampling of our state right now.

My mom (and various others of her generation who shan't be named) tries to bear with us as we fall over ourselves trying to please this baby via the trends du jour. Sometimes she agrees with us, sometimes she laughs at us, and sometimes she longs to steal Oliver away to save him from his crazy, protective parents. She would have been crowing triumphantly had she been with us at about 5 pm yesterday.

Despite its being an FFD (Family Fun Day—a day when Craig, Oliver and I spend the whole day together hanging out), Oliver’s mood took a sharp downward turn about ten minutes into a stroll down 4th Avenue in Kits. Not a huge fan of the stroller even on his best days, Oliver seemed especially put out on this particular occasion. Craig and I stopped a zillion times, made silly expressions, launched new toys into his already crowded compartment, and cooed maniacally. Nothing worked. His face was locked in a sullen expression, he practiced a perma-whine, and every couple of minutes a torrent of sputtering and spitting bubbled forth from his little mouth.

“What IS it?” we asked each other. “What could it POSSIBLY be?” After serious contemplation and debate, we settled on the likely culprit: a Developmental Milestone—a Cognitive Advancement. His brilliant baby brain was so bushed from its relentless processing of new inputs that it was affecting his mood. We wheeled that grumpy, Einsteinian boy down the street somewhat placated by our conclusion.

The whining took on a more threatening tone, however, and we decided to stop so we could have a beer and Oliver could be sprung from his stroller. We pulled Oliver out and sat him on the restaurant table. A powerful pong met our nostrils. Oliver looked up at us beseechingly. We looked at each other, horrified. We had been marinating the poor boy in his own poo. All down 4th. Mystery solved. No comments necessary, mom.

An unfortunate encounter

You know when you bump into someone you are wholly, massively, totally unprepared to bump into? When your mouth gums up, your brain freezes, and a thick, whooshing vibration invades your ears, blocking out all relevant sound? When your interior dialogue drowns out the conversation you’re supposed to be having?

It happened to me last week. The context: a much-deserved appointment with my hairdresser, Kelli. My hair was a bushy, frayed, SOS-pad of blond mixed with dull brown and grey at the roots and it was time to take action. I showed up to the salon without thinking twice about my ensemble since I knew I would be mercifully covered in the same salon robe every other client would be wearing. As a result, my outfit could only be described as soccer-mom meets lady-who-feeds-the-pigeons-in-the-park: bright, white running shoes, slouchy, stretchy, long black shorts, shapeless t-shirt with traces of hastily wiped-off spitup, and the piece de résistance … plastic Safeway bag to hold my wallet since I couldn’t find my purse in the wreck of my baby-bombed apartment.

Not ten minutes into the soothing sounds of Kelli’s scissors, I heard her exclaim: “Jeff!” I passed a quick hand over my mouth to wipe away possible drool and squinted into the mirror. There stood Jeff. Not any Jeff. Jeff, my good friend from my life pre-Oliver. Seriously pre-Oliver … I knew Jeff in a period of my life when I went to the gym, smoked more than I ate, got my eyebrows waxed, and wore only uncomfortable shoes that tore into the skin on my feet. We partied hard and we looked good, and that was about all that mattered for a while.

Now—six years since I had last seen him—stood Jeff, not two feet away from me. Two feet away from the bright white trainers poking out under my robe. Two feet away from my post-partum dumpling of a bum. Two feet away from the plastic bag tucked under Kelli’s station. Two feet too close for my state of dishevelment.

After big hugs, Jeff sat down in the chair right beside me and we began to catch up. Except I couldn’t hear him. The mouth on his handsome face was obviously forming words, and I was nodding furiously to show my grasp of these words, but I was taking nothing in. All I could think was:

“Jeff here. Plastic bag under chair. Must give back robe before leaving premises. Will be me leaving before Jeff. Jeff will see me leave. Oh God, Jeff will see me leave.”

At a certain point, Jeff must have caught on that I wasn’t listening. He asked mischievously, “You like that sort of thing?” in reference to his description of his current job. I mumbled, “Yes, well yes, I like the industry.” I knew he was in the pharmaceutical field so I thought there was a slim chance I had responded in some way appropriately. Later I was able to piece together what he had actually said … something about his role helping doctors use defibrillators on urgent cardiac arrest patients. “I like the industry.” Nice.

Then sadly, Kelli declared my hair done. I murmured my approval, concurred with Jeff that I’d see him when I came back from the changing room, then slunk away from the chair. I saw a back-door exit and contemplated making a run for it. I didn’t. But neither did I trot back to Kelli’s chair to say a real goodbye to Jeff. I snuck quietly to the front desk, paid, then ran like the wind to the door, humming madly to block the sound of the plastic bag crinkling and crackling beside me. The horror.

First post, post-Oliver

Aaagh! I have no idea how to start this post. I’ve wanted to write every single day since Oliver (previously known as Little Dude or the LD) burst into our lives four months ago, but sheer exhaustion and confusion about what and how much I want to write about Oliver here has kept me away. Of course, the more I delay writing, the more daunting it seems, so I’m just going to do it and abandon any hope of this first post doing justice to Oliver and everything I’m feeling because of him. For the next little while, I’m going to write in a way that reflects my new reality: one moment at a time, in fragments.

So I’ll begin with a fragment from a night not long ago. It was one of the many times we’ve had with Oliver in which the most mundane of moments is the most achingly, dizzyingly full experience imaginable.

He was drunk on milk. We lay together on the bed and I watched his goofy, half-conscious smiles as he revelled in his full tummy and groggy head. Though ready to sleep, he resisted for a few minutes, limbs flailing, head whipping from side to side, over and over. Eventually the pull of sleep won, and he succumbed and went limp. I moved my face closer to his, and listened to the little sing-song moans of his breathing. Oliver’s breath smells like almost nothing; only a memory of warm milk gives it any substance at all. Sweet, delicate, and like nothing else in the entire world.

Like Oliver.