How Close is Too Close

How close is too close? When it comes to killer whales, this



is too close.

Despite our guide's reminders to be very quiet, when this little fellow flopped out of the pool to say hi, we all screamed, kids, teachers and chaperones, alike.

Look, you can see his teeth!

President’s Day

I've always thought that anyone who actually wants to be president must be crazy. A thankless job, I believe. An entire nation criticizing your every decision, having to decide whether or not to send someone else's son/daughter/father/mother into harm's way, all those formal, boring state dinners, and being constantly surrounded by reporters so that you could not even once drink too much and dance on the table. No, thanks. I think we should force someone to be president against their will, some infinitely wise person who has the good sense not to want the job. Someone like Bill Moyers.

That being said, today is a school holiday and The Kid has been hanging out with me which means the usual rhythm of reading and writing here at the desk has been skewed. I didn't expect to get too much done today anyway. We had a nice morning, played some Uno, learned many fascinating facts about deserts of the world and went out to lunch. The Kid is really becoming as avid a people watcher as I am, and I just love hanging out with him. We came home and all was well but then The Kid did something that completely and totally freaked me out.

He took a nap.

Yes, my seven year old child lay down on his bed and slept for about 45 minutes. This, says the fair Boots who is my go to girl in all matters of child behavior, is not a good sign. He surely must be getting sick. Even now, he's sticking close to the couch playing a video game. No fever. We went for a walk. He played Toon Town, I knit. Pretty standard afternoon stuff around here. Should I be worried? Should I assume that vomiting is on it's merry way? He says he's fine and that nothing hurts, but he seems tired, a little off.

Other than this little worry, we've had a rather nice day together.

The Truth about the World

A few days ago The Kid was running down the walkway after school to wait for me on the corner. I was about ten feet behind him carrying his backpack. He walked up to a second grader, a boy we know by sight, (The Kid actually calls him "that second grader") and the older, taller boy said a coupe of words I could not hear and then punched The Kid in the stomach. The Kid instinctively turned his back on the boy who proceeded to punch him twice more, once in the back and then he reached around and punched him again in the groin. Even now, it physically hurts me to write these words.

My child! He was punching my child. As soon as I realized what was going on I sprinted the few feet between us screaming "Stop!" My scream broke the spell, other people looked to see what was going on. Heads turned. The crossing guards looked up and that second grader took one look at the fury on my face and ran away as fast as he could. I had pulled The Kid up against me and started yelling, "Who is that kid?" And then in a much darker tone, "Where is his mother?"

I checked The Kid and although he was shaking and crying, he was okay. He said the other boy had punched him "medium" and not hard. A mother who witnessed the whole thing came over and told me the other kid's name. She even spelled the last name for me. I went home and called the school. I spent the afternoon bouncing back and forth between cheering up The Kid and pacing around the house muttering bad words under my breath. I called Lefty who was teaching a lab. I asked him to take his phone out into the hall and told him what happened. After we hung up, he walked down the hall, into a bathroom and kicked the wall – hard.

Is there anything worse than someone hurting your child? Is there anything else that enrages a normally somewhat sane person?

Later that night Lefty was talking to The Kid while he was in the tub, and the phone rang. The name on the caller id was the last name of that second grader. I took a deep breath and answered. His mother was so sorry. Her child had not said a thing but another mother who witnessed the whole thing had called to ask her about it. Her child said The Kid pushed him. I told her I was there, ten feet away, and that The Kid had done nothing of the sort. I tried to be nice and sound calm but the whole time this crazy rage felt like it was about to break through the polite conversation.

She said her child wanted to apologize. I said my child was almost certainly going to be afraid of her child and I would prefer if he just kept his distance. I told her I had called the school and that I was sure they would handle it appropriately. I was shaking when I hung up the phone. I told The Kid he would probably be called to the office to talk about it the next day. I emailed The Kid's teacher to give her a head's up. I went to bed and tossed and turned and worried and argued with the principal and demanded the other child be disciplined and threatened to go to the school board over and over in my head all night long. Very little sleep, much thrashing.

Dawn breaks. The Kid goes to school and the assistant principal calls me, explains how the school handles such things. Assures me, she is a mother. She will be sure that The Kid feels safe. He will be in the room with that second grader. She will listen to both sides of the story. I ask her to be gentle with my boy. He's only just turned seven. He's still so small. My voice trails off. I hang up the phone.

She calls me back mid-afternoon. Everything went fine, she assures me. The Kid was confident and unafraid. The other boy admitted to the punching and that he was not pushed or provoked at all by The Kid. He apologizes to The Kid and my child accepts his apology. She said they both smiled and talked about Pokémon for a minute or so before she walked them back to their classes.

So the fear and the anger (oh, the anger) are all dissolved in this crystalline moment of two smiling little boys. I don't know where The Kid gets his grace, his belief in the good in everyone – even someone who punched him in the groin. He didn't get it from me. I was ready to do a whole lot of things, but smile and forgive were not on the list. I'm happy with the way the school handled things. The other boy will be disciplined. But I'm particularly proud of The Kid and the way he handled things. He didn't catastrophize and think bad things happen, people are not to be trusted. He sees it as the fluke it was. He says "Sam (that second grader now has a name) will never do that again." And he believes it.

We Followed the Directions

I don't know which was more traumatizing – going to a THREE HOUR birthday party with The Kid or having Lefty walk into the final moments of said birthday party to tell me that our car went kablooey. (Okay, he did not actually say kablooey. He said bad, it is bad.)

We spent the weekend working on the car. We bought some wonderful stuff from the auto parts store that was going to, perhaps, fix our radiator leak. We read the directions. WE FOLLOWED THE DIRECTIONS. And the car appears to now be dying some sort of grindy excruciating death while it's vital fluids pour out. We were lucky, I think, to get it home last night.

Whiny Aside: This seems so unfair. We were trying to fix our dear old car and instead we made it a thousand times worse. If only we could turn back the clock and have the leaky radiator back! I would love the leaky radiator. I would embrace it in all it's leakiness. I would buy anti-freeze by the case and never complain.

This morning Lefty and I both had ideas about what we might do next. My idea involved a local garage and a prayer vigil. Lefty's involved a lab coat, safety goggles and borrowing some dangerous chemicals from the Chemistry Department in the hopes of alchemically undoing whatever damage we managed to do even though WE FOLLOWED THE DIRECTIONS. Here I am, taking a long, deep breath.

On a happier (less strident) note, The Kid got to ride in a limousine yesterday as part of the rather longish birthday party. He also bowled his first strike. He was one very happy seven year old. I was happy too, bathed in the glow that comes from seeing children who are behaving atrociously and knowing that your beloved offspring is practically an angel in comparison. I mean, in what universe is it okay to stand on a table in a restaurant?

Argh

I have a terrible cold that has moved from my head down into my throat - cough - and I baked two dozen cupcakes today...

What Will He Eat?

The Kid has started "grading" my cooking. When we sit down to dinner at night he grades each individual item on his plate, but his grading system is completely arbitrary. For a while it was an odd set of letters like D being the best and K being the worst. Now (since he's recently fallen madly in love with math) he uses a crazy number system with scores like 35 out of 92. The carrots last night were 15 out of 92. He is not a fan of cooked carrots.

He's not a fan of much on the dinner table these days. He used to eat a crazy variety of things including vegetables that made my little heart swell with pride, asparagus and spinach. But since he started first grade, things have been dropping one by one off the WILL EAT list. For the first time since he was a baby, I find myself really scrambling to get things onto the table that he'll eat.

This weekend we spent sometime discussing Christmas dinner. Since it is just the three of us this year, we can have anything we want and after The Kid denounced every single traditional Christmas dinner idea we came up with I just had enough. I threw in the towel – at least the "trying to please this kid" towel.

I told Lefty that we would make a yummy Christmas dinner. We would be sure to include something The Kid likes, and he could fill up on that if he wanted. This was definitely the way I initially approached dinner with The Kid but as he gotten older, I've found myself cajoling him more and more at the table. No More! I am changing my supper-making ways.

Remedial Safety Lessons

For a little while now, The Kid has been running ahead of us when we take him to school (we park about a block away). He runs down the sidewalk and then waits at the crosswalk, while we catch up. He does a similar version of this when I pick him up in the afternoon. He runs down back down the sidewalk, and since we are parked right there and don't need to cross, he stops at the crosswalk, turns around and waits for me, while impatiently tapping his foot. It's cute. On Friday I told Lefty this was probably the precursor to his wanting us to say goodbye at the crosswalk in the morning, and meeting me at the crosswalk in the afternoon - natural progression as he grows more independent.

Friday afternoon he ran ahead as usual, and since a friend of his was right there at the crosswalk when he arrived, The Kid crossed the street with him and then waited for me. I got to the crosswalk and looked across the street at The Kid just as he looked up and ran into the street. He did not look both ways. He didn't look at all. He completely ignored the crossing guards, fifth graders who looked on in shock as my son bolted across the street. I was stunned. Almost speechless. Thank God Thank God Thank God there were no cars coming.

When he got to my side of the street, I grabbed him. I tried to remember he was surrounded by his peers and not scream my head off. I chastised him in a shaking, low voice and saved the yelling for when we got to the car. I yelled until he was crying and I was crying. In retrospect, I honestly think it scared him as much as it scared me. I believed he understood all about the crosswalks and the crossing guards. We talked about it a lot at the beginning of school. Obviously, his impulses just got the best of him, or he just forgot. He's six (almost seven). He thinks he's invincible.

We talked, when we got home, about basic safety rules and I told him no more running ahead until we are sure he has the impulse control to follow the rules and can remember the rules every time. Back to remedial safety lessons.

I don't know if it's because I'm a mother or just a personality disorder that's unique to me but I could not shake the images of what might have happened. Even now, they nag at the corners of whatever I'm doing. Saying goodnight last night, I hugged him and did not want to let him go. But I did, that's what moms do.

Decision

Lefty and I drive The Kid to school. It’s about 5 minutes away. We park and walk him to the door. It’s a nice way to start our day all together. Lefty and I drive back home, then he goes to work.

Today, when we got back to the house, our neighbor’s small son – he must be about two – was standing on their porch crying. V’s car was not in the driveway and I know she has an older boy a couple of grades ahead of The Kid at the same school. Her husband is in the army and has not been home for several months. I knew immediately that she had driven her older boy to school and left the younger one sleeping. He’d woken up and being unable to find her in the house had come outside. He was not wandering in the yard. He was just standing on the porch crying.

What would you have done? I walked across the street and sat down on the steps beside him and said, “Your mama has gone to take your brother to school and she will be right back. I’m just going to sit here with you until she gets back.” In a minute or so he was in my lap and I pointed out the cat across the street and a bird in the tree and wiped a tear or two away. I kept repeating what I thought he needed to her: Your mama will be right back. Your mama will be right back.

And she came right back and was obviously shaken as she saw us sitting on the steps. She grabbed him and hugged him and said I’m sorry to both of us about ten times. I said, I understand. It’s hard to wake a sleeping baby.

My sister was a single parent when her oldest boy was young and I honestly don’t know how she did it. I cannot imagine how difficult it is. When Lefty goes out of town for three days, I fall apart, thinking – where is my help? Where is my backup? I can’t imagine raising The Kid all alone.

I walked back across the street and I could still smell that yeasty diaper smell from holding her boy. It reminded me of when the Kid was that small and needed me that much. It brought tears to my eyes. I checked back in with Lefty and wrote our phone number on a card and walked it back across the street. V was sitting with her boy, still holding him, still looking shell-shocked. I gave her our number and said, “If you get in a bind, call us. We’d be happy to give your son a lift to school. I know how hard it must be to be doing this by yourself and I understand.”

I came back home, and no, I will not call Child Protective Services. Let me say right up front, hers is not a decision I would have made. But I understand the calculated risk she took – hoping her baby would just sleep the 10 minutes it took her to run to the school and back. I would not have done that, not when the Kid was two, not now.

If I thought V’s children were being neglected or abused I would not hesitate, not for a moment. But they’re not. I see her everyday with her children and she’s a good, busy mom, who’s trying to sell her house in a limp housing market while her husband is away. I will not judge her. I will offer to help.