Still Got It

I arrived late at the hotel one night last week, and as I waited for the elevator, I made small talk with a fifty-something guy who was also waiting. He mentioned Dorney Park, which evoked fond memories.

"I remember that place!" I said happily. "You have reminded me of my long-lost youth!" We chatted for another minute until the elevator doors opened on the third floor and we both got off.

"So," he said, as we turned in opposite directions. "You have your own room, then?"

"Um, yes," I said, a bit startled, but also a bit awestruck because that sounded like it might have been a pick-up line. "And there are three kids in it."

"Heh-heh," he said, getting the message. "Have a nice night."

I told Mr. Peevie about this conversation later. "Do you think he was trying to pick me up?" I asked him.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Definitely."

"YES!" I Macauley Culkin-ed.

"I'm happy for you," Mr. Peevie said drily.

And he should be. I am a past-her-prime, overweight, mini-van driving softball mom with very few pick-up lines left in my future--so I will not pass up any chance I get to accept independent confirmation of my fading pulchritude.

Even if the pick-up line springs more from middle-aged lonely desperation than from any actual attractiveness on my part.

/ /

Eleven

M. Peevie here. I'll be eleven in two days, and it's time for an update.

So. Last week we were driving to school, and there was a Mercedes in front of us. The only reason I know it was a Mercedes was that my mom said, Hey, I like that Mercedes in front of us. Then A. Peevie said, well, it's not that cool because it's boxy like a mini-van. But I pointed out that the Mercedes was not totally boxy: "It has hips!" I said, noticing that it sort of curved out below the windows.

My mom, the writer, liked this observation. "M. Peevie," she said, "Nice use of anthropomorphism."

"Well, I don't know what 'anthropo-whatever' is," I said, "but I thought it was personification." Then we totally got into a conversation about the difference between personification and anthropomorphism, and IRONICALLY my mom could not even tell us the difference. Sigh. What good are parents if they can't even define their terms?

In school I asked my teacher, Mrs.Kind if she knew the difference between personification and anthropomorphism. She did not. She told me to go down the hall to Mr. Language Man's room and ask him. Mr. Language Man said something that I do not remember. Later when I told my mom about it, she said she thinks they are basically the same. I'm going with that for now.

In other news, for my birthday I want World Peace. I want world peace because I do not like to think about our soldiers and people in other countries getting hurt and killed, and I do not even understand why they can't just sit down and work it out. This is what my mom tells me and my brother A. Peevie all the time. "Sit down and work it out," she says, "I am tired of being a referee." 

And usually we do work it out, but sometimes A. Peevie is completely unreasonable, or my other brother C. Peevie is mean, and I have to tell my mom that he is hurting my feelings. Even though he is the big brother, sometimes he is immature, and sometimes he is a bully. Sometimes he is fun, though, and he wrestles with me. This usually happens late at night, like 9 or 10 o'clock, in my parents' bedroom, and they get extremely annoyed at us for being loud and obnoxious and for being in their bedroom when they are ready to Be Done With Kids.

I have a couple of goals now that I am getting older. One goal I have is to understand what I hear at church. Some days this is easier than other days. Some days the pastor talks about stuff I don't really want to hear about, like S-E-X. (Today my pastor said that we should not be more prudish about s-e-x than God is!--but I'm not sure what he meant. All I know is, I do not want to talk about it or think about it.) 

Another goal I have is to go to DePaul University on a softball scholarship. Because my dad works there I can go there and have free tuition, but I would still have to pay for roomanbord. I'm not really sure what roomandbord is, but if I go there on a softball scholarship, I would get that for free, too. I am working on my softball skills, and I think I am getting better. Sometimes we play traveling teams, though, and their pitchers scare me.

There is one thing I really really want for my birthday. It is a little cooler from Pottery Barn Teen that sits on your desk and hold like four cans of Coke. I think if I get this for my birthday, my happiness will be complete.

Talk to you next year, Internet. Peace out.

M. Peevie

An Anti-Drivel Mothers' Day Post

I can't repost my recent rant about why you should stop saying "Happy Mothers' Day" without appearing to be a lazy blogger who has run out of ideas, so instead, I'll add these helpful quotes about mothers and their body parts:

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.  --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Women who miscalculate are called mothers.  --Abigail Van Buren

It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers. --Norman Douglas

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.  --Jack Nicholson

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.  --Mark Twain

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. --Phyllis Diller

Yes, mother.  I can see you are flawed.  You have not hidden it.  That is your greatest gift to me. --Alice Walker

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.  --Cornershop

I scrolled through about seven zillion quotes about mothers to come up with this list of quotes which have some relationship to my own reality, and which counteract the whole "mothers are perfect angels" drivel that fills the Internets this time of year.  Most of the quotes were gushy and overstated, like a Helen Steiner Rice poem multiplied by six Jewish proverbs.  I think we should appreciate and honor our mothers in ways that acknowledge their imperfect humanity as well as the parts of motherhood that they got right.  If Jeannette Walls can do this, so can I.

My mother was and is far from perfect.  But now that I'm a far-from-perfect mother myself, I have a lot more appreciation for her, and I see her sacrifices more clearly.  In my mind I can see her sitting on the sidelines of my field hockey games, wearing cotton pedal-pushers and white Keds, her blue hair glinting in the sun.  I know now that she probably had other things she'd rather be doing on a weekday afternoon other than getting her butt damp and grass-stained while I cleated around a muddy field in a kilt chasing a white ball with a stick. 

But she showed up, and when my friends said, "Hey, look at that lady over there with blue hair!", I was happy to say, "Yeah.  That's my mom.  She comes to all my games."

Things My Daddy Said, Part I

My daddy used to say, "You're never too old to be spanked!" He was wrong.

But he was right about so many other things that I'm going to let that one go. For example:

"I'd just as soon hear crying as laughing."

This always came on the drive home from Ocean City after one of our family beach day trips. We'd spend the day body surfing in the Atlantic, making gigantic sand turtles with a garden shovel, eating peanut-butter-and-sand-and-jelly sandwiches and drinking sweet tea poured from a metal thermos into nested thermos cups, each a different color. My strawberry blond sister would get so burned that her skin would blister and peel; and I'd rub Noxema onto her hot, lobster-red shoulders.

We'd rent showers and changing rooms at a local beachhouse at the end of the day, sliding fresh cotton t-shirts and shorts over tan lines and sunburn. Then we'd head over to the board walk for dinner--usually a slice of New York style pizza, or a Taylor's pork roll sandwich, or a Philadelphia cheesesteak, washed down with a birch beer and followed with funnel cake and salt water taffy. We'd ride the bumper cars, play some skee-ball, and walk the boards from one end to the other, until we reached near catatonica.

But then, in the car on the way home, we'd get our second wind. We'd be so tired that everything made us laugh, and we'd giggle and hoot and snort until snot came out of our noses, and then we'd giggle and hoot and snort some more, until my dad would reach back as far into the rear of the station wagon as he could while still driving between the yellow lines--it was like an early version of WiiFit!--and smack one of us.

"I'd just as soon hear crying as laughing," he'd say grimly. "Now you kids knock it off. I want some peace and quiet for the ride home!" The smacked one would cry, and the others would pinch their noses to keep the snorts from coming out.

I didn't ever ask my dad to explain himself--that would have been grounds for further smackage--but it never made sense to me that it wasn't better for him to hear laughing than crying. It never made sense to me--until now.

Now? I get it. Sometimes, you just need quiet. Sometimes you just want to be able to hear yourself think. Especially in the car, when my eardrums and my brain and my SANITY are at the mercy of everyone else's decibels.

And if these Peevies are good at one thing, they are good at being LOUD.

Sometimes, I think to myself, I just as soon hear crying as laughing.

But my first choice would be QUIET.

Life Lessons from Spongebob Squarepants

A. Peevie had told me last week that he wanted to be a leader among his friends, but he didn't know how to make it happen.

When this conversation started, I was thinking to myself, "Oh, that's so honorable, so beautiful, so mature that my boy wants to be a leader! He wants to help people make good choices, even though they might be hard ones. He wants to set an example for his classmates. He wants to inspire others to dream big dreams and reach for their goals!"

I was getting all Winston Churchill-y in my mind--but it turns out, A. Peevie had a different kind of leadership in mind.

"Mrs. Faker told us once that some kids are leaders, and some are followers," he said. "And I always end up being a follower. But I don't WANT to be just a follower! I want to be a leader sometimes, too!"

This sounded a little weird to me. Some kids are leaders, and some are followers? Did she really say that? And if she did, why? Was she trying to inspire, um, mediocrity? A sense of entitlement? A philosophy of determinism?

"Well, A. Peevie," I said, "I think it's possible that you may have misunderstood Mrs. Faker. I don't really know why she would say that."

"She did, mom," he insisted.

"Well, if she did, then I disagree with her," I said. "I believe that all kids are leaders sometimes, and all kids are followers sometimes. So you can be a leader, too!"

And here's where my dreams of Churchillian greatness started to crumble.

"But mom!" A. Peevie objected. "Every time I try to lead, nobody wants to follow!"

"What do you mean, A?" I asked.

"If I want to play a game, I tell the kids, but nobody ever wants to play what I want to play," A. Peevie explained. "They just follow The Archangel, or Xander, or Trog. I don't ever get to be the leader!" he finished with a decidedly un-leaderlike whine.

Later, I asked C. Peevie to give his perspective on A. Peevie's dilemma. "I don't know, Mom," he said, "I've never had that problem."

"But what would you do, C.," I asked him, "if you wanted your friends to follow your lead, but they didn't want to?"

"Talk louder," he said, with brutal simplicity, "and keep talking until they give in." And he meant it.

"A. Peevie," C. Peevie added, "You should take a lesson from Spongebob Squarepants. Remember when Plankton was teaching Spongebob how to be more assertive?"

"What's assertive?" A. Peevie asked.

"Assertive means saying what you want loud enough to get it," C. Peevie said. Or something like that.

"Plankton offers to teach Spongebob how to be assertive," C. continued. "He stands in Spongebob's mouth and yells at a little kid to give him his ice cream cone! 'Hey kid! Gimme your ice cream!' And the kid screams and drops his ice cream, and Spongebob says, 'Hey! he dropped his ice cream!'--and then Plankton laughs evilly because it's all part of his evil plan! 'Bwah- hah-hah!'"

By this time A. Peevie had forgotten his leadership woes and was cracking up in the back seat. C. Peevie continued with his slightly mis-remembered retelling of Spongebob's adventures in assertiveness, and any opportunity to add actual value to our discussion went up in giggles.

It was worth it, though. One kid was in his element, talking, telling tales, and entertaining his audience; and the other one was, for a brief moment, forgetting his sadness and frustration.

Nothing Ever Happens on My Block

Did you read this book in your erstwhile youth--Nothing Ever Happens on My Block? OMG. I LOVED that book. And then it sort of disappeared from my life, and I didn't think about it again until I had kids. In searching for information about the book, I came across this cute blog that highlights vintage children's books.

Meanwhile, in only-sort-of-unrelated news, The Crazy Lady on my block got taken away today by the entire police department and half the fire department of Chicago.

I was sitting on my couch, minding my own business, watching People's Court (I have a girl-crush on Marilyn Milian), when I noticed a squad car out in front of my next-door-neighbor's house. Not the neighbor with the jungle, the neighbor on the other side. So I peeked out the window from behind the sheers. There was not just one squad car, but three!

Two police officers were standing on the walk in front of The Crazy Lady's house--and BTW, I mean no disrespect to TCL, who suffers from schizophrenia or some other fairly serious mental illness--and as I peeped, another officer went tearing around the side of the house, down the gangway to the backyard.

Well, being the responsible homeowner that I am, I felt that it was exactly the right time to take out my trash. (I'm not proud of this impulse to gawk at another person's private demons being brought out into the light of day--but it's in me. I wasn't the only neighbor with this indecorous inclination. Other neighbors were not just peeking over back yard fences, but actually walking down the street to get a closer look.)

I went out the back door with my Hefty Bag, and as I crossed the deck, I could see two officers restraining TCL and trying to talk her into accompanying them to the squad car. She resisted them, hollering and flailing. Eventually, four officers carried her around the house and stuffed her as carefully as they could into the back of the squad car.

TCL was still yelling and flailing, and the officers called for back-up. Within minutes, three more police vehicles showed up, including a paddy wagon (are they still called that?) and an SUV. The officers unloaded TCL from the back of the squad car, and re-loaded her into the paddy wagon.

She was not pleased, and she started clawing at the wire mesh. I think she was starting to hurt herself, because within a few minutes the officers extracted her again, two of them peeling her fingers from the doors and two holding her legs to keep her from kicking. Once they got her extricated, they gently plopped her on the street, where she sat, hand- and ankle-cuffed, rocking and occasionally yelling at them not to touch her (they weren't) and that she needed to lock her doors. She was surrounded by officers, and once or twice she started butt-scootching along the pavement, but each time an officer stepped in front of her.

In a few minutes, the six police vehicles were joined by one more squad car, a fire truck, and an ambulance. The paramedics, wearing thick rubber gloves, loaded TCL onto a stretcher, covered her with blankets, strapped her in, and wheeled her off.

TCL has been dealing with obvious mental illness since before we moved into the neighborhood, but she has also had periods of calmness and lucidity. Lately, however, her crazy had been escalating to the point where she was making threats to neighbors and generally acting in a threatening, unpredictable way. She tried to run over one neighbor with her car recently, and she has thrown rocks at children.

Last week when A. Peevie and M. Peevie were playing in the backyard, I went out to check on them. "Mom," A. Peevie said, "That lady is saying B-I-T-C-H over and over again. Really loud." He couldn't even bring himself to say the word in reporting it to me.

M. Peevie came over and told me the same story, and we had a little object lesson in mental illness. "She can't help it," I told them. "There's something in her brain that makes her act that way." I told them that if they felt uncomfortable, or if she directed any of her scary talk directly at them, they should come in the house for awhile.

So the neighbors reluctantly went to court yesterday, and hours later the entire fleet of emergency response vehicles showed up. TCL is currently being held for observation somewhere. It's all very sad and disturbing. The neighbors didn't want to make police reports or go to court to have TCL picked up; but they felt it was the responsible thing to do. Mental illness is absolutely horrifying, and I truly feel compassion for TCL and her husband.

But nothing ever happens on my block.

Boys With Saws and Shovels

I just said one of those sentences that you never expect to have to say when you first become a parent of a tiny, soft-headed, angelic baby.

"A. Peevie! Stop sawing the deck!"

I was in my kitchen when I noticed that I was hearing loud sawing noises from somewhere nearby. I opened the back door, and the noises were louder. I stood on the deck, and I heard the noise, but couldn't see anybody.

"A. Peevie! Where are you?" I hollered.

"Under here!" he called, from under the deck. Then another little head popped up on the fence side of the deck and looked at me with wide-eyed innocence. It was his much-younger friend, K-Pup.

"What are you guys doing under there?" I asked, stupidly.

"Sawing a board," he said.

"What board?" I asked. Pause. "Are you actually sawing the deck?"

"Weeeellll," he said slowly. "Yeah. Kind of."

"A.!" I said sternly. "What are you thinking? Stop sawing the deck! In fact," I added, "Stop sawing--period! Stop playing with sharp implements. Put the tools back in the garage where you found them."

This is what comes of mom sending the kids outside to play without strict instructions and stricter supervision. You would think that an almost-12-year-old boy would know that his mom would not approve of him playing with an actual saw, and especially would not approve of him inviting the 7-year-old neighbor to also play with serrated blades.

I got a lot done in the house, though, while the kids were outside playing with pointy objects. It's sort of a trade-off, sometimes.

I don't know which is worse, playing with a saw, or digging an unauthorized trench on the side of the deck--which is what A. Peevie did yesterday with a different playdate buddy. Not only did they dig a hole deep enough to bury a body, but they did it without calling 811 ("Know what's below! Call before you dig.").

They also conscripted M. Peevie to lug buckets of water over, so they could fill the hole and...what? Stock it with bluegill and then go fishing? I don't even know. By the time Mr. Peevie busted them, all three kids were caked with mud, their shoes were unwearable, and they looked like they'd need three showers each to return to their normal pigmentation.

When I mentioned the ditch-digging to Playdate's dad--to explain the extreme filth on his son's gym shoes--he told me that they had holes all over their backyard because Playdate and his little brother also really loved to dig holes. What is up with boys and holes in the ground?

I love it when my kids play outside. I guess I just need to be a little more specific about the rules: No playing with sharp objects. No unauthorized demolition. No unauthorized digging.

There. That should do it. Until they devise another "project" involving new activities that I have not yet specifically forbidden.

I give it a week.

What Will He Remember?

One more week before (fingers crossed) the big cast comes off and is replaced with the walking cast. Now that the pain is gone, C. Peevie's biggest broken-leg-related problem is the under-the-cast itching, which we treat with Benadryl and a fly swatter.

Oh, it's not clear how a fly swatter can cure itching? It turns out that a fly swatter is the perfect common household implement for scratching an itchy leg under a thigh-high cast. He tried other re-purposed scratchers--a ruler, an unbent hanger, a pen--but they were either too short, too inflexible, or too thick to fit between his leg and the cast.

Now that he's nearing the end of his short-term disability, I'm wondering what he will remember about this episode 30 years from now?

Will he remember WillDad and HarDad splinting his leg so well that the ER staff at Door County Memorial Hospital thought he had been field-dressed by a physician?

Will he remember his pain during the first three days that made him aaaalmost cry, and definitely made his mother cry? Will he remember fidgeting and moaning and shifting and adjusting his pillows at night, trying to find a comfortable position, until his breathing grew even and finally, he slept?

Will he remember falling in the bathroom, shaking and whimpering from fear and pain for about 45 minutes after we got him safely back on the couch?

Will he remember the Buckeyes chocolate candies and the Costco-size box of individual bags of M&M trail mix that my peeps brought him?

Will he remember that he missed his first two weeks of high school? Will he remember navigating the halls in a wheelchair, and refusing to eat lunch in the cafeteria because he didn't want to ask for help?

Will he remember the kindness and support of his teachers and counselors, who helped him navigate the physical and emotional challenges of the first messed-up weeks of school?

Will he remember getting progressively better on his crutches until stairs barely slowed him down? Will he remember doing wheelies in his chair, and me yelling at him to knock it off before he broke his skull?

Will he remember the stories people told him about their own broken bones and assorted traumas?

What will he remember?

27 Socks and a Headless Stag Beetle

Today, under A. Peevie's bed, I found:

27 socks
8 shirts
4 pairs of pants
19 stuffed animals, including 4 manatees, assorted sizes
1 full box of colored pencils
3 army guys
7 pens and pencils
7 drawings
2 plastic cups
3 candy wrappers
1 spoon
small change
a colored easter egg with the shell mostly intact except for a ragged-edged, dime-sized hole through which you can see the petrified yolk.

It's kind of like what I found IN another kid's bed not too long ago.

In related news, when I took A. Peevie to see HeartDoc last week, they had a conversation that went like this:

A. Peevie: Wanna see what I have in my pocket?

HeartDoc: Sure.

AP: (shoving his hand deep into his sweatpants pocket and trying to extricate something delicately) Just a minute...just a minute...Here!

HD: (Looking at a decapitated stag beetle) Wow! Cool!

AP: It's a stag beetle.

HD's nurse: Ack! Get it away from me!

HD: Where is its head?

AP: Oh, hold on a sec. (Shoves his hand into his pants pocket again.) Here it is!

HD's nurse: Ack! Ack!

HD: Wow, look at those horns. Where'dja get it?

AP: On the playground during recess. My friend BiF found three of them, and he gave me one.

HD: Nice friend.

The deceased, headless stag beetle currently resides in our living room, in a place of honor on the speaker. Until the next time I remember it's there, and THROW IT OUT.

Ack.

Magical Moments

Have you ever had one of those moments when time slowed way down and you felt like you had entered a magical alternate dimension where you were eternally young and you were surrounded by happy children, friendly adults, sounds of laughter and cheering, and there was cake, too?

Me neither.

However. This week we came pretty close to that moment. The eighth-graders challenged their parents to a softball game to celebrate their emancipation from grade school and to demonstrate their "superior" athletic ability.

We creamed them. It was awesome.

But wait: let me backtrack for a moment. First of all, we (and by "we" I mean Poor Man's Ricardo Antonio Chavira (PMRAC), who is a 4th grade parent; yay, PMRAC!)) reserved a field at Thillens Stadium for two hours on Wednesday night. Thillens Stadium is an iconic part of Chicago history, where generations of Little Leaguers played under the lights, and Jack Brickhouse announced the play-by-play during the 1950s.


To play under the lights at Thillens is to be a part of something bigger than yourself. To play third base at Thillens as a 48-year-old, mini-van-driving, capri-pants-wearing mother of three, against about 40 eighth-graders and their younger siblings and schoolmates, and to throw your own son out at first base* in a slo-mo-replay moment, is to make history that will never be written, but will also never be forgotten.

After we shut the kids down in the first half inning, we grabbed our bats and took the kids to school. I put myself first in the grown-ups' line-up because I got there first, and the dads were too polite to object. I smashed a single between the cocky teenaged infielders, who were no doubt thinking to themselves, "Sink in, boys, sink in; it's just C. Peevie's mom; she can't hit!"

I rounded the bases when Eddie "The Babe" sent one into orbit, and crossed home plate gasping for air and begging for the paramedics to administer oxygen. "I need a defibrillator!" I wheezed, and Mr. Peevie said, "You need a work-out program." Like I have mentioned in the past, he has a bit of a mean streak.

Since there were little kids playing on the kid team, we let them have five outs per inning. We let them swing until they got a hit, and we "accidentally" fumbled the ball in the field. See, we wanted the little ones to have fun and success, but we had no such concern for the big kids.

O-Daddy and I formed an unbreachable wall covering third and short. I think he took one look at my out-of-shape self and thought to himself, "Oh well, it's just a game." But then! Then I fielded a short-hopper to third and threw to first with precision and grace (if I do say so myself), and O-Daddy's jaw dropped to the ground.

"Wo, Momma!" he said with admiration. "You got some mad skilz!"

"Yes, O-Daddy," I said. "I may look like a zaftig, past-her-softball-prime mama, but when I'm in ready position in the infield, I am still 17!"

The rest of the Mamas and the Papas did great as well, recalling the skills of their lost youths ("yutes," for those of you who are fans of My Cousin Vinny, one of the funniest movies of all time), some of them more lost than others.

The bleachers were filled with additional moms, dads, siblings, and friends who opted to watch the game in the comfort of their blankets (yay! Chicago in June!), coolers, and snacks. I joined them after the first game, having already caused enough damage to my so-called muscles and joints to keep me sore for three full days.

We beat the kids soundly in the first game, and then we sang "Happy Birthday to" C. Peevie because it was his actual b-day, and then I served homemade sheet cake, passing the slices around the bleachers and to the players on the field. The playing, the talking, the trash-talking, the celebrating, the remembering, the laughing, the hanging out in a truly cool locale--these were all gifts of grace and beauty in a troubled world.

It was magical. In the Presbyterian sense of the word, of course.

*My son remembers this differently. In his version, I bobble the grounder, and he's safe at first. But he's been known to have a distorted view of reality.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be High Schoolers

After his long journey navigating the tortuous road to high school, C. Peevie has officially enrolled in classes for fall 2009 at Jones College Prep.

Just to backtrack a teensy bit: When C. Peevie was a sweet-smelling angel of a baby, I would hold him close and feel sorry for my friends whose kids were gigantic high schoolers. I would think to myself, Oh, how sad that they don't get to have the baby experience anymore. They must miss it so much: the cuddling, the adorable clothes, the cooing and gurgling, the toothless smiles that made everyone within a six-mile radius smile back.

And now, with my baby boy entering high school and wearing man-size pants and shoes three sizes bigger than mine--I have to tell you folks who are feeling sorry for me because my babies are no longer babies: Don't.

I do not miss those days AT ALL. I don't miss the stinky diaper smell that pervaded the entire house. I do not miss the constant gnawing on my breasts. I do not miss sleeping next to a staticky baby monitor for the slightest sigh, and wondering if I should get up YET AGAIN to make sure he's still breathing. I don't miss carrying around all the baby equipment: diapers, wipes, Cheerios, bottles, toys, extra outfits, and kitchen sinks.

I don't miss measuring the disgustingness of a poopy diaper by the number of wipes it took to clean it up ("Yow! It's a 12-wiper!"). I don't miss having to carry him everywhere--although it was kind of nice to be able to shove him, in his car seat, under the table at a restaurant during dinner. Now he takes up space and costs money.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed every minute of those days. OK, maybe not every minute, but many, many of them. But now that we're past them, I don't miss them. However. This week my little boy hopped on the Brown Line by himself, headed downtown, got off at the right stop, and met Mr. Peevie at his office. They walked to Jones and enrolled him in his freshman classes: math, world studies, lit, physics, French, P.E./health, and theater.

I am a little bit verklempt.

Here I am, facing the looming prospect that C. Peevito is headed to high school in a few short months, and taking public transportation all over the city--and part of me just wants to tell him STOP! Just stop growing up. I can't take it any more.

He is straddling the fence between childhood and adulthood. His voice is deepening, he'll be taller than me in about an hour (if he's not already; I didn't check today), and he's pretty much accepted the fact that he needs to shower every single day. At least once.

But in many ways, he's still a child. Being within 30 feet of his younger siblings causes his maturity level to plummet. His pre-frontal cortex won't reach maturity for another ten years or so, according to this Chicago Tribune article. That means he lacks impulse control and emotional stability.

It means he still drives me nuts--but he literally can't help himself. It must be tough being an adolescent. I remember a tiny bit about those years, myself, even though they were in a completely different geologic era. I remember my dad yelling at me for doing something I wasn't supposed to do, and my standard answer was, "I couldn't help it. It was an accident."

" 'You couldn't help it!' " my dad would growl, "That's what you always say!"

Turns out I was right. And now the Universe is getting back at me with my very own man-child. Who's almost in high school.

Wah.

Eleven, Part Deux

Darling A. Peevie,

So where was I? Oh, yeah: Standing next to your hospital bed, crying.

At 2 a.m. we sat down in a conference room with the chief of pediatric cardiology at Lutheran General Hospital, Dr. Ira DuBrow. We got a short but thorough course on complex cyanotic congenital heart defects (CHDs). I can't even remember your initial diagnosis--it's changed a half dozen times since then as the specialists got more information--but the first issue was a coarctation, or narrowing, of your aorta. It would need surgical repair as soon as you were stable.

I had tons of questions for Dr. DuBrow. I wanted to know why a level II ultrasound at 20+ weeks wouldn't have picked up on these issues. They only check for four heart chambers, he told us. They wouldn't have seen A. Peevie's issues unless they were trained and instructed to look for them.

And of course I needed to understand why this had happened to you. Was it something that I had done while pregnant? Was there an unknown genetic cause? Nope and nope. Turns out most of the time doctors don't know why embryonic hearts develop structural defects--even though heart defects are the most common birth defect, affecting nearly ten percent of all newborns.

Your severe congestive heart failure triggered a systemic shut-down affecting most of your other major organs. You were in such bad shape, Dr. DuBrow told us much later, that they did not think they could save your life. The beeps and alarms kept the intensive care team busy while you struggled to stay alive, and Daddy and I watched helplessly.

I told God in no uncertain terms that I was very angry at him for allowing this to happen to you, and that I could not lose another child. Caitlin was very much on our minds as we held your tiny fingers and watched your fluctuating oxygen saturation rate on the monitor.

We called both sets of grandparents the next day. "We" meaning "me." Daddy's emotions choked his words in his throat, and he could not speak. Grandmom and Grandpop M. cried and got on their knees to pray for you. Grandmom and Granddad B. drove all the way to Chicago from Florida to stand with us in your hospital room.

Finally, after four days, they stabilized you enough for the first surgery to repair the coarctation of the aorta. As they wheeled you out of the room and down the hall, surrounded by a dozen doctors and nurses, the four of us cried and held each other.

We met with the pediatric cardiology team, including the surgeon, to find out exactly what they'd be doing, and why. From that point forward, every time you faced another surgery or a new procedure, I asked three questions: What was the worst possible outcome? What was the best possible outcome? What was the expected outcome?

In an earlier report, Dr. DuBrow had written, "Because of the complexity of the abnormalities, the prognosis is guarded; however, I have reason to be cautiously optimistic that the baby can be brought through with reasonably good result."

Now, eleven years, three heart surgeries and dozens of procedures later, I watch you run, play, draw, read, imagine, climb, ride and generally experience a happy, healthy childhood--and I am grateful beyond words that you have been brought through with way better than reasonably good results.

Happy birthday, A. Peevie. I love you with a passion unfettered by reason.

Mom

Eleven

Darling boy,

You are eleven. Daddy and I are so in love with you, so enraptured with your unique you-ness, so crazy happy that we get to be your parents.

Also: sometimes you frustrate the shit out of us.

But mostly, we adore you; and we're grateful that you are here with us. When you were born, Daddy brought C. Peevie, age 2.5, to the hospital to meet his new baby brother. He ran into the room, totally ignored me, and commanded, "Baby A. Peevie! Me hold him!" He's been warm and nurturing to you ever since.

Not.

On day ten of your ex-utero existence, we noticed that you were too sleepy to nurse. Daddy and I went Christmas shopping, and when we stopped for lunch at a local Vietnamese restaurant, I tried again to wake you up to nurse you--but you would only latch on for a minute before falling back asleep.

By late afternoon, we were concerned. Ignorantly, we decided to wait until the next day to call the doctor if you were still abnormally lethargic--but then at 5 p.m. Daddy said, Let's just call the doctor to be safe.

He saved your life.

The doctor told me to pinch you to wake you up. You didn't respond. He said, pinch him again, HARD. I didn't want to hurt you, but he said, Pinch him HARD. So I did. You didn't even squeak.

"Bring him in to the ER right away," the ped said. My heart felt cold with fear.

At the ER, the in-take nurse said, "How long has he looked yellow?"

"Since birth," I said truthfully.

"Well, you should have brought him in sooner. He's very jaundiced," she said helpfully.

Fortunately, the rest of the ER staff was appropriate, kind, and professional. I do not know the name of the doctor who put his arm on my shoulder and told me as gently as he could that you were in very serious condition with and needed to be moved to a hospital with a Level IV trauma center--but I will never forget that he was as kind and gentle as he could be under the worst of circumstances.

By this time, your tiny chest was heaving, and you were struggling to breathe. The ER staff debated whether to intubate you right then and there, or to wait for the ambulance trauma team to do it. Meanwhile, Daddy called Roseanne, who was keeping C. Peevie for us.

"A. Peevie is very sick," he managed to choke out, before he burst into tears.

The first ambulance that came to pick you up was not equipped to handle a tiny infant in heart failure. There was a flurry of phone calls and conversations; we considered the possibility that you might die because of a failure to communicate. When the second ambulance came, at least 10 emergency transport personnel surrounded you as they rushed you out to the waiting vehicle.

I started to follow, but one nurse held me back. "You can't go in the ambulance," she told me; and I looked at her with despair. "There's no room," she explained gently. "Everyone in the ambulance has a job to do. Get in your car, go home and get your things, and meet us at the hospital."

Daddy and I just knew we'd never see you alive again, that you'd die in the ambulance on the way to the trauma center. We drove home in a daze, packed a few things, and called our pastor before heading up to the hospital.

The next time we saw you, tubes and wires stuck out all over your chest, arms and even out of your scalp. The intubation tube taped to your face kept you breathing in a regular rhythm; and for the first time since we brought you to the hospital, I started to cry.

I'll finish the story tomorrow; but let me just say for today that I'm glad you're still here, still growing, still being your own one-of-a-kind self. Happy birthday, darling boy.

Love, Mommy

Me and Turtle

Today my baby brother Turtle turns 46, and in his honor, I'd like to tell you a couple of stories about him.

Turtle and I did not get along when we were kids. I'd say to my mom, "I HATE him!" and she'd say, "Don't say hate." So I'd say, "Well, then I dislike him intensely!" and that was apparently OK, even though it makes no sense at all. I hated him because he had the ability to say exactly the right thing to infuriate me, and I had absolutely no ability to moderate the intensity of my emotional response to his relentless teasing.

We grew up on Lowell Road, which was paved to just past our house. Then one day the giant dump trucks came and dumped tons of paving rock on our street--and in a hot second, Turtle and I were both out there hurling rocks. Who could resist the temptation? Why else would they dump a bunch of rocks there, if they didn't want us to throw them?

It was all fun and games until I threw a rock and hit Turtle in the head. He started bleeding copiously and crying--but I cried harder. Even though I hated him sometimes, I didn't want to actually kill him.

I may have hated him at times, but we also had fun playing run-the-bases on the side of the house. We could play this game for hours, Turtle and his friends and me; we wore dusty brown tracks into the grass that my dad worked so hard to keep green and lush. He'd attack the dandelions one by one, and religiously follow his Scott's lawn care regimen--but by the time we were done pounding, running, and sliding, the earth would be showing through and the grass would be patchy.

We made up games like Just Barely Made It in the family room. Just Barely Made It involved climbing from one piece of furniture to another without touching the floor, which was a pit of hungry, snapping alligators. From the love seat, to the swivelling desk chair, to the ottoman, to the blue stuffed rocker, we'd imagine our way across the room like climbers facing a hundred-foot drop with the slightest mistake.

Sometimes we got into trouble together. When mom was sitting in the aforementioned big blue rocking chair, we'd sneak up behind it and tip the chair backwards until she was lying on her back with her feet waving in the air, screeching at us to put her back upright.

"You kids get back here right this instant!" she'd holler, and we come in all innocent-like.

"What's the matter, mom?" we'd ask innocently, not noticing that she was stuck like a turtle on its back.

"Get me back up before I break my neck," she'd say, and we'd oblige. Eventually.

Every Halloween, Turtle would collect massive amounts of candy. He'd hoard it in his room, selling it off piece by piece to the kids at school who ate theirs within a week. This was back in the day when kids could roam all over their suburban communities without their parents, ringing doorbells of total strangers with nary a scary thought. We used pillowcases for maximum-strength candy totage.

And the candybars, children, the candybars! They were full size--not the lame microscopic portions that we dole out today. Turtle would bring his Hershey bars to school after a couple of weeks, and sell them to his classmates at a huge mark-up. The Hershey Bar Index puts the cost of a full-size candy bar at 10 cents in 1970. My entrepreneurial brother would sell them on the playground for 50 cents or more. He even sold candy bars to the retarded kid for the silver dollars that the kid stole from his mother's pocketbook.

I'm happy to report that his sense of ethics and responsibility is no longer stunted, and he is one of the most trustworthy, ethical, and kind-hearted people that I know.

Happy Birthday, Turtle!

Eating Bitterness

One of the Olympic announcers mentioned tonight that the Chinese gymnasts are taken from their parents at age three to live and train at state-sponsored training academies. They only see their families once a year, he said.

Time magazine just published The Price of Gold, which describes the training regimen of young Chinese Olympic hopefuls. It's disgusting. "Our women can eat bitterness more than women from other countries," said a Chinese government PR creature. Yes, I said PR: public relations. Someone who's job it is to make China look good to the outside world.

Apparently, it's OK to force tiny little girls to live away from their families so that they can be twisted, stretched, pounded, and trained to world-class levels. For the glory of the state. And the little girls can take the training, the sadness, the separation, the intensity because they "eat bitterness" better than little girls from other countries.

Disgusting. Every single Olympics I have the same reaction: these children are having their childhoods ripped away from them. And it's not just the Chinese children--I'm sure it happens here, too.

(Just to be fair-minded: Not all young athletes are coerced into hours of unwanted training. Here's a different take on pre-pubescent athletes, describing tiny jocks that can't wait to get back into the ring or on the mat.)

In 1996 the Olympic committee mandated a 16-year-old age minimum to counteract the Nadia Comenici effect. You remember her--the 14-year-old pipsqueak gymnast with a collection of perfect tens in the 1976 Olympics? She, or more accurately, her coach, Bela Karolyi, ushered in the age of pixie gymnastics featuring pre-pubescent girls with extreme flippability.

But have you seen the Chinese gymnasts this year? Is there any way at all that Yang Yilin is 16 years old? The girl still has gaps in her teeth where a recently-sprung baby tooth has not yet been replaced by a permanent tooth. No way is she 16. Yes, I know her passport and Wikipedia have her birthday falling in 1992. I just don't believe it.

What makes me saddest is that Yilin is just one victim of the Olympic-win-at-all-costs philosophy. And she's one of the very few lucky ones--one with Olympic success and glory, and future financial comfort. What about all the other children? That Time article reported that nearly 400,000 children and young people have been "recruited," most from elementary school, to train at state-run sports academies. Only a few hundred will ever get to the Olympics.

It's disgusting. It's wrong. Maybe my perspective is entirely too Western and kid-centric--but obviously, I can't help that. I'm all in favor of respecting cultures and traditions--but not at such a high cost.

Update: See this article by Greg Couch in the Chicago Sun Times for a stern opinion about Karolyi and the undersized Chinese gymnasts.

Little League Mom Strikes (Out) Again

Hey, hey, hey, baseball fans. (Oh, my. I always start missing Harry Caray around this time of year.) Check out my new post on The Little League Coach.

Out in the blogosphere, parents and coaches are reporting that their seasons are over, and they're well into play-offs and all-stars. Not us. Our Little Leaguer is still suiting up and swinging away. We still have two regular season games and 2.5 make-up games to go.

C. Peevie caught a stinging line-drive at first base the other day, and is generally playing well in the field. He's struggling at the plate, however, which I'm sure is bringing his confidence down.

I remember what that was like. I often struggled at the plate as well--but in this 1977 game (!) apparently I was a "tour de force":

"William Tennent gained its eighth win in nine outings behind the pitching of Kathy Strobel, who is now unbeaten in four starts.

But the real tour de force belonged to sophomore second baseman Eve Meyer [AKA E. Peevie]. Starting for the first time, Meyer was a little nervous. She fumbled a couple of balls which paved the way for an early Pennridge lead.

But with Tennent down, 7-5 in the fifth inning, it was Meyer who drove home the tying runs with a single. Then in the sixth she opened the game up with a double.

The key defensive play of the game came when Monique Cousin threw out a runner at the plate--Monique was on target all the way from her left field position."

The caption reads, "Tennent's Eve Meyer shags throw as Upper Merion's Francine Collins steals second"--except they spelled my last name wrong.

Ah, those were the days.

Don't forget to check out my post on The Little League Coach.

The Lost Art of Tree Climbing

Do kids still climb trees?

I practically lived in trees when I was a kid. Our back yard abutted The Woods, which is what we called the one-acre-or-so property of our neighbor. To a small kid, The Woods was vast, dark, and mysterious; a forest of pines that laid a blanket of needles on the ground, dotted with pine cones and the occasional robin's egg, which we'd carry home gently and nest in a shoebox filled with grass, hoping to become adoptive parents of a tiny, soggy baby bird.

The trees were easy to climb (up, at least), with low-hanging branches that left your hands and clothes sticky with dark sap. Mom hated those sap-stained t-shirts, because the washer would loosen the sticky globs just enough to lift off a chunk and deposit it on one of Dad's dress shirts.

My brother and I and our friends would dare each other to climb higher and higher, to where the branches bent under our weight and we started to wonder in the back of our minds if we'd be able to get back down safely. We never did have to call the fire department, but I remember the fear that started to trickle down into my stomach when I reached down blindly with my foot and felt around for the next branch but didn't connect right away.

I still climbed the next day. We all did. It's what we did, before video games, when our moms got tired of our noise and sent us outside to play. We climbed trees.

(This reminds me of a line from The Princess Bride, when the Grandpa comes to read his Grandson a story. Grandson, skeptically: "A book?" Grandpa: "That's right. When I was your age, television was called books.")

My best friend Jane and I imagined ourselves a whole mansion in the weeping willow in her front yard. There were bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and our favorite, the living room. Each of these rooms had branches that, with the benefit of imagination, formed the requisite furniture of our willow chateau. The bedrooms had wide, horizontal branches: beds. The kitchen had a counter-branch where we chopped leaves and twigs for salad.

The exercise room featured a chin-up bar. I do remember a time, before my body weight exceeded my muscle capacity, being able to pull off 10 or 15 pull-ups and chin-ups in one session.

But, ahh, the weeping willow living room. A sturdy pair of parallel horizontal branches, one higher and about a foot behind the other, formed the couch. We could lean back in willow couch comfort, our feet resting on the willow ottoman, and watch TV through Jane's picture window. It was awesome.

Sometimes Jane's mom (my other mom, we used to say, because I spent so much time at their house) would give us snacks to bring out to our treehouse. A bowl of grapes, a PBJ, or a baggie of Oreos would keep us happy while we watched whatever one of Jane's four older brothers had turned on in the living room.

But back to my original question: do kids still climb trees? Maybe it's because I live in the city, and the tree-climbing options are somewhat limited--but I don't see kids climbing trees very often. In fact, if a kid starts to climb a tree, more often than not his mom or dad will tell him to get down so he doesn't get hurt. Also, many of our urban trees are replacements, still young, with skinny branches not yet ready for prime-time climbing.

Nowadays, tree climbing is an organized recreational activity with gear and rules. That's all fine, I guess--but I'm still a little sad that my kids are mostly missing out on a fun, imagination-fueling childhood activity.

Deep Thoughts with M. Peevie

The other day M. Peevie and I were driving along, having our usual conversations about random things. She loves driving with the windows open and hanging her head and arms (a few inches) out the window, like a dog. I looked at her in the rear-view mirror, and smiled, because she's so alive, so in-the-moment, so happy--and I get to be her mom.

At one point, she pulled her head back in, pushed her hair back, and said, "Mom, do blind people blink?"

Where does she come up with these things?

"Great question, M.P.," I said. "I don't know. What do you think?" That's my standard answer, because I know she's got some thinking going on behind the question, and that's always way more interesting than my answer.

"I don't know," she said, pondering. "We blink to keep too much light from going in to our eyes," she said confidently, "And blind people don't have any light going into their eyes, so they don't really need to blink."

"Are there other reasons that we blink?" I asked.

"Well, maybe," she said. "Oh, yes! We blink to keep things out of our eyes, and air and stuff! So blind people DO blink."

I think you're right, I told her. Our eyes blink automatically, to protect themselves, and to keep from getting dried out.

And then she stuck her head back out the car window, squinted and grinned into the wind, and started pondering her next Deep Thought. I looked at her in the rear-view mirror, and smiled.