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If you’re lucky, you can tag your spouse at 3:30 or 4 in the morning and tell him it’s his turn to attempt to placate your miserable three-year-old. He’ll be surprised since he only slept a few hours since his last shift but he’ll willingly take the boy from your arms. You will fall back asleep on the nearest clear surface–your bed, the guest bed in your tiny office, the couch or recliner downstairs. You don’t even remember how many times you have rotated among these locations, or the glider in the kids’ room, throughout the night, in attempts to soothe the boy with a change of scenery or a snuggle position that will somehow bring him relief. 

The next day you will feel completely disoriented, leaving the house in the morning only for medicine that you pray will be an acceptable flavor. You also get chocolate, thinking this may serve as an incentive and reward for swallowing the medicine if it proves to be offensive. The chocolate is met with enthusiasm and devoured even though it turns out bubble gum Benadryl is not so awful. But somehow the chocolate causes distress and there is rushing to the bathroom where no one throws up but rather drools and dribbles m&m residue and refuses to drink water or milk and he becomes generally hysterical.

What seems to be the only way to distract him from the itch is movies, so naturally you let him watch age inappropriate films such as Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, which you bought on iTunes (in a bundle with the new all-female version) because he’s been obsessed with Ghostbusters for months based solely on seeing the Ghostbusters Lego sets in the Lego catalog which he read so much it completely fell apart. Ghostbusters is much worse than you remember it being, but he likes it. You observe that Bill Murray is ageless. Then you watch Annie (the version starring Quvenzhané Wallis) which all of you have seen at least a dozen times but it’s easier to take than Ghostbusters and big sister needs a chance to choose.

Sometime during the film fest he rallies enough to ask for you to high five his feet, and at last he consents to let you spread on the baking soda paste you whisked up, which seems to help at least a little and it makes you feel better that you’re actually doing something useful for your sick child. 

You play Legos at his request even though you are weary of playing good guys vs. bad guys and would rather just build. Sometimes he will build with you but today he just wants you to be a bad guy farmer while he is twin Iron Man brothers teamed up with a mini figure you made at the new Lego store that you named Frank. You wonder how on earth you can disinfect all the Legos. 

You check your phone so much that he actually starts tapping your arm to get you to put your phone away. You feel bad that you’re looking at the phone, although to be fair you’re spending about 25% of the time you’re on it looking up information about coxsackievirus or texting people at school to tell them to be in the lookout for signs. The rest of the time you’re just distracting yourself from the unpleasantness at hand, or trying to feel a connection with the world and other grownups who are out living their lives since you and your husband are at home unable to leave the side of your child except to do dishes or laundry to fetch medicine or ice packs or wash your hands approximately 500 times. You notice that you’re running out of soap. 

Eventually you and your daughter leave the house to get Five Guys, which later you regret. But while you’re there hurriedly shelling peanuts and quizzing her on Virginia geography for her upcoming social studies test, you feel gloriously liberated. Even circling through Clarendon for 15 minutes to find a parking spot–you completely forgot it was Saturday night when you left the house–isn’t so bad because you and your daughter can listen to Harry Potter. 

Thankfully your son is hungry and thirsty at last and eats a little dinner and drinks some water and some milk. At one point you go into the bathroom with him and he sees the rash all over his mouth while he’s washing his hands and looking in the mirror. He is, understandably, dismayed, but he doesn’t cry.

You change your clothes a few times because he’s been desperately rubbing his face and hands and feet all over you throughout the day. You strip the pillows and wash all the blankets. You wash your hands another 500 times. You check facebook and get sympathy and advice from other parents.

You worry that your daughter will catch it. She worries too and she meticulously avoids touching his legos or other toys and brings down sheets and a comforter and her own pillow to lie on the love seat where he has been lying. This is actually pretty smart, you think. 

Finally both children are in bed. You enjoy listening to your husband practice mandolin. You do a little cleaning triage. You know you should just go to bed but it is lovely to be awake when no children are awake, for just a little while. You hope, hard, that everyone will sleep through the night and that tomorrow brings healing.

The portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt that we talked about today on Zoe’s field trip.

This morning I spent chaperoning a third grade field trip to the Lincoln Memorial and the National Portrait Gallery. I completely rearranged my schedule to do this. It was not convenient. I’m not saying this because I deserve a medal (but I’ll always accept a cookie) but just to provide the context that I understood that my presence meant a lot to Zoe and it was the final opportunity of the year to go on a field trip with her class so I made it happen. All the previous field trips had been scheduled on days that I was required to drop off or pick up at preschool. I haven’t been asked to volunteer in her classroom this year (although I offered repeatedly) so I haven’t had the chance to get to know her classmates like I did the past two years.

So today I had a chance to check out the boy she has a crush on, and meet some of her friends who I had only heard about. I bounced along in the back of the noisy school bus marveling at my early childhood ambition to become a school bus driver. I escorted girls to the bathroom and tried to keep kids in line and handed out bag lunches. I watched in sympathy as two of the other chaperones who were 7ish months pregnant climbed up and down the stairs at the Memorial and in the museum. I appreciated not being pregnant.

When we returned to school, Zoe’s teacher said I was welcome to take Zoe home, as the class would not be doing any important work for the last 40 minutes of the school day today. I took Zoe to Dairy Queen where we enjoyed blizzards. We came home and Zoe took herself to the playground in our neighborhood while I sprouted a migraine and took a nap.

Then later in the afternoon when I mentioned to Zoe that I had a meeting at church tonight, she despaired. “I feel like you’ve been gone every night,” she lamented. I said, yes, I was out last night, when I left the house at 9pm, when she should have been in bed anyway, to play in my last soccer game of the season. I had spent every moment of the afternoon, from 4:45 when I picked her and her friend up for their soccer practice to 9pm, with her. This afternoon Zoe said to me, “I wish I could spend every minute of every day with you.” I know this is not true. I understand the sentiment behind it. The result, however, is both flattering and smothering.

At least last night when I left Zoe did not scream and wail like Zeke did. Zeke, who also should have been asleep but was not, desperately wanted me to put him to bed. He was clinging to me like I was about to disappear forever. This represents a recent recurrence of the all-mommy-all-the time phase we have previously experienced. We have also experienced all-daddy-all-the-time phases.

There is something so painful and sweet and confounding about these moments. It is excruciating to hear and see your child sob violently because you are going away, even if it’s for two hours and he’s going to be asleep, or at least calm, within five minutes after you leave. It is amazing and sometimes startling to be wanted so intensely, to know that you are the person that someone most wants to be with in the world at that moment, that you snuggling with him would provide complete contentment. And that snuggling and rocking and singing would provide contentment for you too. But at the same time you have to do other things sometimes. You have to exercise your body, cultivate grown-up friendships, nurture your spirituality, see a movie. You have to have a life of your own or that time spent with those little people who want you so much will feel less blissful and more resentful. You need to have a life so you can demonstrate to your children that you do have a life that does not revolve 100% around them. 98%, sure, but you need to squeeze out that 2% for yourself.

I have worked for myself for a decade now and I started my business in part because I wanted to be able to make my would-be kids my first priority, after witnessing bosses who were not particularly family friendly. I am thankful every single day that I get to be a mom, which I’ve dreamed of being since I was seven, and a writer, which I’ve planned on since I was eight. I try hard to be present for and involved with my kids while still giving them room to develop their own imaginations, relationships, and interests. Yeah yeah yeah. It is still really freaking hard to not feel like I’m disappointing them when I am not going to be with them. Zeke loves playing with the kids at his day care, loves his babysitter, is always smiling and happy when I pick him up. But he never wants to go there because he always wants to stay with me. My saying, “but I have to go to work” does not matter in the least to him. I don’t know why I bother saying it.

You can’t please everyone. You have to take care of yourself. You have to take care of your business-work, relationships, community. But all these reasonable ideas, rational concepts, true statements seem to dissolve like so many toddlers bursting into tears in the face of your children who want nothing more in the world than to be with you.

I struggle with a destructive habit of constantly tabulating the mistakes I’ve made and the things that have gone wrong when I’m having a bad day. I know about counting your blessings. I know the things for which I am thankful are abundant. But some days are just not good and I tend to make them worse.

My past two days were Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days. Actually they were mine. And I cannot seem to stop perseverating about my failures, large or small. I learned that word from a therapist who said I did it and I was embarrassed to not know what she was talking about. A failure in and of itself. My birthday is next week and somehow all these little injuries feel like bad omens. Shouldn’t I have my life more under control when I’m about to be 42?

Today I had part one of my first root canal. Tomorrow is part two. I have been a diligent tooth brusher my entire life, and only had one cavity ever until now, when I have several, including one so deep that it required a root canal. I felt convinced my tooth decay represented moral depravity on my part. I have an extraordinarily strong gag reflex. So I spent the time today in the dentist’s chair alternating between silently weeping and loudly gagging. Sometimes I did both simultaneously. The dentist was patient and nice about it. I was embarrassed. I felt sure that she and her entire staff sighed with relief when I left, although not that much relief since I have to come back tomorrow morning. She handed me prescriptions for antibiotics, ibuprofen, and valium in the hope that I could tolerate the rest of the procedure with less drama.

I won’t actually share my litany of troubles, because no one likes a complainer. Although many people like to complain. And I don’t like to complain. Just remind myself internally of all of my shortcomings and the world’s brokenness.

For several weeks now I’ve been listening to audio books in the car when I’m driving alone. I love music and I love NPR, but there came a point where every time I turned the car on I would hear, “And the death toll in [name any place] continues to rise.” Or “Today Donald Trump said [any revolting thing].” And I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I listened to The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy, as a tribute to one of my favorite authors, who recently died from pancreatic cancer. Although I knew something about Conroy’s family from his autobiographical novels, this memoir laid bare the lifetimes of abuse, drama, and emotional disfigurement that Conroy and his family experienced and foisted upon each other. Plus Conroy’s writing is inventive and lush. He describes so much pain with so much beauty. Part of what struck me about The Death of Santini is how, despite suffering cruel and bizarre treatment from each other time and again, most of the family never gave up on each other. I felt thankful that, however eccentric or idiosyncratic my family is, we are fundamentally kind. That counts for a lot.

I am thankful for my family, and for modern oral health care, even if it is unpleasant and uncomfortable. I am thankful that I could come home today from the dentist and take a long nap. I am thankful that I was able to help Zoe with her math homework, and that Zeke asked me to read Where the Wild Things Are, and The Mommy Book, and Maisy’s Book of Seasons to him at bedtime and that he snuggled in deep on my lap under his favorite crocheted blanket. I am thankful that my family liked the dinner I cooked for them, courtesy of my friend Trader Joe, even though I couldn’t eat any of it. I am thankful that people were cleaning our house today while I was at the dentist. I am thankful for the music I listened to at the dentist, and all music that brings me joy.

Yesterday Zoe and I listened to this song about 25 times. The fabulous youth choir at our church sang it and we found this recording on YouTube that the song’s composer created with a choir at Texas State University. I think I need to listen about 25 more times.

This is a poem I wrote as an assignment for the worship team that I am a part of at church. 

Newsprint brought my parents together
Defining my father still
down to his illegible note taking in the margins

Millions of pages in
thousands of books
hundreds of magazines
countless clippings
crowd each other all over their house
competing for attention

Voracious does not begin to describe
our collective appetite for words
try
compulsive
or better yet
ravenous

My parents save all of our words
published and unpublished
hastily scribbled and neatly printed
Our words are savored
papers and postcards
tucked away in files
stuffed in drawers
piled on desks

I typed my first newsletter
on my mom’s green typewriter
when I was eight
And I’ve never stopped

So much of the paper now is
invisible
stacked up inside digital devices
But it’s still paper
to me
extracting or repelling
juggling or reshaping my words

Words swim inside the paper
until they need to
come to the surface to breathe
They float or they sink
They crawl around the edges
clinging to what meaning they can find

I am less attached
to the paper than
my parents are
I can harvest the words and
give away the paper

Sometimes

Or heretically just throw it away, or recycle it

Sometimes

The words remain
The words are imprinted on me
I was born of paper, and now the paper is me

Betsy Rosenblatt Rosso
March 2016

  He went to the dentist for the first time ever and was a model patient. He was quiet and obedient and his only move in the chair was reaching for my hand to hold it while the hygienist cleaned his teeth with the chocolate toothpaste he kept trying to eat. He was rewarded with a Spider-Man sticker (to go on his Spider-Man t-shirt) and a Green Lantern ring.

Then we went to the shoe store and he picked out Batman sneakers because he’s been longing for superhero shoes. He also got Avengers crocs (do you sense a theme?). He was perfectly behaved.

We went home so I could eat a late lunch and he played Legos until we went to the playground he requested. He had a fabulous time and climbed up every ladder and slid down every slide again and again. 

Then we took Zoe to martial arts class and he was relatively content, coloring and chatting until class was over and he seized the opportunity to grab a light saber (a piece of foam pool noodle they use to practice defensive moves with) and run in circles brandishing it, which is a fully sanctioned activity once classes have ended. 

Until suddenly he wasn’t fine at all, and all the other kids except mine had gone home and he didn’t want to relinquish his weapon and he didn’t want to leave and the tantrum began and I had to gather our things and scoop him up and walk to the car, hoping he wouldn’t escape from my grasp in the parking lot and hurl himself onto the asphalt. I had to leave my water bottle and his sippy cup on the ledge outside the studio because I needed to secure my grip on him and I hoped Zoe would see them there as she followed us to the car and bring them. She did.

I forced him into his car seat while he screamed and I flung his Batman shoes into the back of the car. Not the most mature thing to do, but it kept me from futilely screaming back at him. 

All the way home he screamed and yelled, shouting ow ow ow as if he were being tortured. I turned the music up to an uncomfortably loud volume to drown him out. 

At home I let Zoe out to go inside and Zeke and I sat in the parked car in front of  our house while he screamed. I could tell he was getting hoarse and losing steam. Abruptly, he stopped crying and said, “I’m calm now.”

And he was, briefly, until we went insid and discussed bathing. And then he wasn’t, but he did settle down to happily eat dinner and eventually consented to the bath after a brief standoff that was at least quiet. And after the bath I held him and rocked him until it was past time for him to put on his diaper and pajamas. Another fight commenced and after I struggled to diaper him, he took off the diaper and stood there defiantly and said he didn’t like it. I explained that once he started using the potty all the time and wearing underwear he could wear it to bed and not have to wear a diaper. “Oh!” He said, as if this were a perfectly reasonable revelation. Then I said, “let’s wear underwear to school tomorrow,” and he said, “nope!” But I pressed on. “You can wear your Green Lantern underwear!” He agreed. Who knows what his thinking will be about underwear in the morning. 

Unsurprisingly I fell asleep while putting him to bed and after I woke up all I could do was stumble into our bedroom and fall into our bed, unable to venture downstairs and face the dishes or read a book or talk with my husband, all of which I had been planning to do. I fell asleep wearing my glasses, without brushing my teeth or taking my pills. And then I woke up to the sound of Zoe moaning in her sleep. Fortunately she had quieted by the time I used the bathroom and retrieved a glass of water. And now I am awake, listening to Randy breathe beside me and waiting for Zeke to wander in and climb up into our bed, which is what often happens at this time of night. 

And here he is. 

And then there are the nights when you wake up to your husband poking your foot with his foot and he’s whispering across your sprawled and sleeping son that it’s six in the morning and you panic slightly because you fell asleep at 8:30 putting your son to bed despite your efforts to stay awake. (It’s actually not quite midnight. He has a storied history of announcing the wrong time in his sleep).

Not that falling asleep putting your son to bed is all that rare, but it’s more disorienting than usual when you’re in your sister’s guest bedroom because, for the second night in a row, you can’t sleep at your house because many of your belongings are stacked up in your kitchen because a company was supposed to come install new floors in your family room and dining room and upstairs hallway and downstairs bathroom on Tuesday but failed to do so because allegedly the truck carrying your flooring materials and its driver went rogue and disappeared into thin air. Fortunately the carpet installer from the same company did manage to show up, although he came alone despite the vast quantity of massive furniture to be moved out of the way in your three bedrooms. Somehow he did it by himself and he worked his tush off for nine hours to get it all done and is beautiful so you gave him a big tip. Do you even tip carpet installers?

So even though the bedrooms are carpeted you can’t sleep at home because the upstairs bathrooms are filled with objects that were in the bedrooms or in the hall and the hall floor still needs to be replaced and they’re going to have to shove those bookshelves and cubbies and your daughter’s camp trunk that hangs out there into the bedrooms so you can’t really reassemble the bedrooms yet. And your lovely new closet is overflowing with books and assorted items that were sitting onto it husbsnd’s nightstand or collecting dust under the bed and you cannot reach the clothes hanging toward the back which you need to wear for work without knocking over some of the carefully assembled piles. And when you are trying to pack overnight bags for your kids you have to hunt room by room for the trash bag of their hats and gloves because it’s supposed to snow tomorrow and when you were packing up for the floor installation it was 70 degrees so you didn’t think ahead to keep tabs on the winter accessories.

All this floor business is because of the water damage that happened now three months ago but it’s taken you a long time to solve this particular part of the problem because you knew it would be a huge hassle and low and behold it’s been a humungous hassle (approximately 10 times more aggravating than a huge hassle) but still, you know, first world problems.

Much like the first world problem of losing your iPhone in a thunderstorm and searching for it and your husband searching for it and your daughter’s martial arts teacher searching for it and becoming convinced it washed away into the sewer and going to buy a new one two days later (in a process that takes nearly two hours in part because of a belligerent and intoxicated customer who is trying his best to attract the attention of all the store employees and apparently had come in daily to do so until they threatened to call the police and he exited quickly saying, “I’m a Black man! I don’t want the police!). And then someone finds your phone and it is returned to you and seems to be working fine and you gave to figure out how to get some money back for it since you’re now paying for two phones. Again, the very nature of a first world problem.

Now it is dark and quiet and your sister and brother-in-law and nephew and husband and so and daughter are all sound asleep but you are not since you fell asleep at 8:30 and there are just a few things on your mind.

It’s a terrible and relentless cough and Zeke is miserable. I think it’s croup again. Tonight before bed he was just wailing in despair. He didn’t want his stuffed animals. He only wanted to snuggle under the blanket with me and rock in the glider and for me to hold his feet. 

When I thought he was asleep I laid him down in the bed. He sat back up. I asked him what was wrong. He made some indecipherable noises. I urged him to use words. 

He said, “I want my friend!”

“Your animals?” I offered. “Mimi?” (The cat). “Uh Oh Dog?” (The dog).

“No!” He cried. “Zoe!”

“You want Zoe? Ok, I’ll go get her.”

So I ran downstairs to summon Zoe. 

Often all Zoe wants to do is collect hugs and kisses from her brother. Rarely does he oblige. 

Zoe returned upstairs with me and sat down on Zeke’s bed. “Do you want me to sit with you?” He nodded. She said, “why don’t you lie down?” And gently eased him back to his pillow. She tucked the blankets back over him and laid down between him and the wall, wedging herself carefully into the space so as not to disturb him. She rubbed his back for a while. She smiled at me and asked if he was asleep. I nodded and she started to sit up. He opened an eye and raised his head slightly. She lay back down beside him and I covered her legs with a extra blanket. She rubbed his back some more. She stroked his hair. She lightly kissed the top of his head. She put the extra blanket on top of him and gave him one more kiss before climbing down out of his little bed. 

At 4:41am Zoe came in to our room and stood by my side of the bed and asked me to tuck her back in because she had just had “a slightly bad dream.” I walked her back into her room and helped her rearrange the blankets. She turned on the Muppets Christmas cd on her iPod at low enough volume so as not to wake Zeke, but loud enough that I could still make out the reassuring Muppet singing when I returned to my room. Zoe’s wall is on the other side of our closet, which is currently completely empty (including floor and most of the drywall) because of recent water damage. For some reason I could not get back to sleep. Perhaps because I fell asleep while putting Zeke to bed at 8:30. Even after I laid him down, I was so groggy that I then fell asleep on the floor in the hall outside our bedroom door. Randy tried to wake me up but I was confused and I think I said something rude to him (sorry, babe) and lay there for a while until I could rouse myself to brush my teeth and take my vitamins and fall into bed.

So this morning at 5 I was wide awake, thinking of things undone. Not that it’s unusual to lie in bed and think of things undone, but since today is Christmas Eve, there is more than usual to do, and I’ve just been in denial. A month ago yesterday my mom had a stroke, and continues to deal with expressive aphasia. Our family life has been disrupted, to put it mildly. We are immensely thankful that she didn’t suffer more severe consequences from the stroke, but I would be lying if I said things were back to normal. Meanwhile, we experienced the aforementioned water damage, which has caused us to basically rearrange our house while the crisis was resolved. The real repairs have not yet been done, so we are still in a state of disarray, although we’ve tried to make it as liveable as possible, even though we will have to rearrange it all again once we get a contractor in to fix the ceilings, build a new closet, and install new flooring throughout the house. So this is a nuisance, to be sure, but I think I’ve been less worried about it (although still annoyed) because relatively speaking, the house issues shrink in the shadow of more meaningful issues like my mom’s health.

A few weeks ago in church the service [scroll down to sermon archives and select December 13 if you want to watch] was about our church delegation’s trip to Guatemala to spend time with people there who have endured decades of oppression, abuse, and marginalization at the hands of their government (trained by the US) and international corporations (based in the US). The altar and the entrance to the sanctuary were surrounded by cardboard boxes bearing the addresses of locations in Guatemala where human remains of persecuted people have been rescued from mass graves. Forensic technicians, who Rev. Aaron aptly called angels, are working to identify the remains to return them to their families.

Suffering seems to come in small, medium, and large right now and each example may shift to a different category depending on what else happens. My mom’s stroke relegated the water damage and resulting chaos in my house to medium because aphasia is LARGE. But Guatemala, the recent anniversary of Sandy Hook and the colossal, wasteful spectre of violence looms even LARGER. And regardless of the size of the problems, they all need to be addressed. I still had to figure out how to make dinner for my family when the light fixture in our kitchen was out. Randy has been replacing bulbs all over the house, including those CFLs that are supposed to last seven years but certainly don’t in our house. Yesterday we got a new toilet and a new flange (more expensive than you’d think!) because when the plumber took out the old toilet he discovered the flange was rusted through. No, we don’t want sewer gasses seeping into our house, thank you. This year we’ve had to replace all kinds of stuff, and we just hand over our credit card again and again. But at the same time, we are alive and free to live our lives basically however we want. We are not oppressed, or threatened by the government that we or our loved ones will be arrested, imprisioned, tortured, or killed because we are trying to defend our land or keep our community from being poisoned.

Everybody has something they’re dealing with. Divorce, illness, a terrible job, isolation, grief. I hear a lot of these stories lately, from people I love. Also it’s been raining here all week. But we did put up a Christmas tree. Zoe and I put on the lights and most of the ornaments ourselves one night while Randy was putting Zeke to bed. We saved some of their favorites for them to put on the next day. And all of us worked together, or in pairs, to put up Christmas lights outside our house on the night of the Winter Solstice. We are making our small contribution to drive out the darkness and the gloom with little colored lights. We’re just leaving them on all the time because we need that little bit of illumination.

We didn’t do an advent calendar this year, or put together a gingerbread house. We didn’t make latkes or play dreidel but we did celebrate Hanukkah (and I did make latkes for my book club). Zoe arranged all her nativity sets on the mantel and hung the stockings with care. We do have presents, although I haven’t wrapped a single one yet. We did make cookies, thanks to my aunt’s initiative. We haven’t finished the Christmas letter yet, but I did write my mom’s portion, based on her sketchy instructions. We did buy and wrap Christmas presents for kids in need through our church’s tree. Some kids in DC and Arlington will have happier Christmases. I bought Target gift cards for families at Zoe’s school who needed a little extra help. We make a lot of charitable gifts in honor of our family members at Christmas. Tomorrow they will open envelopes with cards that say some homeless pets or homeless people or children in Haiti or children in the hospital were helped because of donations we made specifically for them. So this is what I can do. Christmas isn’t cancelled, even though it’s not exactly the Christmas we had in mind.

I think what I really need to do is have a family reading of How the Grinch Stole Christmas today. I need a reminder from the Whos down in Whoville.

Welcome Christmas. Bring your cheer,
Cheer to all Whos, far and near.

Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to grasp.

Christmas Day will always be
Just as long as we have we.

Welcome Christmas while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

 More leaves blanket the

Ground than linger on the trees

No going back now