Brenda currently lives in Stoneham MA, but grew up in Mineral WA. She is surrounded by men, with two sons, one husband and two boy cats. She plays trumpet at church, cans farmshare produce and works in software.
It’s always hard to return to writing after having posted something Deep and Meaningful. For example, my life today is deeply centered on poop, snot and laundry. It’s a hard come-down to go from summarizing a man’s life to poop, snot and laundry (although I suspect he would’ve been deeply sympathetic on at least the poop and snot counts).
We’re sick here at my house. Not like desperately sick. Not running fevers and throwing up sick. No, we’re snotty sick — the kind of sick that can go on for months without exciting too much comment, and you don’t realize just how not well you were feeling until you start feeling well again. I have a diagnosed secondary infection (and am on antibiotics). Thane has already had one bout of antibiotics and is now pathetically, sadly full of snot. Oh, the snot. The thing is, babies mostly breathe through their noses. And his poor, wee little nose is so clogged up, he can’t breathe. And them as can’t breathe, can’t sleep. Every hour or so his mother heartlessly tortures him with a suction device of great cruelty. His nose is bleeding from where snot-scabs had to be removed. Every breath is a snorffle of unhappiness. I have him sleeping in his swing. I do suction out his poor nose. I have the humidifier going. I attempted to torture him further, uh, help him out by irrigating his nose with saline. These are the remedies available in the 21st century, all the drugs of the 20th century having been proven not to help babies and may cause harm. Salt water and suction.
Grey is sick too. His nose is like a Hawaiian (that has far too many consecutive vowels) volcano, with overlapping floes. I’m not too worried about him. He’s discovered the joy of sleeves as stand-ins for tissues. I would argue, but it beats the couch.
We will not speak of the poop, except to say that finding the cat gift at 3 am last night elevated my poop woes to a level to which they needed not go. One grownup and four poop-producing-machines is really unfair odds.
My brother came out this weekend to help out, which was actually very helpful. He made it possible for me to sleep in. Ah, blessed sleep. How I missed you. He also kept me from feeling too lonely. I am a social creature by nature. I like people. Preferably people whose poop I’m not responsible for. But he had to go back down to Princeton this afternoon, so it’s just me and the poop-producers again. Grey is sometimes company, but he’s also started getting into things. I need to be more alert, watch him more carefully, set out clearer rules and consequences, and follow through. That sounds like work to me. I think we may play with computers tonight. That is less like work.
My husband will return to me on Wednesday. I in no way begrudge the time he is spending with his mother. There’s no more important thing for him to be doing. But I also miss him. Every time I think about how I miss him and how I miss having him around, I get all sniffly because my husband is gone for a week. My mother-in-law’s husband is gone.
The boys awaken. I think I need to bring them both to the doctor tomorrow, to see if they have drifted into secondary infections. Likely so. I can’t wait to go back to work!
My father-in-law’s name has always been a bit of a mystery. If you were introduced to him, he’d firmly shake your hand and tell you he was Michael. My grandmother-in-law would usually add some warning about never naming an Irish child Michael. But on his passport (and magazine subscriptions), he was actually John Michael Flynn. No one I’ve ever met has ever called him John.
Mike was raised in Long Island — the youngest of three children. His father was an orphan. His sister died shortly before Adam and I were married. He idolized his older brother Jimmy who was the best man at his wedding. His brother had attempted suicide when they were both young men — probably about the age Adam and I are now. Jimmy’s suicide attempt failed, but cost him his ability to function. He died 6 years ago in the nursing home where that same grandmother-in-law worked as a nurse until she retired. Michael used to cry when I sang “Red River Valley” — it had been Jimmy’s favorite song.
During Vietnam, Michael served as an airplane mechanic for the air force. I think it was there that he got his taste for international travel. He returned to the New York and attended college on (I presume) the GI bill. While at college, he met a sweet young thing studying English and Education. They married, graduated, and bought a house in upstate New York. It was purchased for the big bay window and took what little money they had as they attempted to make it habitable. Any time I complain about commuting or driving any distance, I hear about the 9 hours that stood between Mike and Laureen and Laur’s parents in Long Island.
Michael and Laureen’s first child was a girl named Kietha. She was born too early for the technology of the time to save her, and she died very shortly thereafter. Every Christmas, Adam and I hang a small brass angel on the Christmas tree and remember the sister he never knew.
Not too long afterwards, Mike discovered he had testicular cancer. To pass along his own particular wisdom: “If your balls feel like a walnut, something’s wrong.” Surgery successfully removed the cancerous testicle, and spawned a favorite topic for family jokes for the next 35 years or so. Rarely did a gathering pass without someone (usually Peter) getting a good joke in about Michael and his one ball. Soon after the surgery, Mike and Laureen discovered that, happily, everything still worked.
Peter was born on December 10th, 1974. He was also born very premature, but in the years between he and Kietha, medical technology had discovered a way to provide oxygen to tiny newborn lungs. Adam, also born extremely early, arrived two years later at a hospital in Albany. His arrival was difficult enough to make sure that he would have no younger siblings.
When you sit at a table and hear the stories of this time, Mike and Laureen sound very happy, very in love, and very triumphant over their challenges. You’ll hear how the baby boys fattened right up on their mother’s milk, and how she made so much she could share with the other preemies. You’ll hear about Peter’s first words welcoming his brother home, “Dat my baby!” You’ll hear how they made do on the little they had and felt it was bountiful. You’ll likely also hear how both boys were perfect in every way, down to the last red-gold curl.
Michael was working as a technical salesman at the time. Laureen had been a teacher of English, but stopped teaching when the boys were born. When Adam was about two, Michael got the opportunity to go to Saudi Arabia with his young family and work with the Arab-American Oil Company (Aramco). They promptly decamped and moved halfway across the globe, where they would spend the next 20 years of their life.
Michael, Alec and Adam
Mike’s time in Saudi Arabia was happy. They took in lonely soldiers during the Gulf War. The house abounded in pets — dogs and lizards and birds and cats. Mike and his sons would walk the dogs together in the morning and talk. They raced boats in the streets during infrequent Saudi rains. Mike worked 5 minutes from the house, and would come home on his lunch break to share the meal with his family. Mornings and evenings were spent smoking on the back porch, talking about history, philosophy or the best way to manufacture a still for the highest quality homebrew. (Michael could and would give you a dissertation on the best ways to manufacture hooch, along with guidelines on the risks and rewards.)
Michael was a man of great curiosity. He loved to read books, especially about history. An archetypal view of Michael is him sitting at a table with an old printing of a book in front of him. The book sprouts sticky notes from every page. His glasses lay forgotten beside his pen, and he will likely lose both of them and spend the next 20 minutes trying to find them. Mike loved every period of western history, from the Knights Templar through to the Cold War. He took a particular delight in military history. He published articles on a diverse range of obscure historical points. At the time of his death, he was working on an article on Stalin.
His interest was not merely academic. He was also interested in the practical applications of what he studied. It’s amazing neither he nor his sons lost any fingers based on the stories one hears about firecrackers, live wires, black power experiments and blast furnaces. My favorite of these is a trick Mike played on his son Peter. Mike took a firecracker and placed it in the middle of a cigarette. He lit one end of the cigarette, placed it outside Peter’s window, and hurried to find himself an excellent alibi in another part of the house. Pete, of course, was rather startled by the explosion, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out who to blame. I can almost hear Mike laughing now.
Mike was a good father. He spent a lot of time with his sons and was very fond of them. He played games with them, talked with them, fished with them and explored the world with them. He called them Idiot Stick (Peter) and Dwarf (Adam), and the nicknames were infused with mischievous affection. Mike was a wonderful grandfather. He wrote stories with his grandsons, took them on adventures, patiently played games with them, sang them “Muleskinner Blues”, sent them notes from the places he would visit and frequently remarked on how exceptional and wonderful he found them.
Mike didn't let being sick get in the way of fishing
Not long after Mike and Laureen returned from Saudi Arabia to the cold winters of Rhode Island, Michael got sick with stomach cancer. He had surgery which removed most of his stomach, followed by radiation. Although his cancer never reoccurred and he lived for four years after that point, he never fully recovered. His weight plummeted by a third, and he vacillated between nearly-normal and sick as a dog. He was miserable and frustrated by his inability to do the things he loved, but he was still loving, curious and funny. Mike and Laureen moved to Atlanta to be near Peter, Jennifer and Alec (and to get away from New England winters). No matter how sick he was, he could never sit still. Even on his worst days he would run to the grocery store twice, the hardware store once, and strike up a friendship with the postman.
Mike with Laureen and Grey
Since the 4 am phone call telling us he was gone, I’ve struggled to find the words to encapsulate the man. The stories are many and funny, but none of them tells you the most important things about him. Michael was a man of energy, passion, curiosity, temper and humor. He was always happy to help with whatever you asked of him. He made friends easily with everyone he encountered. He never passed up an opportunity to tell you he loved you and was proud of you. He had an Irish temperament, to go with his fair skin, red hair and blue eyes, but never let his temper get in the way of making sure you knew where you stood with him. On the last day, he was a man who left this world with no word of love unsaid.
My husband’s father has been sick for about 4 years now. I think it was roughly 4 years this month that he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He had surgery and radiation treatment. They believe they got all the cancer.
Unfortunately, they also got the parts of his digestive system that process food.
You might have noticed that food is a rather important part of being alive and healthy.
Mike nearly died around the time Grey was born.
See what I mean? This was Mike a few weeks after Grey was born.
Over the next three years he has swung up and down. During the good times he was nearly back to fighting fit — maybe 120 pounds with energy. He went camping and fishing and played with his grandsons.
During the bad times, his weight drops under 100 pounds. (Note: he’s built roughly along the same lines as my husband — maybe broader in the shoulder — and weighs 30 – 50 pounds less.)
When he gets sick, and none of us have figured out what makes that happen, he can’t eat. What he tries to eat, he throws up, or comes through undigested. (Yeah, it’s fun to live through too.) His weight drops. He gets weak. He gets confused. The doctors haven’t been helpful. Then he’ll try something new. (Dear God, what have they not tried? They’ve tried enzymes and acupuncture and careful diets and chinese herbs.) And then he’ll get better. He’ll gain weight. His energy will return. He’ll sleep better. And that will last for a while and then he’ll get worse again.
But the betters never quite get back to all the way good. He has no reserves of energy, fat, strength, nutrients. He is incredibly vulnerable to anything. And right now, he is on a very low low.
They are putting him in the hospital today. My mother in law is the most positive, cheerful, strong person you’ll ever meet. She bounces back if she ever falls, and she rarely falls. She was in tears this morning. She is exhausted by worry and nursing. Four years of this would wear anyone down. It’s amazing she doesn’t lose hope of a regular life with him. But today her energy is spent, too.
I hope, of course, that this is just one more spin of the yo-yo. That in a couple days he’ll find some new food he can eat. (Fried calamari! It has 9 grams of protein! You never know what the food du jour is. For a while it was eggs poached in vinegar.) That he’ll have time yet to teach his grandsons to spit and curse.
But I’m afraid. I’m working on seeing if I can get my husband tickets down to be with his mother and father. I love my father in law. There isn’t anything left unsaid between us all, but you can never get enough time with the people you love.
In many ways it’s ironic that I’m such a happy denizen of the internet. I have this great and passionate love affair with paper and pen. For example, the other day my husband and I went on a date to Borders. (What? You’ve probably done the same thing.) While there, I purchased a gift for my 16 year old self. It’s a black leather journal embossed with a Celtic knot. 16-year-old-me went nuts over it, and promptly began writing poetry about how very alone I am, interspersed with overwrought descriptions of rain. (What can I say? I was raised in the Northwest!) You think that I started writing when blogs were invented? Hardly. I just switched from paper journals to blogs.
In some ways I prefer blogs. Paper journals never talked back.
In other ways, I miss the beauty and tactile fulfillment of paper and pen. There is an intense satisfaction to page after page of imprinted Bic writing in my even, if unlovely hand. The feel of a journal, with secrets, in your hand, lends your words a feeling of weight. You build, literally, upon the pages of the past.
I remember I always had problems when writing my journals with audience. I always wrote TO people. With a journal, I just never knew who those people were, although I pondered. My unthought-of children? My future self? My biographers? Now I know. I write to YOU.
There is a pen at the top of this blog. This is not a coincidence. It is an expression of my fancy and fantasy. I will likely now never write anything of great consequence with a pen. It is far too slow compared to the flying dance my fingers do over the keyboard. But I dream of ink, of creamy blank paper, and of the filling of space with words of import.
So I have a confession to make. Both of my sons have slept extensively in swings for the early part of their lives. Simply put, both of them really liked their swing and slept well in it. This is especially true when they have a cold and their poor little nosykins are all stuffed up. And when your baby is sick and sleeps better in a swing, well, you stock up on D batteries and put the baby in the swing.
I was reading an article about SIDS, though, and wondering. The conjectures are that SIDS happens when CO2 gets trapped by a baby’s mouth and nose, and instead of stirring to wake themselves and shift position like a grownup would do, they simply keep breathing it until they suffocate. In a swing, the air is moving much more than it does when the child is still. Has anyone ever done a study of SIDS incidence in swings versus cribs? Might it not actually be better for the baby? Call the doctor, mommy puts me to sleep in a swing!
I’m not sure when this started. I think it has something to do with organizing data for a living. (How are computer programmers like librarians?) But I’m a sucker for hard, empirical data.
For example, my company has no log of hours worked. But on my own, really for my own benefit, I’ve logged my hours for roughly the last 5 years. Why? To what end? I have no idea. I just like the fact that they are bona fide real facts and I can keep track of them.
Which brings us to today. When you nurse a child, you have no idea how much they are eating. The amounts are quantified as: not enough, enough and too much. (Too much, for the curious, usually results in a return of a rather larger portion of milk than you appreciate. Usually over something that is dry clean only.) But when you go back to work and sit in a server room for half an hour a day with the Economist (this week) and a breast pump that wheezes “wax on, wax off” you end up knowing EXACTLY how much. And if you keep the variables relatively consistent (twice a day with a noontime nursing) you can, you know, keep track. With this lovely, empirical, completely pointless data.
11 ounces, in case you’re curious. Tigris appears to consistently produce half an ounce less than Euphrades.
So of course I have to start logging this data. Not because it’s important, useful or valuable in any way. No. Because it’s DATA.
So after three months of being a full time mom, I’m back at work. I was full of trepidation for all the past week. How will I handle work? How much has changed? How am I going to get it all done?
That last fear hasn’t actually gone anywhere — there was plenty to be done when I was home doing it full time — but my psuedo-new-job anxiety has dissipated. I’ve been working for my employer for a long time — 6.5 years by my count. I’ve done the new-baby/pumping-mother routine before. While it is all unaccustomed based on my previous 12 weeks, none of this is actually new to me. That helps.
I’m hoping to bring a fresh energy and perspective to my job. In some ways the time off wasn’t just a maternity leave, it was a sabbatical. Having someone who knows the company inside and out AND who isn’t looking at it with jaded eyes can be valuable, and I hope I use that space to propose and execute some new and exciting ideas. I’m also thinking that work-related/tech-related reading for my pumping time (instead of the Economist) is a winning idea.
Notes from the first day:
*The server room (pumping room) isn’t as cold as I remember. Thank heavens.
*I went to see Thane at lunch and feed him. It was nice to get a little snuggle break in my day, and really doesn’t take that long.
*While I skirted dehydration while I was at home, my “at work” habits involve massive amounts of liquids, both of the caffeinated and non-caffeinated variety.
*My coworker managed to keep most of the plants alive while I was gone
*They MOVED the COFFEE!!!!
*There were at one point three of us pregnant in the office. One of them wasn’t in the office today. I asked another colleague how far along she was and his reply was “Three centimeters.” Heh. I wonder if we’ll have any overlap, or if she’ll go out just as I’m coming back!
The real challenge of working will be sleep. Thane is still waking up once or twice a night. Heck, GREY is still waking up once or twice a night. If I get up with my husband (and I really need his help in the morning), that involves getting out of bed at like 6:45!!! I need to go to bed earlier. My mom gave me a great piece of wisdom, that I will share with you.
The first three minutes getting out of bed are hard. But they’re almost as hard as 10 am as they are at 7 am. Make the sacrifice early and enjoy the time.
So I’ve been working my way through a book about photographing children. It had a small but useful chapter on the technical stuff that cameras do. I’ve discovered my point and shoot does NOT have any manual controls for aperture — the bit where you can blur backgrounds. Given the clutter that is the normal state of my environment, that would be mighty useful. But I did discover ISO, or how not to use a flash indoors. I think some of my photos are “noisy” from having gone too high in the ISO settings, but generally I like the light better.
The bulk of my pictures are of Thane. There are two reasons for this: 1) He is a baby and therefore massively photogenic 2) He sits still, unlike his cute (if snotty) older brother.
There are also one or two pictures I just thought looked cool and so left in place.
I laugh at you, stereotype that second children have fewer baby pictures than first! Thane shall not lack for baby pictures!
So today I took both boys to daycare. I thought it would be easier to drop Thane off at daycare because:
1) He’s a full month older than Grey was when I first dropped Grey off
2) I’ve known Rubertina for three years now, and have had a good experience dealing with her and my FIRST baby
3) Thane is my second baby. These things get easier with practice, right?
Ha. Wrong.
It’s hard to drop your child off at daycare for the first time. I don’t think it gets easier until they get older, either.
It probably doesn’t help that I read this story about SIDS and how it happens disproportionately to children on their first day being taken care of by someone other than their mom, for reasons which are not yet clear. Also, SIDS risk is highest between 2 – 4 months. Thane is 3 months old. I wish to heaven that SIDS didn’t exist and that the fear of him simply dying while asleep was an irrational one. I’m good and dealing with irrational fears. The fact that it is rational and it happens to sweet, smily, healthy children with no warning while they are peacefully sleeping is, to put it simply, utterly terrifying. We have as few risk factors as possible (no smoking, not premature, Caucasian baby, sleeps on his back, room’s not too warm, no blackets, yadda yadda) but it still isn’t zero.
These are the things that occupy your mind one the first day you drop your sweet, beloved child off at daycare. Or rather, the night before, to the great chagrin of your husband.
Happily, the things I worry about are statistically extremely unlikely. I bet that the drive too and from is riskier — especially in this weather. (On second thought, perhaps not such a happy thought.) I look forward to snuggling that sweet little body close to me tonight!
For Josh, Em an Al — my three better halves, and never mind the math.
I beat Em in Gheos last night. I know all three of the acknowledgees. I even know the authoress.
This is SO COOL. It’s like, um, really cool. At least half my friends have had visions of writing a book and having it published, myself included. More of my friends have actually written books, myself not included. But that someone I know can have, through hard work and talent, actually written and published a real book which can really be purchased through Amazon!??! Tres cool.
So go. Buy this book. Read this book. (I will as soon as I can — only my great devotion to my children prevents me from perching on the couch right now.) This book represents the hopes that we have, but fulfilled by great efforts and abilities of Maggie.
My Truant Pen 