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Sympathy

Aug 16th, 2010 by

My mom’s cat Barret died from liver failure Saturday, and my own cat, Percival, is in renal failure and may not have much longer himself. It’s been a tough, tough week or so around here. And when I say “tough”, I mean I have cried buckets every day for a week now. (I’ve held off blogging about this because, as I have just discovered, I am comfortable broadcasting my little anxieties and quirks to the world, but not genuine heartache.)

So yesterday I had to have a chat with Simon.

“Simon, honey, I have to tell you something very serious. Percy is sick.”

“Is he going to get better?”

“I don’t think so. I’m doing all I can to help him, but I don’t think he’s going to get better.”

“Are you going to take him to the doctor?”

“Yes, Percy goes back to the doctor tomorrow. But he might not be able to help either.”

“Oh, Mommy, we’ll take him to the doctor and then bring him home and he’ll be new again.”

“I wish it worked like that honey, but it doesn’t. He’s very old and very sick, and I don’t think he’s going to get better.” I said this bit through choked tears.

“Mommy? Is that a tear-drop?”

“Yes, honey, it is. I’m very sad right now.”

“Why?”

“Because Percy is very sick, and I love him.”

“You know what will make you feel better, Mommy? A big, giant hug… [and he hugged me and held on fiercely] and a kiss right here on your arm [and he sweetly pecked me on the arm].”

“And you know what else will make you feel better? A toy!”

[And he went and brought me his second fastest hot wheel, Stingray.]

“Do you feel better, Mommy?”

“Oh, honey, I do. You always make me feel better.”

And, if I’m honest, a little bit worse, too. The combination of sweetness, misunderstanding, and naiveté was kind of heart-breaking on its own merits.

Coda: Percy had a better Sunday than Saturday, and today he got more fluids at the vet. He’s still not eating enough, but if we can get the bare minimum into him and continue the fluids, there’s a chance we might be able to manage his condition for a while and preserve a decent quality of life. Only time will tell.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | 2 Comments »

The Big Boy Quotient

Aug 13th, 2010 by

Simon is upping it in a big, big way, egged on I think by being grouped with younger kids at camp. He hated that designation, resented it mightily in fact, and told us every day about a particular child he disliked because “she cried”. The “she” in question was the youngest of the group, and therefore the one that most cemented his identification with “the babies”.

I learned from my friend Sharon, the cantor at KI and the mother of Leah, that the big kids at camp (the threes, fours, and kindergarteners) referred to the little ones (itsies and twos) as “babies” quite often, as in “Here come the babies!” or “Oh no, the babies are coming.”

This wounded Simon’s big-boy pride and has made him turn on all younger children for now. I know he’s not particulary nice to his friend Taylor’s little sister, Tori, and he’s already informed me that he does not want to play with Agotich because “she’s a baby.”

That’s all the negative stuff; there have been positives as well. The first came yesterday afternoon when Simon asked Matt to take off his bed-rail. He’s a big boy now, he explained, and doesn’t need it. He really doesn’t. He’s been sleeping in that bed for a year now, and his preferred position is shmushed up against the wall and his stuffed animals. Boy oh boy does the bed look odd without it, though. The whole room looks different to me!

The other manifestation of big-boy-dom is a most promising start to the new school year. It doesn’t begin until Tuesday, so I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, but I am optimistic that beginning the threes will be nothing like beginning the itsies or the twos. For one, I knew which teacher to request this year. One day last spring, I arrived at KIP and found Simon chatting with Ms. Tammy on the bench outside the cafeteria, whereupon Ms. Tammy regaled me with her thoughts of how sweet and sensitive Simon is, what a good heart he has, and how you can already tell he will grow up to be a wonderful person.

While she chatted away, I took note of the fact that she teaches the threes and had an interior dialogue something like this: “I want her for next year. No, scratch that I am demanding her next year. And Baron will be in that class, too, because they love each other too much to be separated next year. I’m on the board. I built the school blog. I can make this happen.”

And I did. Which brings me to today, when I took Simon along to school to show him his new room for next year. What distinguishes the big kids from the little kids at school is where their classrooms are (little kids down; big kids up) and where they eat lunch (big kids in the cafeteria all together; little kids in their rooms). I’ve been telling Simon that he’s going upstairs “with the big kids” for a few weeks, and he seems very excited about that.

At our dry run today, we ran into a few teachers, including Ms. Jill (Simon’s teacher from last year) and her daughter Larkin. Larkin is Simon’s age and was in the Itsies with him the year before last. The kids found each other upstairs, started to chat, and soon after took off down the hall together. They popped into every classroom, chatting, giggling, and turning on lights all the while.

After a few minutes, I decided it was time to chase them down. And they weren’t there! They had run all the way down the hall, gone downstairs, and had landed in one of the twos classrooms from last year, where they were playing hide and seek with each other. Ms. Judie, Simon’s co-teacher from last year, was in the room at the time.

Jill came down quickly to correct Larkin for going into a room that wasn’t hers. I stayed quiet, as did Judie. But once they left, Judie looked at with a huge smile and said, “Look at how far he’s come! Can you imagine him just taking off with a friend like that last year? He’s a whole new kid.”

She was so proud of him. And so was I. But I do have one minor correction. Simon is the same kid he always was. What Judie saw was simply a more secure and confident version, a Simon ready to let go a tiny bit and show the world his true self.

Posted in Jessica, KIP (Preschool), Little Boy | 1 Comment »

“When I’m a Grown-Up”

Aug 10th, 2010 by

Simon has lots of plans for when he’s a grown-up, and they aren’t the dreams of blasting off into space, digging up dinosaur bones, or driving a racing car that I would have expected. Not yet, anyway. Nope, his dreams are a bit more prosaic at present.

“When I’m a grown-up,” he tells me, “I’m going to drive you to school and then come home and work.”

Substitute “elder day out” for “school,” and I think this dream is likely to come true.

There’s also:

“One day, when I’m a grown-up, I’m going to have a cat named TJ. And another cat named Tristan. And I’ll go to Target and get a cage… a carrier? … and I’ll drive them to the dentist, to Dr. Shellie, to have their teeth cleaned. They’ll lie down on the chair, and Miss. Barb will clean their teeth. Then I’ll drive them home.”

I especially love that one, as it demonstrates his understanding that “cage” is not quite the nice word we like to use, even if it’s accurate. It also endearingly demonstrates his misunderstanding that the kitty dentist is just like the pediatric dentist. He’d be so upset to learn that Tristan didn’t get to put on sunglasses or choose a toy when he had his teeth cleaned! (He’d be even more upset to learn that Tristan came home with two fewer teeth than he started the day with.)

But what I love most is that Simon seems to be in synch with our rather mundane, homebody lives. Whether a product of temperament or his limited understanding of the world, at this moment nothing is more thrilling to him than being an active member of the household. He thrills at trips to the hardware store with Matt, to the grocery with either one of us, and to the coffee shop whenever he can. He loves to feed the cats, water the plants, and help make his meals. Few things bring him the joy that carrying dishes into the kitchen, brushing his teeth, or helping me sort laundry do.

Yup. At this moment, Simon can’t imagine anything more exciting than being us, which goes a long way towards reminding us about how lucky we are in our daily lives.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... | No Comments »

Family Man

Aug 8th, 2010 by

On Friday, August 6, at about 10:40 a.m., my friend Gabriel (birth name Kwai Akech Kwai) became a family man in the truest sense when his wife Alek and daughter Agotich arrived from Khartoum, Sudan, via Amman, Jordan, and Chicago, Illinois. And what a long, strange, trip it was.

They met four years ago through Gabriel’s sister, who still lives in Sudan, and married in the spring of 2008 when Gabriel traveled to Sudan to have a traditional wedding in the southern part of the country. He was able to stay for about two months before he returned to the US to earn a living and work on securing Alek’s visa to join him.

The wheels at the INS offices turn slowly, made all the more slow by the erratic mail service to a place like Sudan and the exponential costs of processing an immigration case. Medical exams, DNA tests, travel to Egypt for interviews (we don’t have an embassy in Khartoum), regular mailing of papers at $100 a shot, and passport fees quickly make the process stretch out to well over a year and cost upwards of $8,000. I don’t know how anyone does it.

Gabriel’s case took just over two years start-to-finish. And while he was juggling jobs and paperwork on his side, his wife gave birth to their baby girl back in Khartoum in January of 2009, a daughter he only saw in two photographs and heard in the background of phone calls until Friday. He missed the entire first 18 months of her life: first smiles, first steps, first words—all of it. It’s heartbreaking, made all the more so by the knowledge that Gabriel himself was separated from his family at age nine and hasn’t lived as part of a nuclear family in the 23 years since.

This was all supposed to change when Alek’s flight arrived in Louisville Thursday night, but even that turned out to be complicated. First she spent a frantic 12 hours racing around Khartoum the day of her departure when bureaucrats at the office of international departures (AKA, the office of last-minute extortion) invented new paperwork they required of her. She could hardly argue or appeal when she had a plane ticket worth $2300 in her hands. So she drained her savings and got on a plane with a cell phone that quit working once she left Khartoum, no US money, Sudanese pounds no one will exchange, and a cousin’s bank card and pin code.

The rest of the story after the jump:

Continue Reading »

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This Picture is Worth More Than a Thousand Words

Aug 6th, 2010 by

Which is good, because I’m too tired to write right now. That will come later. But all you really need to know–or see–is this:

The Kwai Family: Alek, Agotich, and Gabriel (Akech)

Posted in Friends, Jessica | 3 Comments »

Foreign Toys

Aug 5th, 2010 by

I don’t know how he does it, but Simon is aces at being attracted to toys I can’t get. He had an entire week at camp themed “Disney” and never once asked for a Mickey or a Minnie. They had an Alvin and the Chipmunks week that also yielded no requests. Beach week resulted in no increased interest in sand toys. Winter in July week brought about no begging for shaving cream. Despite regular water play days and the brutal heat, I can’t get the little guy to go to the pool with me at all.

However, ten minutes on YouTube looking for train videos resulted in unseemly supplications for the Takara Tomy Shinkansen Plarail. Got that?

He wanted to watch trains. So I showed him a few. “No mommy, fast trains!” he exclaimed when I pulled up freight trains in Oregon or, worse yet, BART. Mommy, possessing little knowledge about the rails, finally searched for “Japanese bullet train” on YouTube in hopes I’d find videos of sleek, super-fast trains.

And I did! And we watched them over and over and over. And then he started asking for different colors. “I want the fast yellow train, Mommy! Now the blue one!” Somewhere along the line, I pulled up a video called “Thomas and Percy Trainspotting Shinkansen.” Huh? Some toy train enthusiast set up his toy Japanese Plarail set with a Thomas and Percy,  had them watching Shinkansen bullet trains (also toy) race by, narrated the action in Japanese, and then filmed the entire thing.


Simon took one look at those toy Shinkansen trains racing around the blue track and was emphatic that this was the best toy train set ever. I fear the wooden Thomas set downstairs is dead to him.

“Can you get it for me, Mommy? For my birthday. When I have my birthday you can get me this for my present. And it will zoom around really really fast like a race train!”

Cool, no?

This comes with Red Ryder BB Gun levels of devotion and obsession. So I have several choices:

  1. Talk him out of it;
  2. Try to explain it’s Japanese (I can hear it now, “Can we go tomorrow after my nap?”;
  3. E-bay it;
  4. Find a Japanese-reading friend and navigate my way through a Japanese e-commerce site;
  5. Find someone who knows someone in Japan and see what I can pull off.

I’d be much more inclined to opt for 1 or 2 were the thing not so undeniably cool. I don’t get why Simon wants a jail to put Sly and Gobbo into and the allure of the cat toy eluded me, but the appeal of Plarail is pretty undeniable.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | 1 Comment »

How Hot Is It?

Aug 4th, 2010 by

EVERYONE has their own stories to qualify the brutality of this summer’s heat wave (hottest on record here in Kentucky). The New York Times ran a funny piece last month that measured the misery in terms of utility workers’ overtime pay, the physical toll on firefighters and police officers, and the stir-craziness of New Yorkers stuck in their single air conditioned rooms. (Cooling the entire apartment strains the grid and is a no-no.)

I thought my story was going to center around Simon’s photo album. In a normal summer, we live outdoors from May through July, then suddenly all the pics move inside during the dog days of August and for half of September. Beat down by the heat, multiple park trips per day lose their appeal, and the air conditioned and mosquito-free inside becomes irresistible. Suddenly, you only see the boy in the kitchen, living room, or basement. Only February boasts more interior shots than August.

This summer, however, all of June and July were like that, too. When the camp half-day is over, Simon is too drained to hit a park himself. He only wants to come home, snack, watch a little TV, and then crash. We’re talking naps of over two hours for a kid I thought was giving up his nap. Other parents are reporting similar behavior. We’ve hardly been to the parks this summer, and when we do go, they are sparsely populated except for the splash areas. The pickings of outdoor photos are slim indeed.

But no, that isn’t my story. (Though I have told it.) I’ve now got a better one. Last night at midnight, I found myself outside my friend Gabriel’s new apartment, chatting by the dumpsters with him and his friend Solomon.* We had just spent two hours assembling his bed and fighting with the usual fuzzy diagrams that come with some-assembly-required furniture. Our task—and bonding via mutual frustration—complete, we were now making small talk as we tossed out the packaging and got ready to drive home to our respective apartments. (Gabriel hasn’t slept over in the new place, yet.)

Our talk came to a close when Gabriel and Solomon, two men born in Bor, Sudan (average daily high in August is around 91 with high humidity), who spent a total of about 14 years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya (average daily high in Kakuma, Kenya, is 104 degrees), and at least one of whom has spent some time in Khartoum (average daily high in summer ranges from 104 to 118, making it the hottest national capital on the planet), looked at each other and said:

“It is too hot out here. I think now I must go home and get into the cool air. Goodnight.”

THAT’S how hot it is, ladies and gentlemen!

* I realized something funny last night. While I don’t miss the physical wear and tear of moving my friends anymore, and years ago decided that if you had REAL furniture you needed to pony up for REAL movers, I do miss the socialization that comes from this type of activity. You really get to know people when you haul their crap up flights of stairs, eat a meal off of packing boxes on the floor, and struggle to figure out where “Part C” described in the bad diagram goes on your brand new bed/desk/bookshelf. I felt younger last night than I have in a while, and had a truly lovely chat with Gabriel and Solomon, free from the polite constraints that can hobble conversation in more civilized settings.

Posted in Friends, Jessica, Little Boy | 1 Comment »

Blue in the Interview

Aug 1st, 2010 by

I quit posting my career change stuff because it seemed so overwrought and self indulgent once I got the boot.  I haven’t decided if that stuff will see the light of day yet, but one part of an un-posted thread reared its head again two weeks ago.

When I first began career counseling, back in February on my own dime, I was immediately identified by my counselor as a Myers Briggs ENFJ type. That would be E for extroverted (shocking!), N for iNtuitive (more interested in the theoretical and possible than concrete reality); F for feeling (whether I go with my heart or my head when I make decisions; it’s  a close call but I tend to be ruled by the heart); and J for judging (as in I like everything neat and tidy and clear-cut. As in I alphabetize my spices. As in, I think I’ll stop now before I divulge too much.)

At the close of my initial getting-to-know-you session, my counselor told me she was shocked that someone with my type made it to the all but dissertation stage in graduate school. Despite all the books saying ENFJs are supposed to be college professors or members of the clergy, I was swimming upstream against my basic temperament. And heaven knows, by the time I discontinued my studies, I was pondering putting my head in an oven to end it all and had had at least one clinical paranoid episode.

Five months on, at my new counseling center (on the company’s dime), I’ve had a very similar experience. Their system is Brinkmann’s First Look, and there you are typed by color. I, alongside all the artists, poets, visionaries, and philosopher-carpenters out there, am Blue. Blue at home. Blue when I’m happy. Blue when I’m stressed. The only time I’m not blue is when I’m green at work, which basically means I toss in a little select sociability and actionable results—yellow things—to my essential blueness.

How this all can play out is amusing. In June, I took a seminar on interviewing. Two weeks ago, I went to test out my refined skills by sitting for a virtual interview with a computer. The night before, I looked over common questions, prepped my stories, and rehearsed my two-minute replies with Simon’s teeth-brushing timer. (This may be the only time it ever gets used!)

Then, on a hot and muggy Tuesday morning, I sat in front of a web-camera and tried to charm a hypothetical and badly dressed interviewer. And then, in an act that abdicated all pride, I sent my interview to one of the center’s coaches to be critiqued.

“You’re blue, right?” Ralph said to me by way of introduction.

“Sure am! Green at work, but otherwise blue as the sea.”

“Mmm Hmm. Watch.”

And that’s when he very nicely explained to me that 2/3 of each of my responses were right on the mark. I chose good stories, I set them up well, and I went through my sequence of actions very well. In fact, he told me that the first 2/3 of my responses were exemplary and would serve me well.

But then, when it was time for the big finish, I ended every story with some version of “and we worked it out” or “we came to agreement” or “we went on to publish a great book together”.  This, in the career coaching world, is the equivalent of “and they lived happily ever after.”

Every one of my business stories, even the most technical among them, read like a children’s book or folk song. And if the person interviewing me is similarly blue, this might just work out. But if they are not, and especially if they are trained at scoring behavioral interviews, I need to start quantifying stuff and put a little more yellow into my life.

The rule is 3 to 5 numbers per story/response. In any interview, I can give non-quantifiable answers to 20% of my questions, but those had better end up being Aesop’s Fables, examples of how I learned a Very Valuable Lesson on someone else’s dime. For practice, I’ve decided to start quantifying every part of my life.

The next time someone asks me how life as a stay-at-home mom is going, I’m going to respond thusly:

“It’s been great! Let me tell you about the three or four best things about it:  My house is so much cleaner that it would appraise for 10% more and sell on average 3 months faster than it would have 6 months ago. All the home-cooking has reduced our food budget by 40% and helped Matt lose 15 pounds in three months. The website I built for my son’s preschool has brought in 10% of the new students for next year. And despite losing 20% of our income, we are staying in budget month-to-month and have kept our retirement savings unchanged.”

I can do this, of course. It’s just a silly game. I can even admit that my stories sound better this way. But in my heart of hearts, I’m still blue. And all my happy stories will still end with “And they lived happily ever after.”

Posted in Career Change, Jessica | 1 Comment »

This Toy is Not a Toy

Jul 28th, 2010 by

One of the unintended consequences of Simon’s love of British kids shows is that he asks for quite a few toys that don’t exist, or at least don’t exist in the US for a reasonable price. Just two weeks ago we had several frustrating (for him) conversations about why I could not go out and by a jail to put Sly and Gobbo (characters in Noddy) into. I found Sly on eBay, but until I can round up a Gobbo, this wish will go unfulfilled. And I don’t even want to think about the shipping costs!

This week I got luckier. While watching Kipper, Simon became entranced by one of the character’s toy mouse. Forthwith, he demanded, and then pled, that we go to the store and buy Kipper’s toy mouse with wheels on it.

“Really?” I said. “You want a toy mouse with wheels on it?”

“I do! I do! I do!” he replied, mixing his TV imitations. (Noddy often says things like “I will! I will! I will!”)

“OK, buddy. Hop in the car.”

And so we drove to Target, headed directly to the “Cat supplies and toy” aisle, and found a perfect little toy mouse with wheels on it and ribbons for a tail for a grand total of $4.99.

I asked him if it’s what he wanted, but he was too busy squealing with joy to give an articulate reply. He joyfully clasped the (cat) toy all the while to check-out, excitedly told the (confused) clerk that we were getting “Kipper’s toy mouse with wheels on it”, and clutched his new rodent friend to his bosom all the way home.

Upon arrival, I immediately discovered that the toy rolled very fast indeed and that—suprisingly—my son was more into the toy than my cats. Perhaps at 78 and 84 in human years, they have simply put aside such childish things. Then I spotted some small text on the tag:

“Not intended for children.”

Ceci n'est pas une cat jouet

Says who? I’m going to assume they mean that in a not-tested-for-choking-hazard kind of way, and not in a made- entirely-of-lead-and-cadmium way.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

Diplomatic Relations

Jul 26th, 2010 by

Maybe I can get the car-seat thing right the third time?  It seems I’ve made two parenting errors where these safety devices are concerned, one by overestimating my child’s size and readiness and the other by underestimating the same.

Just before Simon turned one, we were planning a family road trip and were quite eager to face him forward in the car. The rule is 20 pounds and one year old before they can face forward. Our trip was scheduled for one week before Simon turned one. Three hundred and fifty-eight days was surely just as good as three hundred and sixty-five. Could just 7 teeny tiny little days really matter?

“Yes,” said my lawyer friend immediately. “If God forbid something happens, the first thing I would do if I were your insurance company, the other driver,  etc. would be to determine if you were using all safety materials according to spec. You would not be in compliance. And even aside from the legal angle, you’d never forgive yourself. Wait until he’s really one.”

She made a compelling case, and we waited several weeks after Simon turned one before graduating him from his infant car seat (since bequeathed to friends who had twins) to his Britax Diplomat. Of late, Matt has been complaining that the Diplomat is too small and that we need to get a booster. For ages, I’ve been demurring; Simon can get in himself, for one, and the sucker is rated for up to 40 pounds, for seconders. Simon is nowhere near 40 pounds! “Just make him get in himself,” I argued. “We’re good.”

Except we weren’t. I began looking at boosters for our second car, a pure luxury item, when I happened upon the specs for the Diplomat. And there before my eyes was a truth I had not yet considered: The seat is rated for children up to 40 pounds (See, I was right!) and 40 inches tall (What! There was a height cut-off?).  I’m pretty sure Simon is 40.5 inches, if not a full 41. And really, the length of leg spilling over the seat and the awkward set of the shoulder straps should have alerted me ages ago, but I am disinclined to consider upper height limits. Since when have I been to tall for anything, after all?

I’ll be ordering our new Recardo Vivo booster seat today. And not a day too soon, either. Because a week from Thursday, my friend Gabriel’s wife and daughter arrive from Khartoum. Little Agotich just was 18 months old and will need a seat for her ride home from the airport and thereafter.  How lovely and serendipitous (a theme of late, no?), that this child, whose arrival I have been anticipating for nearly a year now and whose welcome party I have begun planning, should start her new life in America just as I was about to consign another bulky item to my attic of undo attachment.

The Diplomat is dead. Long live the Diplomat.

Posted in Jessica, Little Boy | No Comments »

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