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October 7, 2003
Are you there God?
It’s me.
The Creep.
It started out like any other crazy morning. I was kicking myself for not jumping out of bed 15 minutes earlier and panicked because deep down I knew it was physically impossible to get everything done in one hour and 18 minutes. We just passed one tough week with first Kaillan and then Brandan getting wicked bouts with croup. The kind of croup where you second guess yourself every couple hours. Her fever won’t break. He’s coughing so violently he broke blood vessels on his face. That wheezing can’t be all right. His chest rattled.
I kept them home five days except for running back and forth to the doctors and was so grateful when yesterday Brandan was definitely over the worst of it. It was about then that Emmie started sneezing. Knock on wood she simply rides her course.
I woke Brandan up and he seemed to be in pretty good shape. In a lickety split judgment call, I decided I would ship him off to school. Today was picture day and deep down I didn’t want him to miss out of his very first class picture. So what his lip was a bit swollen from his leap down the last five stairs and he still has a scratch above his eye from Kaillan trying to poke his eye out for something or other. So what those dark circles under his eyes only make him look paler and he feels so skinny to me since he threw up all those times over the weekend. Your first class picture is a treasure to cherish.
Anne Marie, our cleaning lady, was supposed to be here at nine and you can’t imagine what I still had left to pick up. While I tried to hustle Brandan and Kaillan through the morning motions and into warm clothes, Emmie cried her face off. She wanted to be cuddled and I tried three different times to hold her and do things and it wasn’t satisfying either need. Brandan and Kaillan were farting around all over the place and exasperating me no end.
“Brandan, do you want chicken soup or a chicken sandwich for lunch?”
“Chicken” he answered, in the voice reserved for knock-knock jokes.
I repeated my question. He repeated his answer. The third time I asked, my tone was so stern he had to come up with an answer that would save face. “Sa”. I told him to get his socks on. Again At the time, his dilly dallying and attitude, her emulating everything he was and wasn’t doing pushed every button I owned. They wanted Vector and Life Cereal mixed. That they eat a good breakfast is important to me, but never more so than when they’re sick and dwindling. So as I sliced bananas into their bowls, I told them we had eight minutes to get to the bus. They were up and down off the chairs, bothering each other and proclaiming bananas in cereal is disgusting. I told you Kaillan uses big words. It’s fair to say I hate whining and while they were busy not eating and not getting dressed or brushing their teeth, whining up a storm whilst I ran like a maniac trying to chop fruits and pack a lunch and a bag and stop that beeping on the washing machine with Emmie on my shoulder, I started to yell at them to just eat. Now. Brandan started gagging on the bananas. For the record, he can effectively gag on cue. With my finger pointed right at his nose, I told him not to dare. I don’t know if he spit or flipped those bananas all over the floor but his partner in crime copied. I told him he was going to have to eat them anyway. And in my head I knew I had lost it. Both of them were staring at me and I’ll never forget the look in Brandan’s eyes, he was trying to figure out if I meant it or not. I was so frustrated, so exasperated and so late, I yelled at them to get in the car, wrapped Emmie in a blanket on my lap and with Kaillan and Brandan on the seat beside drove six doors down. 8:45, we missed the bus. So I drove around our block to catch it. Wasting more time. Back to the house I went to get the baby’s car seat, strapped them all in, left the garage door wide open for Anne Marie and raced to the school respecting the four different school zones. I felt like the biggest heel in the world for all that yelling I did. What was my point? Where did it come from? What did I accomplish? I felt horrible, mean, guilty. Sure, both of their halos were a little tilted in that entire scene, but I could’ve have handled the whole situation a hundred different ways. It’s my job to make life easier for them. Every kid in the world has a right to a day that’s kicked off happy.
I moved on to a really nice day, just me and the two girls and when Brandan came home, I squeezed in some special moments with him. I’m not even going to try to share what lesson I learned because I don’t think I can explain it.
Saying life is too short to waste is so cliché.
I just got off the phone with my girlfriend. Hang on while I try to swallow my lump away. Her neighbor’s five-year old son started kindergarten last month, probably just as scared and eager and excited as my five-year old son. Then just like that, POOF, he got tired, dizzy, sick. Within two weeks and after a six hour operation for just the biopsy, his parents were given the devastating news: he has the worst possible brain tumor in the worst possible spot. Inoperable, at best he has one year to live. The tumor is growing fast. In one week he’s already blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, he throws up all the time and he hasn’t walked since the surgery. May never walk again. While I learned enough about this family to feel as though they’re my neighbors, I almost tuned her out, I got so lost in my pain for them. It’s that sick sick feeling where you want nothing more than to go back to life before you were part of the story. One day he was fine. My son is five. What will they tell him? His eight year old sister? He’ll be in pain. He’ll suffer. He’ll be terrified. And then he’ll die.
It makes my morning panic seem so freaking unbelievably stupid.
Life is your dance. Live simply. Live good. Laugh alot.
Be happy. Today.
Allisun
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