Hands

Sometimes, when we walk together, Nathan will hold my hand.
Sometimes he waves his arms around like an indignant octopus in an often successful attempt to escape restraint.
But sometimes he will hold my hand.
There is something about that little hand wrapped firmly around my index finger that just melts my heart.
I look down and see my tousel-haired little boy walking beside me, occasionally looking up at me, eyes shining with excitement at a truck, or, even better, a purple bus.
But just under the skin of that reality is my dark eyed baby, blinking sleepy milk drunk eyes at me, soft fingers curled reflexively around mine.
And behind that? The picture I carry in my heart of my fetus, thumb in mouth, holding onto the umbilical cord for security.  He is anchored no less firmly in my heart now than he was then, but he is less often attached to my side.

Whether it is two spoons at dinner or not holding my hand in a parking lot "Na-Na", as he calls himself, has his own ideas about how things should be done.

It makes me happy. And quite frankly, it makes me sad.  My sometimes baby, sometimes boy will too soon be always boy.

I'm not an activist by any stretch of the imagination.  Not to say I don't care or I don't have opinions, but I've never considered myself to have the discretionary time necessary to do anything big about it.  Still I do believe that many people performing small actions can effect as much change as one big action.  In this vein, I have decided not to buy gas from BP.  It's the closest to our house, the most convenient by far, but certainly not the only choice.  I've been torn between the rationale that they need all the money they can get to fix this mess in the gulf, and the thought that they don't need my money to support their ongoing pursuit of profit.
In the end, I decided to pump my fuel elsewhere.

Until today, that is.  This afternoon, I heard an ad, a plea really, from the owner of our local BP franchise. 
I'll paraphrase:  "I live here in your community.  I employ your friends and neighbors.  It's not my fault that the BP well exploded.  BP is trying to fix it.  Please don't blame us.  Please buy gas from me." 
It was much more eloquent than that but that's how it broke down.

It made me think.  We know that the fishermen in the gulf are suffering.  We know the tourist trade is declining.  We know the effects of the oil in the ocean can be shown on computer models to be catastrophic if it is not stopped.  But what about the BP franchise owners in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Washington?  Nowhere near the water, and definitely not on the news, but being driven out of business, loosing their livelihood and savings nonetheless.  All because people like me want BP to know, in a small, small way that we disapprove.

The excuse for inactivity is so easy to make.  My single gas purchase makes no difference and is not felt one way or another.  It is only the cumulative effect of many that makes an impact.  That's true for BP if I don't buy their gas, and for the local franchise owner if I do.  But I do have to choose.  I do have to decide if I side against the large corporation for their non-malevolent negligence or with the local small business owner and a community that has already been financially bludgeoned with the relocation of the steel industry.

Tonight I'm not sure.  I continue to struggle, and I'd love to know what you think.

Wait, it comes together . . .

When Dave and I hadn't been dating for very long at all, he got me a very special gift.  It was a mini-rose bush.  We sat in front of it as he explained that it was like our love.  Lots of blooms open but lots of buds with promise to come.
A few months later when my "green thumb" had brought the rose bush to its knees, Dave begged me to no longer think of it as representing us.

For our wedding favors we gave small "Tree in a Box" sets for planting a tree in the Jewish tradition.  We planted our own seed and the resultant tree, a flowering catalpa, has made it through 5 years.  Every spring when it sprouts new little shoots and leaves, we always breathe a sigh of relief.  This year, on our fifth anniversary, despite being repotted to a larger pot, fertilized, and even put outside, it has refused to give any green.

**********

We're certainly not plumbers but we have had a few do-it-yourself adventures in our kitchen.

When I was pregnant, we decided to replace the kitchen faucet with a fixture with a pull-out hose/nozzle.  I was sitting on the floor reading the directions and Dave was under the sink doing all the work.  When he turned on the water to check the connection, the hose, with nozzle as yet unattached, went crazy and sprayed water all over the kitchen.  The worst part, though, was that Dave had reversed the connection so he thought he was turning on the cold and instead ended up dousing me with straight-out-of-the-water-heater hot water.  Luckily no permanent damage was done to anyone or anything and we are able to laugh about it.

Today Dave replaced our garbage disposal.  The motor on the old one was dead, so instead of being able to confirm the breaker was off, we just had to turn off the entire first floor and basement.  (Our house is wired strangely enough that turning off the second floor may have made sense as well, but the electrical vagaries of our house make a post for another time.)  It could have been an easy job but there were a few hitches, including a trouble with the wiring that had both Dave and I wrestling with exposed wire.  Finally, it was all together and we were working together to get it up and secured to the sink when my shoulder flipped up the switch.

And the disposal roared to life. (OK, purred through its noise dampener, but it was the thunder of our lives flashing before our eyes to Dave and I.)  Nathan asleep upstairs and his parents blithely playing with exposed wires hooked up to 220 with only a switch between them and certain doom.

When we started breathing again, we could only laugh nervously, and Dave just turned off the whole house.  It seemed the safest even though the wiring was done.

**********

This evening, on our front porch, we noticed that our wedding tree has finally put out two little shoots of green.  Coincidence?

Trouble

- with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bear.


Gummy Bears to be exact.  Gummy Bear Vitamins to be uber precise.
I've scoured the ingredient label, and I can't find crack, but maybe it's hidden in amongst the fancy chemical names for things like vitamin E (alpha-tocopheryl, anyone?).  Nevertheless, Nathan has a powerful need for the gummy bear.  Every morning we come down to the kitchen, and thus begins a frantic pantomine of pointing, signing "more" and "please" and then the addition of vocal choruses of "more-more", "buh-beh" (gummy bear, for those fortunate enough to be uninitiated to this ritual), "peasss-peasss" (surely you recognize please-please - in baby talk).  I think the intensity of his hand motions, pathetic pleading, and unutterable cuteness is almost enough to levitate the bottle off the counter and into his grasping hands.
Almost, but not quite.  He remains dependent of his mother and her mean-spirited, unfair, doctory, ridiculous, one vitamin per day rule.
Two days ago he resorted to rolling around on the kitchen floor in indignation, howling "please more gummy bear", tearing his hair, and beating on the ground.  And when his mother, cold-hearted woman that she is, simply stepped around him as she emptied the dishwasher and asked him to please stop shouting and refused to hear reason, he sat up and with tear-stained face, turned on his 1000-watt smile and said "peass-peass, buh-beh" in the the most pitifully pathetic tone ever given voice.
And I'll admit it.  I almost caved.  Almost went the route of "one extra vitamin couldn't possibly hurt him".  But I didn't.
I gave him dried mango instead.

Yes, I bribed him with sweets, but apparently standing firm on the gummy bear issue was enough because while we continue to have protracted conversations about my refusal to dish out more of the good stuff, there has been no more wailing or rolling (at least about "buh-beh's").

The Golden Years?

So far second year of fellowship is awesome.  I don't have much weeknight call - none at all in July, and so last night, on what would traditionally have bee the night I would have come home from work late and been on call and getting paged all night, Dave and I celebrated.
We sat on the deck, enjoying our new patio furniture, listening to the planes overhead and watching the fireflies blink.  We talked about truly deep aspects of our lives like tiki torches and Nathan's delight in his pint sized deck chair.
It was wonderful.
I do have one complaint though.
This morning I have itchy mosquito bites. 
I never got mosquito bites as a first year fellow.

Something I Love

Every night at bedtime we read "Goodnight Moon".  Nathan requests it with an enthusiastic "moon, moon!".
We have little rituals as we go through the book.  The mouse squeaks, the kittens miaow, and for reasons I have never understood, Nathan always smells the picture of the three little bears sitting in chairs.  I lift his hand up to my mouth to "shush" against it and now he puts his little hand up as soon as the page appears, and giggles with delight when I tickle his palm.

The part I really love, though, the thing I know I'll miss the most as he gets older and wiser is "Good night Air".  When we turn to that page, speckled with stars across the top and a white void at the bottom, Nathan reaches up and wiggles his ears.

Good night ears.
What does he know of air, anyway?
Ears he knows, and every bedtime we tell them good night.

Fine Young Cannibals

I think of myself as a pretty relaxed parent. 
Nathan bounces around on the ground a lot.  He is, after all, perfecting his walking/running/climbing/exploring skills and a few head bumps/pinched fingers/little scrapes are just all part of the process.
I was, however, completely unrelaxed today when my son came home with teeth marks on his baby skin. 
It's not the first time.  On his second day in the toddler room we took off his shirt at bath time and there was a perfect dental imprint written in broken blood vessels in the middle of his back.  Today, apparently the same offender got out of control and bit my little guy's shoulder.
And drew blood.
When Dave arrived to pick him up, our tear-stained boy was surrounded by day care workers, ice packs, and incident reports.  The mother, an attending I have worked with on more than one occasion, was mortified and apologetic.  Nate's teachers were similarly distressed.  They are supposed to keep "the twins"  and their teeth separate from the other kids, but today there was a breakdown in the system.
I'm not OK with this.
I'm not OK with biting.
Nate has spent exactly 3 minutes in time out and all 3 of them were after the first and last 3 times he bit anyone in this house.
I am glad I wasn't there because I am not sure I would have settled for time out if I had actually seen the little boy nearly twice Nathan's size trying to make a meal out of my baby.  Caning is still legal, isn't it?