Archive for the 'Conversing With the Rain' Category

Why I Don’t Write About My Mother

You’ve asked.  Lots of you have asked.  More lately, and I’m not sure why.  Maybe because it is such an obvious gap in the narrative.  Ducky, Gran,  that Grand Man, the aunts, the brother.  But never my mother.

And the answer is:  because I don’t feel like it.  Maybe some day I will, but not today.

What I will tell you is that all parenting — good and bad – is a reaction, good and bad, to the way we were parented.  And that one day a little girl decided the one thing she would never ever be was Mom.  And she fought and worked and grew up to be DaMomma, and that pleases her greatly, and the joy she has in it she shares as widely as she can.

My compassion, my desire for privacy, my stage of life will allow no more discussion than that.

Closed Doors and the Blessing of Being Over-Burdened

The woman sitting next to me in the master’s fiction course was stressed out.  We were all stressed out.

The program was merciless, cut throat, and involved sitting in a circle discussing in great detail what was wrong with each other’s writing.  I hadn’t even submitted work, yet, and I was miserable.

 ”I stared at that sentence until 2 a.m.,” the woman said.  “The grammar was just wrong and I couldn’t sleep thinking about it because I knew he was going to be all over me about it.”

“I just have so much to do before I even get here,” I said.  It popped out of my mouth and I regretted it instantly.   Never in my life have I felt quite as uncool as I did being a mini-van driving mother of two in a class full of young single literary women.

“Is it really that different than any of the rest of us who have lives outside this class?” the girl replied. 

“No.  Sorry, I’m just tired,” I said.

Because it’s rude to say, “Sweetheart, you just don’t get it.” 

She had bills to pay and floors to sweep, boyfriend problems and worries about the future.  Plenty of pressure, to be sure.  But it wasn’t quite the same as what I was experiencing.

Before I could get in the car to come to class I had to make dinner for five people, lay out pajamas and pick up the living room.   Doing my homework cost me $12 an hour in child care.  Before I put one penny toward that, I had to teach two undergraduate courses just to meet my financial obligations to our household. 

I was the only student who had to factor a mortgage and day care into my financial aid assessment, who felt like every hour in the classroom was taking resouces away from my kids.  I was the only one planning a fairy princess party for 17 the weekend before her paper was due.

Draped over all of this was the fog of drugs I was taking to control the violent nausea of the first trimester of a pregnancy I was keeping secret —  discretely excusing myself from the discussion to pee or vomit or whatever.

The night before we were to workshop my material, the professor e-mailed to say it was not going to go well for me.  My work was inadequate and he intended to be very hard on me in class the next day.  He just wanted me to know what to expect.

I replied with a request to withdraw from the program. 

I was not the person I was trying to be.  I could not return to a life when I could stay up until 2 a.m. glorying in grammatical art.  I could not make the money we needed by working in a coffee shop.  I could not care about the coursework the way I was supposed to because my worries included whether my kid’s night terrors were related to the number of hours she was spending in day care.

I was staring at a closed door.  A door I had closed long ago.

Maybe if the program had been different — less pressure and negativity, more nurture and encouragement.  Maybe if our financial position had been better and the stakes had not felt quite so high, if I had not had to work two jobs while racking up more debt.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Coming home after signing the withdrawal paperwork I felt immense relief, regret, sadness.  I had gotten a full refund.  The loans were gone forever, thank God.  I stood at the kitchen eating chocolate cake, looking down at my growing belly, contemplating the fact that if I had been ten years younger, I would have stuck it out, no matter what.  I would have listened in  tortured silence, feeling stupid while my work was ridiculed and discarded — thinking I deserved it.  I would have refused to quit and I would have assumed a lot of debt doing it.

A year later, Schmoopy is very Schmoopily, and way better than any nasty ole MFA.  I have been grateful many times that I was not trying to complete a degree while caring for a sick child and earning a living.  I would never have made it.

As to the writing part?  Well, I am reminding myself every day that I don’t have to be everything I will ever be,  just who I am right now.   Every life has its sadnesses, its closed doors. 

And who knows? Maybe some day I’ll be the lady in the MFA class, bitching about how hard this is to do on a retiree’s income. 

But I hope not.  I hope I’m the lady writing about how she taught herself, did it between loads of laundry and paying freelance gigs, and how it is okay that it took twenty years because she got there in the end.

Along with her husband and three beautiful children.

Snowstorm, Part II

I come out of the meeting to discover that it is 10 p.m. and snow is falling hard enough to weigh down my eye lashes.

The parking lot is un-plowed, so when I press down on the Loser Cruiser’s accelerator, I am curious to see what I’ve got for torque. I have backed the car in to the space — I’m a New England girl, I can smell snow and when I do, I park nose-out. I learned to drive on front-wheel transmissions, not that anyone knows what that means any more.

I ease out on to the main road, fish-tailing a little, but not bad. The conditions are worse than they look, though, and I bring my speed down to under 20.

Take it easy, no rush, low and slow.

When I drive like this, I always think of that Grand Man. In his youth he was a pilot, trained by an instructor who would blow cigar smoke up in his face during instrument approaches.

“Boy, if you could land in those conditions, you could land in anything,” he used to tell me. He taught me to practice my acceleration, to shift by the sound of the gears — even how to double-clutch like a race car driver.

My headlights make a clean triangle into the block of snow I’m driving through. On either side, darkness.

It occurs to me that I have not been this alone in a very long time.

I am glad the children are not with me. Ahead of me, in our little house, they are in their beds. Ren and Mare are probably in the bottom bunk together –they have a habit of snuggling when a storm powers the drafts that run through the Tilty Floored Farm House.

Don’t get cocky, just ’cause they’re not in the car, their mother is in the car and they need you to come home — it is the Grand Man’s voice that scolds me when I drive. Check your speed, check your rear, check your sides, feel for a skid, be ready.

It is really dark now — I can’t see the lines on the road, I check my sides to be sure I’m where I need to be, there are no treads ahead of me and I know I am hydroplaning.

I used to be this alone all the time.

I am not just their mother. I am a daughter. I am a wife. I am the granddaughter Ducky so fiercely protected, my brother’s sister, and the teacher my students count on to pass on all that was taught to me.

With my children not in the car, I realize its cargo is still precious. There is plenty in me, yet.

And then I am home.

The driveway is a narrow target between two trees. It drops suddenly over a little lip. I reverse, aim, press the gas, release, ease the Loser Cruiser into its spot. I make sure the Crappy Honda will be able to get around me in the morning, then I turn the key and set the brake.

In the kitchen I stomp my bare feet while my tea steeps. I put away the half-eaten biscuit I’m pretty sure Cute Husband must have given to Ren after she didn’t eat her pasta.

I am halfway up the stairs with my mug when I hear a tiny, breathy:

“Hi! MAMA!”

It’s coming from my bedroom. A pair of chocolate eyes in a little fuzzy baby bird head peeks out from the blankets. Her Daddy, beside her, is snoring. She kicks her feet in joy, pulls herself out of his arms and over to my side. I tuck in, nurse, rub her back.

She is mine, and I am hers. And she is hers, and I am mine.

A Snowstorm

The shriek of the phone shattered the silence of the bedroom.  It was 3 a.m., I was nursing Eden, and by the second ring, my hands were shaking. 

What horrible news was on the other end of the line? 

Nothing but a dialtone. Before I could hang up, a bright flash from the streetside window.  Another one.  Cute Husband was up, peering out into the darkness and falling snow.  Another flash, followed by the ringing phone, a dialtone.

And then silence.  No hum from the furnace, no blue glow from the clock.

Another flash and I saw it — balls of fire rolling down the electrical wires toward the house.

“Sounds like a blown transformer,” the police dispatcher told me.  “Power company’s on it, and we’ll send the fire department to check your house.”

About three minutes later, the sound of a plow.  Just behind it, two fire trucks throwing warm red light into the darkness.   A handful of heavy-coated firefighters deployed from the truck. They checked our house, and the neighbors’ — shoveled the way for the electric company trucks to get to the pole.

Our house grew colder.  I put extra blankets on Mare and Ren, tucked Eden between Cute Husband and me, put a hat on her.

We played cards on the iPhone in the darkness, the lights from the fire trucks flickering against the walls.  Our baby sat smiling between us, cooing and gnawing on her fist.

An hour later and the furnace hummed to life, the clock flashed blue. A fire fighter knocked to tell us all was well, and went back out into the darkness in the falling snow.

What a thing it is to know that help will come.

Time and a Sarcophagus

 

The great irony of the Egyptian pharaohs is that they wanted to live forever. 

I consider how far I have come — that I have been a mother for eight years, a blogger for five, married for almost 12.  And it all seems like such a dizzying quantity of time:  how fast it has gone!  

And then I walked in to the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s exhibit The Secrets of Tomb 10A.   The exhibit contains the artifacts collected from the tomb of Governor and Lady Djehutynakht of an ancient Egyptian province in the countryside.

The artifacts there were made, worn, used by people who lived and died 4,000 years ago.   It took Western minds 200 years of concerted effort to be able to read the hieroglyphs that mark the walls and caskets — and now we can.  

Messages of the past, not so different from the thoughts of the present.  They write of dreams and their guesses at the answers to the mystery of existence. 

In the middle of the exhibit, a skull.  The mummified head of either Governor or Lady Djehutynakht –nobody knows.  But 4,000 years ago, it was a cherished person.  Someone’s child, someone’s parent.  

Today it is an eerie whisper of the past, transported here to Boston where people traipse through and look at it.  

Governor and Lady Djehutynakht entombed themselves so that they could live forever.  And in a way, they have.  

DaMomma.com Sponsors Haiti Surgical Team

DaMomma.com Sponsors Haiti Surgical Team


On December 26th, 1944 my Graddad answered a call for volunteers to provide surgical help to 1,000 wounded, trapped in Bastogne. He was dropped into a combat zone by glider, carrying his own medical supplies. He operated for two straight days while bombs went off around him. He was asked many times over the years what had posessed him to vounteer for such a hopeless, dangerous mission. He always said, “Because they needed help.”

In that spirit I am so pleased to support the efforts of a young doctor heading into Haiti with his surgical team on Monday. His sister is a reader of this blog — and a longtime friend of mine — and has asked my support. I am so honored to be able to give it.

Dr. Elie and his wife Abby’s message speaks to what my Granddad charged of me — if you can help, you must.

“Dear Family and Friends,

As Jews, we are supposed to take action when fellow human beings are in distress. As a doctor, the phrase: ‘לא תעמוד על דם רעך You shall not stand idly by your brothers blood’ has an added meaning and responsibility that I am privileged to be a part of. We have just found out that Elie is going to be joining a surgical team in Haiti starting this monday morning for 4 to 5 days. It is being sponsored by his hospital, Holy Cross in Fort Lauderdale and will include ER docs, Anesthesiologists, Surgeons (I will be 1 out of 2), and Critical care specialists. While they will be only able to take in what they carry on their backs, our hope is to have some amount of medicines and surgical tools/supplies that will be directly used by the team on the ground. Elie will be able to obtain medications, such as basic antibiotics, pain medicines, water purifying tablets, lidocaine, etc… at cost and is looking to raise money between now and the trip to be
able to purchase as much of these vital and life-saving medicines as he can carry.

Thank you,
Elie and Abby”

Let’s make sure Dr. Elie is carrying all he can carry. Donations sent through PayPal will translate directly into surgical supplies and drugs purchased at cost. Alternatively, if you want to pledge here and send a check I can provide an address.

Thank you all so much, and thanks to Shana for giving us the opportunity to be of real use. My prayers and best wishes go with Dr. Elie and his team, that they may help as many people as possible.

DaMomma.com Sponsors Haiti Surgical Team


A Year of Joy, and Fear, and Gratitude

January

… brought us a niece and a sister-in-law, and we named the baby.

February

Mare and I went shopping for the baby.

March

We had a Festivus St. Patrickus, and readers offered their suggestions for delivery music for the iPod.

April

Our last day as We Four

 

Sweet Schmoopy

Schmoopy totally had my back with the angry pediatrician.

May

 I got my life back with Tootsie Rolls , we saw Dr. Button every day and I turned 34

June

Finally, I was overwhelmed by fear andCute Husband and I escaped with our baby .

July

I marked Ducky’s 100th birthday by making Mare a duck suit.  I missed the trip to Syracuse and made a promise on Clover Hill.   

August

More tests for Schmoopy, and my first good night’s sleep in four months.  The grill caught fire and Cute Husband narrowly escaped with his life.

September

Eden turned a corner, I took up Zumba and accidentally gave a woman in the Starbuck’s line the finger.  While talking on my cell phone.

Schmoopy started to improve. And her eyes decided on brown.

 October

 Ren increased her vocabulary and I clothed my household in crimson.

November

I wrote a note to the women who find my site by Googling “not cut out for motherhood,” and I learned a lot when Eden rolled off the pink settee.

 December

There was.  A.  Flying-freaking-squirrel.  In the living room.

It was a year of joy and terror, of the fullness of motherhood and the starkness of life.  In the end, it is a year of gratitude: three beautiful girls, whole and safe.  A Tilty-Floored Farmhouse, warm against a year’s first and last snows.

My thanks to you all for your readership, your humor, your devotion to La Casa Loony Tunes.  My very best wishes to you  and yours for a healthy, full-of-promise New Year.

How I Gave Eden Life Twice

I remember the first time my milk came in.  It was 3:30 in the morning, about four days after Mare was born.  I hated nursing.  It hurt.  All I wanted was to go to bed for a week to recover from what had happened to me.  Instead, I was in a rocking chair, bare to the waist, holding a squirming infant against my chest, wincing as she repeatedly kicked my incision. 

And then it happened. A rush.  A slight burning.  A trickling  sensation down my arm.  It was milk, spilling from me.  On the other side, Mare snorted, burrowed, drank deeply.  I switched sides, she drank again until she fell into a contented sleep with milk on her lip.  She slept four hours after that, and I did, too.

I nursed her for fourteen months.  I nursed Ren for eighteen.  

I was a devoted breastfeeder, but I also learned a leeriness for the militantly pro-breastfeeders.  I had seen too many women suffer at the hands of callous lactation consultants, had watched too many first months of life lost to pursuing something that made the mother miserable.

Yes, breast is best if you can stand it.  If you can’t stand it, happy mother and child are best.  Plenty of babies are never breastfed (yours truly included) and grow into perfectly lovely human beings.

But I address this post to prospective mothers, to the ones considering giving it a try:

My most recent baby, Eden started to lose weight in the hospital, just like all my babies did.  My milk wasn’t even in — at 24 hours postpartum, it wasn’t supposed to be — and they started with the pressure to give formula.  Initially it was polite.  But by day two, Eden had lost too much weight by their chart, and the pressure was really on.

“One bottle won’t affect nursing,” they said.  “She is losing too much weight, just give her a few extra calories.”

The maternity ward pediatrician made me feel bad about myself.  Clearly, I didn’t have enough milk, she said.  I pointed to pictures of Mare and Ren and explained that I had successfully nursed them both in to toddlerhood.  What did she think had changed in three years?

She said it didn’t matter, that I needed to let go of my ego,  do what was right for the baby and give her a bottle. It won’t affect nursing, she swore.  I wanted to ask her how many babies she had personally breastfed. 

In my experience, a bottle in the early weeks is the first brick on the path to giving up nursing.  The bottle fills baby’s tummy, so baby sleeps longer than normal and wakes very hungry.  Momma has slept too long, too, and has missed a breastfeeding, so her milk is declining.   Hungry baby isn’t satisfied, and Momma caves and gives another bottle and another breastfeeding is missed.  Supply goes down, baby sleeps longer.  Nursing is never really established after that. 

I made that mistake with Mare, caught it before my milk disappeared and spent a miserable two days listening to her scream while I insisted she try at the breast.  I did not give her another bottle for many months.

I wasn’t going to give Eden one now.  I assigned a family member to stay with the baby to make sure no one gave her a bottle.  The nurses glared at me, at Emily, at Sunbeam, as our tiny baby was wheeled down the corridor gazing up at her Person in Trace.

The staff became so hostile that I checked out  just 48 hours after a brutal 2-hour Caesarean delivery.  I was afraid that if Eden got any skinnier they would refuse to release her to me.  Without my consent, the maternity ward pediatrician called Dr. Button to tattle on me.

He made me promise to see him  before she was a week old, and then he gave his consent to my release from the hospital.

When we got home, Eden developed jaundice.  We went to urgent care every day for a week, where a new and different pediatrician lectured me each time.

Play it safe and give formula, she’s too skinny and that’s the bottom line, they said.   How much was I  nursing?  How much I was pumping?  -they never actually accused me of lying, but the aggresiveness and criticism made me dread the doctor’s appointments.   I made the mistake of admitting to one that Eden slept in our bed — next to her sister — and got the Co-Sleeping Lecture, too.

 If Eden had been my first, I would have stopped nursing her.  I would have crawled into a tiny hole and stayed there.

Dr. Button changed everything.   He agreed to exclusive breastfeeding if I agreed to be seen every single day.  I did.  Our days developed into a routine:  nursing every two hours all night long.  Get up and get the bigs dressed for school, take Eden to the doctor, get the kids from school, make dinner, play for a bit, back to bed, up for school and doctor.

Eden had been born weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces.  At six weeks old she was just a hair over 8 pounds.  Dr. Button finally insisted that she be offered a bottle.  But only, he said, after taking a full breastfeeding.   She never took more than a half ounce or so, and didn’t gain more weight.  We were allowed to stop offering a week later, and returned to exclusive breastfeeding.

It wasn’t the milk.

Children’s Hospital, blood work, tests, Dr. Google, nightmares, tiny baby in my arms shrinking instead of growing.  I nursed her, I rubbed her back, I stayed calm and carried on.

At five months we had a confirmed diagnosis:  Eden had picked up an infection somewhere in the first days of life.  She was burning massive amounts of calories fighting it.  The infection was so severe it had elevated her tiny liver function.

She had been closer to death than Cute Husband or I could stand to admit.

And then in month six there was a sudden change and Eden started to eat massive amounts of solid food while continuing a healthy nursing schedule.  She got plump and rosy-cheeked.  In four weeks’ time she gained back the missing weight.  People stopped asking me if she had been a preemie.  She was finally starting to be normal.

Here’s the part that’s about you –

Eden had an infection.  A really bad one.  It could have killed her.  Breastmilk is packed with natural antibodies that boost the immune system.  So the “conservative” approach the doctors were suggesting was to take away Eden’s last defense against the infection that was making her waste away.

If you are considering breastfeeding, read this as an argument in favor.  Your milk can protect your infant in ways you can’t imagine.  Do not let medical professionals convince you that your body is flawed.  Do not give a bottle if you don’t absolutely have to. 

Seek a doctor that truly supports breastfeeding and does not encourage mothers to supplement.  Work now to find a lactation consultant who is empathic, supportive, and well-trained and who will help you navigate through conflicting medical advice. 

Know that breastfeeding can be miserable work.  For some people it’s easy and great, but for many of us it is a huge effort.  But the payoff is beyond measure.

Life with Eden is much more normal now.  When she tucks in for a feed, she looks up at me with big, bored chocolaty eyes.  She takes my hand, smirks a little, feeds.  Warms her belly against mine.  She is fat and dimpled and has no idea that she was ever anything but what she is now.

I’ll never be the same.  I have spent weeks and months praying over a sick infant, and my relationship with her is different in ways I don’t yet have words for.  But my love for my body and what it can do is renewed.

It gave Eden life.  Twice.

For Better, For Worse

“I am willing to live with your mistakes,” Ducky said.  We were sitting in the living room of her apartment, looking out over the river. 

I was living in The House, and had just finished telling her the latest details of the construction project next door.  It was a massive undertaking that involved a portion of Ducky’s land.   She had been on that land her whole life, her parents had been on it all of theirs.  It was the beginning of the end.

We had the power to deter the project, but if we abused that power we’d be in a lawsuit that could destroy us.  However, the land would have to be sold when Ducky died, and the project could drastically lessen its value.  Someone needed to advocate aggressively for her interests and protect the asset for her children and grandchildren.

“We need you to do this,” she said.  There was no urgency in her voice — there almost never was.  Just a pragmatism: I was too young, but she was too old, and it had to get done.   “We need you,” she repeated.

I told her what I thought the best move was.  She nodded.  I suggested instructions for the lawyers and she said to go ahead.

“But I could be wrong,” I cautioned.  I could be really, disastrously wrong. 

The House weighed heavy — but far worse was the specter of failing her.  What would it be like to destroy what she had devoted herself to build?

“I am willing to live with your mistakes,” she said.  She was sitting back in her chair, leveling an arctic blue gaze on me.  “You will make them.  You won’t be perfect.  But I think your chances are quite good and I am willing to live with whatever happens.”

“Okay,” I said. 

The House started to lose its magic for me at that time.  The meetings, the e-mails, the constant weighing of strategies.  I couldn’t look out the window without wondering whether I had made the right call about this aspect or that.  I couldn’t go down the driveway with the kids without running into someone I was in an adversarial relationship with. 

Every week, I made the drive to Ducky’s apartment and reported on developments.

“So what’s the next move?” she would ask.

I would outline my plan, the possible faults with it, the reason I thought it was the way to go.   “Very complicated doings,” she would say, setting aside the folder.  “How is Young Mary enjoying preschool?”

I wondered whether maybe she was losing her mind a little.

She wasn’t.  She retained the facts from one conversation to another.  Sometimes she was waiting with the file open and a question.  She always trusted my answer, nodded, and then changed the subject.  Sometimes her question would make me consider an alternate route, but she never told me what to think and she never offered an opinion of my choices. 

I was on my own, but her hand was warm on my back. 

My last years at The House were a deathwatch that consumed my life.  I despised living there and I dreaded leaving.

And then it happened:  the project was complete, Ducky died, and The House was sold (value intact), all in about two months.  La Casa Loony Tunes moved to the Tilty Floored Farmhouse to begin again. 

Cute Husband asked me many times over the course of those years whether it was worth it.

The answer always was that I wasn’t going to abandon Ducky, no matter what.

But I didn’t expect the gift she would leave me in return.

There is no perfection, no life without sorrow, no relationship without its wrong turns.  The romantic surrender to love has no depth.  It is the surrender to imperfection that builds life. 

She taught me that in those last years, when she taught me what it is to know that someone has forgiven your mistakes in advance of your making them. 

“Nikki is my frenemy,” Mare says.  She is writing a note to Nikki in dark crayon.

As the baby that Mary was disappears further into the past, that baby-love I had for her fades, too.  It will always be there, buried in that little body I grew and nursed and carried on a hip for so many months.  But an increasingly complex person is occupying that body now, and an increasingly complex love develops between us.

“Your what, now?” I ask.  I dread this, the Girl Thing that brought such agony to my youth. 

“She told me on the playground that she didn’t like my hair and she’s supposed to be my friend but she isn’t and then she and Robin said I could only be friends with them …” she goes on.  My head hurts.

“I think your best bet,” I say, “is to find other friends.”  And then I can’t believe I said that, because it’s useless advice and every bit of useless advice I utter put me one mark closer to Stupid Mother.

“It sounds very challenging,” I finally say.  And then offer no advice at all.

Maybe it will be her destiny to be Popular.  Maybe it will be her destiny to engage in female politics for a year or a decade or a lifetime.  It isn’t for me to say.

I can tell her to do her homework and to keep her elbows off the table.  I am in charge of how much television she watches and what she wears. 

But I can’t tell her how to think or what to value.  She’s going to have to work that one out on her own.

And I am learning to live with her mistakes.

The Flying Squirrel in the Living Room

The best part of the entire episode is Mare, standing over the cat with great concern.

“Why is she acting like that?” Mare asks.  She has tried to stroke Sunshine, who is perched on the back of the leather chair.  But the cat just keeps clicking and yarlwoling toward the ceiling.

I, being a veteran owner of cats, follow the gaze with great anxiety to where it rests, just over Mare’s head.

 

 

 

Holy shit, dude.

“Sunshine, it’s okay,” Mare is saying, innocently stroking between fuzzy feline ears, no idea what is hanging on the ceiling about three feet above her own cranium. 

 

As I look at her, all I can think is:

 ”Okay, girls, everyone upstairs.”

“But — why?” Mare asks.

“NOW!” I say.  They go, and the squirrel shifts only a little, staring at me.

I sit on the pink settee, across from him, considering my options.  He is centrally located, nowhere that I can shut him in or that we can really be on the first floor away from him. I know if I approach, he’ll fly, and things will get really exciting.

I call the neighbor who works for the rescue league.  Nothing.  I call animal control, but they’re closed after 5:00 and really only deal with domesticated animals.  I briefly consider 911 because, you know, there’s a freaking flying squirrel on my ceiling and I really don’t care how hard anyone laughs as long as they take it out.

“MOMMA!  We’re huuuuuuungry!!” the girls call from the closed bed room.

“Stay in there!!’

And then I do what a girl does:  I called That Grand Man.

“Dad,” I say.  “There’s a freaking flying squirrel on my ceiling.”

“How do you know it’s a flying squirrel?” he asks.

“It has webbing.”

“Yeah, that sure sounds like a flying squirrel.  Interesting.”  We chat about the migratory habits of squirrels. 

“CAN WE COME DOWN FOR SOME WATER?” the girls call.

“Shut up, you kids!” I reply.

At Dad’s suggestion, I call an exterminator. I go down the list on Google, getting voicemails on the first five listings.  The sixth has an “emergency hotline.”  A guy named Jim answers and tells me he is going to get his son in law and be there in an hour.

I bring the girls water and crackers, and turn on Noggin. They’re happy smearing crumbs into my bed.  I put a large pan under the squirrel in case he little legs give.  Sending him, crashing, into the floor.  With his webbing all splayed out.

I sit on the settee to stare at him.  It’s dark.  And late, and dinner isn’t started and the house is a pit and I have work to do and I am very worried about how much this is going to cost and I really need him out of here right now.

I call that Grand Man back.

“Is he moving?” he asks.

“No.  But I don’t want to run the risk that he’ll be airborne if I turn my back.  I’m going to keep an eye on him.”

“Yeah, you have to stay with him until someone comes.”

And then we’re talking about being parents, and being protective.   And about the special election in Massachusetts and how the dryness in Colorado makes it feel less cold and that no one plows reliably so he drives in ice a lot.  I don’t tell him to be careful, but I want to.

I think about how our relationship is changing.  He is a Granddad, now, and his voice has gotten gravelier, here in my living room across a phone line, across a country.  He reminds me of his own Dad sometimes, has the same rhythm to his voice, the same slightly English New England accent.  But he’s more modern, talks faster, and is still my Dad.

We are communicating in the shorthand of our kind, and it fits like a favorite old sweater.

“I hope these guys show up,” I say, glancing out the window.  He tells me he has noticed a decline in the quality of customer service in this country, and he attributes it to the Republicans.  The last Administration lied so much, he says, did whatever they hell they pleased, it set the tone for the country.

I reply that it may be similar to the trend of girls giving boys sexual favors in middle school in the mid-nineties because it wasn’t sex.  There is a pause and then he says that he doesn’t agree with Obama on the mortgage refinancing and we agree on that point. 

What kind of example is it to bail out the cheaters? we ask.   And what would it do to inflation?

Headlights in the driveway.

“They’re here,” I say.  He has been on the phone with me an hour.  That Grand Lady, the girls’ Gran, has brought him water twice.  The squirrel has stayed where he is and in a minute or two he will be out,  I will write a check, bring the girls down, and get an abbreviated evening routine going.  It’s going to be okay.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say.

“You’re welcome,” he says. 

And in the extreme luxury of still being his little girl, I am comforted.