dad as the dad

i never remember my dad being around when we were sick. mom found that quite convenient. i only remember being sick once in my youth, and not making it to the bathroom. i called out. dad answered and then ran away. fast. my brother paid back his negligence by once throwing up over the interior of the back passenger door and the power lock never let dad forget as it kept for many years after a funny squeak. but dad really couldn't handle it less he be sick himself and burden mom with twice the mess to clean. he complained he could not help his weak stomach any more than his early hair loss. mom rolled her eyes.

i grew up associating myself with my strong-willed, able-bodied mother until i became pregnant with caleb. i have a new respect for my dad now. there's no doubt i have inherited more than just his unique gene mutations.

the flu struck caleb down in the prime of easter's season. vern handled the mess over the weekend, but come monday - i sat on the couch with the little man and his trusty bucket all day. i held his head when he got sick and rubbed his back and counted my blessings that his stomach was pretty empty by that point.

and i was thinking. it had to be junior high when i became horribly ill. mom was taking courses for her lpn in the evening, working nights and keeping the house afloat, us kids clothed and fed all by herself. it seems i became sick over a weekend visit to grandpa's an hour south in omaha where dad was residing. helping on the office end out of grandpa's basement the family farm/ranch/bank operations. that or mom brought me down and handed me off to the husband that was just be-bopping around a home office anyway with grandpa's housekeeper, mattie, cleaning and cooking...

i don't remember much of it other than how i existed in grandpa's big arm chair watching tv with a bucket beside me. the extreme sick. and dad. who somehow never got sick himself. who actually hung out with me. who called mom the second or third day concerned that while my stomach finally seemed somewhat settled, i needed to go to the hospital. mom directed him to have mattie pick up some thera-flu. mattie did, and i remember quite clearly how much i did not want to have anything to do with it. dad called mom and said he thought it was a bad idea. mom reminded him she was still the mom. dad pleaded with me and then gave me the phone. mom reminded me she was the mom. i tried the thera-flu, and woe was me. i had actually begun to feel slightly better, and then. oh. bad.

i'll never forget dad's expression. pissed at himself for not being the dad in that moment with a hint of vindication for being right. when i realized my situation - sick under dad's care, i felt some consolation that at least mattie would be around here and there to make sure i did not die. i suffered through the fog and haze of extreme ill and emerged to discover this dad who actually parented. somehow in my misery we bonded. just a little. and i did go to the hospital where mom met us and held my hand as the iv fluids coursed through.

she was the mom after all.

she apologised for making me take the thera-flu. and followed up that dad shouldn't have had me take all of it. dad went back to his bachelor pad and i home with mom to my brother and the world spun.

but those 3 or 4 days with dad, sick, were huge. i couldn't put it in his obit, but i sure did want to list it alongside his college degree... "cared for daughter all by himself when she was throwing up green".

scratch that

i'm really happy we never went with caleb and madeline now that i've had time to use them. now to work on william xavier, winston xavier or ___. i keep waiting for the perfect name we never gave the youngest to occur to me so i can work it over in this blog, too. hence owen before although it belongs to a few special kids in our existing circle.

i really loved joshua. maybe i go with that.

thanks to vern the kids have started calling me 'mambo'. as in 'hey, mambo! mambo italiano...!' nice. i never minded 'mamacita'. which is probably why they're now so hooked on changing it.

this is why i do not seek a following. this post has no relevance to anyone but the people i live with. how the wife worked out her crazy woulda-shoulda notions regarding baby names...

buttons

i told my girlfriend not 3 months ago that i had yet to experience the pull and slip into blogland. hm. i think i'm now looking up at the grassy knoll on which i made that statement. grassy knoll. it's really the bathroom i began cleaning before the laptop and i sat down to nurse...

there are these little buttons, you see. buttons with cherub faces. beautiful babes. sick. deceased. loved.

i guess i had always assumed the blogosphere was full of ___. well. stuff that would make me want to take my eyeballs out and wash them. but here i am ignoring the side of my husband waiting in bed because my eyes have spied yet another joyful praise beaming from the depths of pain and grief and confusion and bone-tired.

i honestly never expected to find such wealth of testimony to God's peace. everywhere i turn. praise. peace. joy. faith. Him.

o loke to ote opples ond bononos

i'm having a hard time lately finding a good bite of banana, and today considered the hard facts that maybe i just do not like them anymore. it's one thing - those proud moments when you report to your 88 year old grandmother "i like tomatoes now!", but quite another when a tried and true and beloved breakfast companion seems to be slipping away from you. i'm almost afraid to try my grandfather's grapefruit and guava juice. afraid that i'll like it. i will have then fully turned some sort of corner separating who i am with who i was. though. those little grapefruit sporks are sure cute.

brag on your kid

i passed up a carnival last week for moms to brag with wild abandon on their offspring. this method versus the art of subtle implication most of us tend to use. the purpose of this carnival was to focus on the good if you've felt swept up by the less than pleasant bits of parenting. even so, i find plenty of parents are skilled at back-handed bragging on themselves and their children during tales of ornery, stubborn and boundary-testing.

on that day my daughter opened the child-proof cap of our flintstone vitamins and, knowing she was about to be stormed, grabbed as many freds and wilmas and barneys as she could in her little fist. and then realized her fisted score was trapped, fist and all, inside the bottle. it took some cajoling and quite a few tears to get maddy's hand out of the bottle. playing out another of aesop's fables which was what made the whole thing so amusing to me.

i laughed to myself what part of that a person would brag up for the carnival. in the hands of the right parent...

we have friends whose roughly 2.5 yr old once spent a few minutes eyeing the cookie jar on top of the counter before getting a piece of paper and sliding it under the jar until the paper became wedged firmly underneath. then. he pulled.

now that's something to brag on. same as the sweet little girl the today show featured once who was reading at 18 months.

there isn't really much our kids do that other kids their age are not. or simply haven't had the opportunity to try. or been caught doing. we just do not come up with the fun nicknames like "teeny houdini". the art is more in the parent than the child. turning whatever that child did into something so uber-spectacular. doesn't mean i'm not proud that caleb recently read 'go, dog, go' all by himself. he knows that, and that's all that matters. (versus the self-served blogging to strangers about it.) but. he also knows about that little 18 month old baby who could read circles around his 4 year old self.

it's the second shoe: 'God made you. He gave you special gifts and talents, and loves you SO much. and oh. by the way. He made everybody, and gave everybody special talents and gifts, and loves everybody SO much...'

i get a kick out of little kid stories. every child is gifted, you just have to pay attention. it's usually the brag, implied or hanging-all-out, by the parent who does that annoys me. unless the story has a large dollap of tongue-in-cheek or acknowledges that second shoe, i instantly bristle assuming the parent thinks their child is the only one who did/said/thought/strutted. i bristle so much so anymore that it alters the whole sweet story sour.

that's pretty lousy of me. and it assumes i'm always so deft at telling stories of my children without coming off like i hold a lime-light above their heads myself. i know i do not. sometimes i'm in a hurry and lucky just to get the story of how maddy scaled the oven door and climbed on top of the stove emailed before she goes at it again. let alone touch on how i know she's not the only one who can climb...

so. i set out to read all those blog posts with a smile on my face. practice makes perfect. i'd like to work on this flaw before it cripples me entirely, and - forget the random stranger's blog - my friends start to wonder what's wrong with my face whenever they start in on a tale about their smartest kid ever. or worse still, their smartest kid ever starts to wonder.

i'd like to eventually brag on myself for not being this person anymore who rolls her eyes at a blog carnival titled "brag on your kid". that would be something special.

not fair

caleb got sick before he even had a chance to dare our warnings about eating too much easter candy. this morning he was found crumpled in a ball on the floor of the bathroom. resting his head on a pile of dirty clothes left from the night before. he cannot understand why he's now being urged to lay on his bed rather than the couch. there being no tv by his bed - the only thing he can even sort of 'do'. they may as well have left him on the bathroom floor passed out in discarded jeans and undies. he's sick and cannot play and now they want to banish him away. no one cares about the sick kid.

owen is likely next to fall. he's smiley yet, so long as he's being held, and his mom's soaked. as is anything in a 2 foot radius. this spitting up seems excessive even for him.

and maddy. not only is there no room for her on the couch, but she keeps getting hollered at for pitching easter eggs in the 'basket' next to caleb. and for drinking twice now from his sippy of gatorade. wailing, looking for comfort after being reprimanded, she stepped right into owen's mess her mom was trying to get cleaned up. we won't even mention how often she's had her hands on some easter candy, only to have it taken away...

worst of all. 'barney' is on and i cannot find the remote to change the channel.

25 things about me i will not post on facebook: 8 & 9

8. i use the same old code # my two girlfriends used for things when they roomed together in college. granthillbobbyhurleybobbyhurley. it's the first thing that ever comes to mind. though i can never remember what order, and when asked for confirmation, i'm usually like, um, it's either aabb or bbaa... what's crazy is not only do i have my own number unto its own, but when it came to basketball in that era i liked christian laettner.

9. i have a weak tongue. i can never drink the hot chocolate being served at holiday events. it's also hard to share a cup with vern as he typically forgets and keeps drinking as i wait it out. by the time it's cool, it's about gone. that tid-bit is probably more about vern than me, but it does speak to why i consider my tongue to be such a handicapper. and as i think on it, probably why i'm not a big fan of soups.