Motherhood is Not for Wimps

It won’t surprise longtime readers that I have this little tiny terror of falling when I’m pregnant. I had not anticipated what it would be like to be walking around six months pregnant in ice and snow with two small children.

I am in constant fear of falling, of taking one or three kids down with me. I wear boots everywhere, all the time, but it’s not enough.

Then today, someone showed me these. I went right out and bought a pair for $30 at REI.

They are so freaking amazing, I wanted all of you to know.

Seriously, it’s like putting chains on your boots. I’m no longer in a shakey panic coming down the driveway. These jobbies just grip the heck out of the packed snow and ice.

The Doodle has a fine tradition of claiming the New Year for herself.

She was baptized on New Year’s day. The following year she celebrated her anniversary by suffering third degree burns over her head and face.

This year she fell backward down a flight of stairs.

I’ve been waiting for it to happen ever since we moved into this house. There’s almost no hallway on our teeny second floor, just a little landing with doorways for two bedrooms and a bathroom. We were talking in the bathroom doorway, Mare, Ren and I. Ren was gesturing and walking backward. I saw it coming, shot a hand out, but it was too late.

She was rolling, bang, bang, bang down 15 steep hardwood stairs. A sick thud and then silence.

Mare started screaming.

Remember you’re pregnant, don’t fall and hurt the other one. Don’t pick her up. Neck injury: in-line stabilization, look for bleeding in the ears, nose …

“Mary stop screaming. Mary stop screaming.”

“I can’t Momma I can’t is Renny dead is she dead?”

“She’s not dead. Stop screaming. You can do that after she’s okay. Right now I need you to go get a blanket. Go now.”

Ren was flat on her back, blinking up at the ceiling. No blood. She saw me and let out a shriek.

“Okay, Baby, you’re all right. Just lie here for second.” Best bet is to call 911 and let them backboard her. Man, I’d rather not put her through that if we don’t have to.

She was trying to sit up.

“Okay, babe, we’re not going to sit up just yet. First I need to know what hurts?”

“My leg!” she shrieked. I took a peek, horrified I would see a bone sticking out. Nothing but a scrape, the kind you would see after a playground fall. Mare brought the blanket, we tucked it around her, and sat for a minute. Then I put my hands on her feet, and squeezed lightly. Then her calves, her knees, her thighs, her hips.

“Does anything hurt?” I asked.

“My leg!” she repeated. I squeezed it, more firmly, and she didn’t react. I got to her shoulders, her chin, her neck. She never winced.

The little shit was completely fine.

“Okay, Ren, do you want to try to get yourself up?” I asked. She shrugged and got up and minutes later we were on the couch. She had an ice pack on her head and I had a phone to my ear.

“Can I have a band aid?” Ren asked.

“Renny,” Mare started. “If we give you a band aid, I am afraid the doctor can’t look at it. How about a scarf?”

Oh, yeah, ’cause this situation makes so much sense.

I was sure Dr. Sweetheart’s hold music was threatening to give me a psychotic episode. Finally –

“Family Medical Practice, can you hold?”

“No, no, look, I really can’ –”

“It’ll just be a minute, I have a doctor standing in front of me, just wait.”

A few more long minutes.

“Hi, I’m back, how can I help you?”

“I have a 3 year-old who has just fallen down a flight of stairs.” About, oh, say, thirty-freaking-minutes-and-a-techno-Beethoven ago.

“Oh, you have to take her to the pediatric ER.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, this happened to my kid a while ago. It’s horrible, you have to hold her down for the MRI and she’ll scream. It’s really bad.”

I. Don’t know what to say.

“… My kid has a speech delay and it was really awful, she spoke her first sentence ever that day, never had before. She said, ‘I want to go home, now.’”

Right, great, thanks. Hey, could I speak to someone with, I dunno a medical opinion?

“I’d rather skip the ER if at all possible. She doesn’t seem hurt. Could I maybe speak to a doctor about my options?”

“Oh, let me see if anyone is around.” Yeah, yeah, hey why don’t you do that??

Ohmagawd we’re back to Techno Bethoven.

“Momma, I o’tay,” Ren said, patting my arm comfortingly. “It’s no big deal.”

The woman was back on the line.

“Dr. Sweetheart is here. He wants to know if she lost conciousness?”

“No –” Now I’m all excited to show off. I’ve been a freaking superhero in the last 30 minutes and it’s about time someone over the age of six witnessed it. “Pupils are identical, no bleeding from her head, nose or mouth. She is sitting up and appears alert and oriented. There is a bruise on the front of her head. I’ve got ice on it and it hasn’t gotten any bigger in the last twenty minutes. I can’t find a bruise on the back of her head at all, and she’s not showing any pain when I touch her head and neck.”

I could hear her reporting it back to him, and hear him say, “They don’t have to go if she doesn’t want to.”

“He says you don’t have to go,” the woman said.

“Okay,” I said.

“The important thing,” she continued, “is to make as little fuss out of the whole thing as possible.”

Am I on camera?

“Okay, right, thanks,” I said.

“I o’tay, Momma,” Ren repeated. “Can I have some ice cream?”

We play this game at family dinner sometimes. We go around the table and ask, “What was the best part of today? What was the hardest part?”

This morning, over saussage biscuits and strawberries, we asked the question for the entire year.

What was the best?

“Christmas,” Mare said.

“Christmas,” Ren agreed.

“What about horse shows? And the Sister Party? Our trip to Colorado?”

“Christmas,” they repeated.

“And the hardest time?” I asked.

“Can’t think of one,” Mare said. (Suck eggs, Pollyanna.)

“Doodle?”

“Cleaning my room dis morning. Dat was terrible.” (Deep breaths, Sandra Burnhardt.)

“What about you, Momma?”

“Oh, well, the hardest. That’s easy. Being so sick.” I was painting this room when it started. A sunshine yellow that makes our farmhouse living room less cave-like. Every time I look at the walls, where the paint stops up at the tops, I remember how bad it hurt. I thought it was dehydration, or just exhuastion. I took a break and drove the kids for bagels. I had to turn around halfway there. I dragged myself back into the house and passed out on the kitchen floor. The next day I was in the hospital.

“That was definitely the hardest,” I said.

“And the best?”

You girls. Everything to do with beautiful, funny, smart, generous crazy you.

“Oh, well, I loved the horse shows.” Eating bagels in the Loser Cruiser, waiting for the rain to stop. “Loved the ballet recital and High School Musical.” The way Mare’s become such a long, lean dancer-girl. “And getting our new little house all set up.” Framing everything, getting it on the walls, how it’s suddenly so ours. Working so damned hard to pay that mortgage. “And then there was that phone call from Dr. Sweetheart. ‘Guess what …?’ he said. ‘There’s a baby in your tummy!’!”

They both giggled and cheered.

“And I said … ‘NO! NO WAY!’ — And then there was the visit to Dr. Brainy. Oh that was great. When he said, ‘Guess what? Baby has a beautiful brain, and a spine, and a belly and hands and feet! And boy, God must think you make great girls ’cause he gave you another one!‘”

Here they lost their tiny minds with happy, squealing and clapping their hands. And right then and there I got all sentimental about New Year’s.

Not the year that has passed, but the one that’s coming. All the ones, God willing, that are coming.

Your little family is waiting for you, Baby Girl. Take your time. But wait’ll you see how loud we cheer when you arrive.

I find it hard to be sentimental about New Year’s. Some years are good, some are bad. Most are both. They fall away behind us and if we are smart we let them go and look to the next.

We are watching Harry Potter in front of a roaring fire. The snow has come down hard all day. I got out for groceries.

My only resolution is that from now on, this will be known as the Day of Three Pizzas.

Clockwise from bottom: Roasted artichoke parmesan; caramelized onion and chevre; Caprese (in honor of Nini– come here some time, I promise to rock Olive Garden’s tushie).

I wish you all love, shelter and peace tonight and in the coming year.

With love, from Karin, El and me.

We are crowding into an elevator with a proper-looking couple in their fifties. My girls are decked out in full regalia — their hair crimped and colored with the hair kits Santa brought, wearing the dresses Auntie sent, with just a dash of sparkly gloss shimmering on their lips.

“Guess what?” Ren says to the couple– as she will to anyone who will listen these days — “Momma has a baby in her tummy! A girl!!”

We grin and rub my belly.

“Is it really three girls?” the man asks Cute Husband.

“Yep,” Cute Husband laughs.

“Poor guy,” the man says. “Are you going to try again? For a son?”

At this point, I consider asking this man about his prostate, his investment portfolio, the status of his marriage to the dour looking woman to his right.

“Just wait until they get married,” the man continues, “and you have to pay for three weddings. Tell them they have to elope.” The door opens, and the couple starts to leave.

“Yeah, yeah,” Cute Husband nods enthusiastically as they step off the elevator. “Go fuck yourself.”

He whispers it under his breath.

At least, I think that was his plan. But he has said the loud part quiet, and the quiet part loud, and in that split second before the elevator door closes, I am pretty sure they heard him.

The F-bomb. It lingers in the air.

We are silent, Mare and Ren blinking at him for a few long seconds.

“I think he heard you,” I say finally.

“Teach him to shut his damn mouth,” Cute Husband replies. “Spouting off that kind of ignorance in front of my girls. Being the Dad of girls is the best thing anybody could ever ask for.”

The girls nod their agreement, the door opens, and they step out.

I kiss their father. The way you kiss a man when someone asks you if you’d marry him all over again, and that’s your answer.

It all began Christmas Eve in 1956, when a Sears Roebuck & Co in Colorado Springs, Colorado ran an advertisement in the local newspaper for a hotline for kids to talk to Santa. Due to a misprint, the phone number printed in the paper was actually for the Continental Air Defense Commander-in-Chief’s hotline.

Imagine that? You’re the big guy in charge of the air defense of North America on Christmas Eve, manning a hotline to the President of the United States. And it rings. Lots of times. With calls from kids wanting to talk to Santa.

The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, responded with remarkable ingenuity — rather than turn the children away, he gave them radar-provided updates on Santa’s location.

A tradition was born. Like all traditions, it has evolved over time. Today, Santa is tracked by the American/Canadian North American Air Defense (NORAD). A website provides regular worldwide updates in seven languages, and children from all over the world can track Santa’s progress over the course of Christmas Eve day. NORAD also has a hotline staffed by U.S. Air Force personnel who provide detailed tracking information by phone. They respond to kids with such cool professionalism that you’d swear this was a matter of national security.

Once Santa has crossed the Atlantic, Canadian NORAD fighter pilots in CF-18’s intercept and welcome Santa to North America. In United States airspace, American NORAD fighter pilots take over in F-15’s or F-18’s. Squadron commanders give interviews to media about the flight, with pilots confirming visual contact with Santa.

For one night, weapons of war and defense for a continent are transformed intruments of celebration for the world.

Anywhere you are in the world, your kids can call NORAD for an update on Santa’s progress. 1 (877) HI NORAD (1 877 446-6723). From outside the U.S. 1 (719) 556-5211.

You can also track Santa all day on the website: http://www.noradsanta.org/

“I can’t Momma, I’m too nervous, I can’t.”

“Mare they don’t want to talk to me! This is Santa, this is kids’s stuff.”

“Momma, I can’t!”

“Oh, give it to me,” Ren grabs the phone and listens.

“NORAD Santa Tracking Center, this is Lt. Phillips speaking.”

“Hi,” Ren says. “This is Karenna. We trying to track Santa on Momma’s computer.”

“Are you having any luck?”

“Yeah, but we want to know, when Santa gonna be at our house?”

“In BOSTON,” I say loudly in the background. I hear the Leuitenant giggle.

“Santa is currently over Kowloon, Hong Kong. Our data shows that Santa will be expected in the Boston area between 10:00 and 11:00 tonight.”

“O’tay,” Doodle says, nodding.

“But … Santa will not start deliveries until children are asleep,” Lt. Phillips continues in a firm voice.

“Huh?” Ren asks.

“Asleep,” the Lieutenant says. “You have to be asleep.”

“Oh, maaaaan!” she says. Another giggle from proper NORAD command lady.

“Say ‘thank you,’” I prompt.

“Thank you, and Merry Christmas. And tell Santa I hope I love him,” Ren says.

“Will do,” the Lieutenant says.

“Momma, you got it wrong,” Mare says.

I am mid-dramatic reading of THE Santa note to Miss Sunbeam.

“I did?” (You can hardly blame me. Chick writes like a 6 year-old.)

“Yes, here, at the end. It doesn’t say, ‘We will ask our mother if you do not know what to do.’ It says, ‘We will ask our mother. And if you don’t, you know what we’ll do.’”

“Oh.”

Are you threatening Santa?

“Ren? Is that what you said, Baby?”

Working away at her Christmas activity coloring book, Doodle nods.

“Yeah.”

“Well … what? What will you do, Roodley?”

“Oh,” she says, “Santa knows.”

My daughters are obsessed with the idea of getting a ride on Santa’s sleigh.

“Baby, Santa can’t do it for you because Santa can’t do it for everyone,” I say.

“Would you let me, if Santa offered?” Mare asks.

“Of course I would.”

“We haven’ a baby!” Ren says to the random person at the bagel shop. “A girl! Which means I am two things, a big sister and a little sister.”

“Wow. How old is she?” the person asks me. But Ren is ready for this, we’ve trained her.

“I’m three!” she says. “And I’m a dia-lobical genuis! Do you know what that means? It means I am very very smart!”

“Momma, what does it really mean that Ren is a dia-lobical genuis?”

“It means that she’s very smart at certain things. One of her talents is that she’s really good at getting people to do what she wants without their even realizing it. It’s a nice talent, but it will make her a mean person if Daddy and I don’t help her follow some rules.”

“You mean like the way she can always get people to give her stuff in stores and stuff?”

“Yes. Just like that. People don’t even realize that she had that in mind all along. It’s very funny and cute, but it’s also a little evil.”

“I don’t do that.”

“No. You have other talents. When it comes to getting things you want you are very polite and direct, which also works a lot of the time. But Ren often gets what she wants by making people think it was their idea. And that’s different.”

This morning the girls spent a great deal of time whispering at the play table before finally producing a note to Santa.

Mare wrote it out, but explained to me that she was only the author of the introduction. The rest was a transcription from Ren.

Dear Santa,

(Mare’s intro) My sister is a dia-lobical genuis so please listen to what she has to say.

(This is Ren’s big part.) I hope I love you Santa, me and my sister want to travel with you. We will ask our mother if you do not know what to do.

(Signed) Mare and Ren

For anyone not following the Twitter. While we were waiting in line to have pictures taken with Santa, I asked Ren what she will say if Santa asked her what she wants for Christmas. Her response, wide-eyed, serious, with a hint of indignation: “What do you mean ‘what do I want?’ — I put it in da letter to ya and I mailed it. You fahgot?”

I’ve had a couple of requests to repost this entry from last year.

– EBS

How I Came to Believe In Santa
Posted by DaMomma
December 7, 2007

It has become fashionable for parents not to encourage their children’s belief in Santa. Call me hip, call me cutting edge: I grew up not Believing.

My Dad was literal and honest with us about everything, and felt that Santa was a cruel joke to play on kids. I was in my teens before I realized there were people who actually Believed in Santa.

I wrote a paper for a college theology class in which I argued that God existed because people believed in him. I called it, “Yes Virginia, there is a God.” I got an A.

I grew up literal and honest about everything.

“Don’t you feel badly tricking them?” I asked Emily when Mary was finally old enough that some sort of Santa Policy had to be made. Cute Husband desperately wanted her to Believe and I was asking mothers I respected for advice.

“Oh, I think if I felt like I were tricking them I would feel badly,” Emily said.

(”Yeah, but, you’re telling them a fat guy in a red suit pops down their chimny and drops off a bunch of presents. I mean. Come on.”)

“Here’s the thing –” she said. “After it’s all done, after I’ve wrapped everything, set it up and I stand there looking at it before I stagger to bed … I Believe.”

Right, she’s Believing away while she’s chomping on cookies her kids made for the fat guy.

I totally understand how my Jewish friends shake their heads in perplexity at the tradition of buying piles of presents for kids and pretending someone else — some stranger with an eating disorder and a questionable relationship with elves — brought them down the chimney.

The Hannukah tradition is so much more sensible. Family. Brings presents. Happy Hannukah.

And then one Christmas my friend Angela told me a story of when she was an elementary school teacher in Stafford, Virginia. Every Christmas Angela and her co-workers identified families who might be having trouble making Christmas happen, pooled their money and helped to buy presents for them.

Angela was coming down the hallway on the last day of school when she found a little girl crying on the steps.

“Santa’s not coming to our house this year,” she said. “My mother says it’s because we don’t have money, but I know it’s because I wasn’t a good girl.”

The little girl wasn’t one of the children Angela and her friends had identified, but her situation turned out to easily be the worst. The girl and her brother, mother and grandmother were struggling to survive, much less have Christmas.

Angela called her husband, a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant stationed in Okinawa, Japan.

“I feel so bad,” she told him. “What do we do?”

“Get the family’s name and address,” he told her. “And the ages of everyone in the house. I’ll see what I can do.”

From Japan, Angela’s husband called back to the Marine Corps base at Quantico. The following afternoon, Christmas Eve day, the little girl from Angela’s school was playing in her house when there was a knock at the door. Her mother opened it to find two young Marines in dress blue uniform.

While her mother stared in astonishment, the Marines began to move boxes of things into the house — food, gifts for everyone, and a tree.

The 20 year-old Corporal — stationed away from his own family (he would have dinner at Angela’s the following night) — stopped to speak to the little girl.

“Santa was worried he might not make it to your house this year,” he said. “So he called in the Marines and asked us to help out. He said to tell you you were a very good little girl and he was proud of you.”

“That’s Santa,” Angela said simply. How could anyone not Believe after that?

“Okay, girls, pick something awesome. Pick something great,” I say at the mall toy store. We’ve done it every year, even years when we couldn’t buy anything for our own children and had to rely on family to do it for us.

Because even in those years, we knew we had it good.

“It has to be good,” I say. Something you really want for yourself — something that will hurt a little to give up. Mare choses an exquisitely-dressed ballerina Barbie. Renny, a Dora doll. I pay and walk them over to the Marine in dress blues at the Toys for Tots table.

“Okay. Please give them to the Lance Corporal.”

They turn them over — Renny a little less than graciously. But it’s Mare who really hesitates as she passes that ballerina doll over the counter.

“You help Santa, right?” Mare asks, dark blue gaze fixed on the young Lance Corporal.

“Sure do,” he says, eyes flickering to me. I nod.

“Will you tell the girl who gets this: ‘Merry Christmas from Mary?’ — And I hope she has a good Christmas and that I am sorry her family doesn’t have enough money?”

“Baby,” I say before he can answer. “He can’t do that. Santa will give this to parents who can’t afford gifts for their children, and they will give it to their little girl. It’s not from you. It’s from Santa.”

You have to give it up for zero reward. You can think of that girl in your heart, but you can’t ever ask her to thank you. After all, you didn’t really do anything except grow up privileged enough to be able to do this.

I never say “Him” when I talk about Santa. I don’t answer questions about sleighs or reindeer — I read the girls the stories not as literal truths, but as allegories of the magic that really does exist.

I get what Emily meant.

Christmas Eve when it’s all done and I look at the lights and the quiet peace of joy and comfort we can provide, I will truly in my heart Believe. When my kids squeal and open presents in the predawn living room I’ll be thinking of that Dora doll and the ballerina, and hoping those kids Believe, too.