Wild Thing

My two-year-old drives a black motorcycle with an American flag. 

Just like his grandfather. 

Desmond parks his bike in his "tree house" -- a wildly huge weed of a shrub that boasts leaves the size of dinner plates.

My kids use the leaves as umbrellas on rainy days and parasols on sunny ones. In fact, we called it the "umbrella tree" until Desmond moved in as a squatter and took possession of it. The tree house has a front and back door and visitors are quite welcome. It also has a garage out back where Desmond keeps his lawnmower. 

 

Most days, he rides his motorcycle to North Carolina while we wait to pick up his sister at the bus stop. 

Josephine likes to taunt him: "North Cackalacka. North Cackalacka."

That's my fault. The funny name. Not the taunting. 

Josephine also owns a motorcycle. It's pink with a red stripe and polka dot flag. 

Not at all like her grandfather's. 

She doesn't ride it much. She prefers to pick flowers and dirty mushrooms while we wait.

 

Yesterday, Desmond informed me that he rode his motorcycle to Africa. I wondered how he got there, given the rather large ocean that separates the two continents. He put the bike on his kayak and sailed there, don't you know. 

One of his favorite books these days is "Where the Wild Things Are." I imagine he fancied himself like Max who used a private boat to sail off "through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are."

Like Max, Desmond likes to play with monsters. He pokes at them with a broom or imaginary stick and growls. "I'm going to eat you up." Then he runs away. Looking for his motorcycle, I suppose.  

The Long Letting Go

Twenty years ago, at my senior prom, my friends and I danced to "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS. 

We were optimistic. Naive too. I lost touch with all but one of my friends from high school. 

College, travel, opportunities, age, time. It all helped tear us apart. 

I've been thinking of old classmates and dear friends long forgotten over the past several months as my 20-year reunion approaches. I misplaced my brain several years ago and the bulk of my childhood memories a few years before that. But I do recall that song and the earnestness of its refrain:

"And they could never tear us apart."

What made me think of the song recently, though, wasn't the close of one school chapter but the start of another. 

A few weeks before Esme started kindergarten, she blew a dandelion on a walk to the coffee shop. I asked what she wished for. "That I get everything I want," she said. I told her that sounded a bit greedy and wondered if there was anything else she might want. "That I don't have to go to school."

I was surprised. She'd been talking about school for months. She was looking forward to the bus and chocolate milk in the cafeteria, recess and big kids. She did daily fashion shows in her uniform and modeled the different outfits - spring, winter, P.E. - for every visitor to the house. 

Given all the outward signs of excitement, I asked why she didn't want to go. "So I can stay home with my family," she said. 

Esme has been my constant companion for the past five years. She went to preschool but only for three hours at a time. And not every day of the week. I can count on two hands the nights I've spent away from her, including three when the twins were born.  

I cried as I labored with them because I missed Esme so terribly. Admittedly, it could have been the pain too.

She and I share a crazy strong bond that Kent remarks upon often. It's like we're tapped into each other's heads. Frequently, she will notice something totally random or obscure - the color of a house, the shape of a cloud, a berry in a tree - and comment at precisely the moment the thought forms in my head. 

It might be cool if it wasn't so spooky. 

When Esme was about 22 months old, we sat across from each other at a sandwich shop. My head was woozy from the twins inside my belly and I was eating potato chips to settle the nausea. We looked at our food and folks passing by the window beside us. We looked at each other. We didn't speak. She reached her hand across the table and put it on top of mine. We sat like that for a while. In silence.

Esme and I are the same kind of quiet. The same kind of curious. The same kind of strange. The same kind of vulnerable. 

Lots of parents breathe a sigh of relief when school starts because it means a few hours during the day to get chores done and think without chaos. 

But for me, it means time away from someone whose company I adore, whose conversation I appreciate, whose observations I look forward to. Eight hours a day. Five days a week. That's a lot of lost time.

Recently, I wrote about the fading of summer into autumn, my favorite season. I surprised myself when I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was more sad about what's passing than excited about what's coming. I couldn't figure out why. 

Eventually, I did. 

I'm over the moon about Esme's new adventures and super excited for her to start this remarkable journey. But I'm also mourning the loss of her in my day. I'm mourning the acceleration of the tearing apart. 

After all, the start of the long letting go began five years ago, the day she was born.

This Post is Not Yet Rated

I had an embarrassing encounter of the intimate kind at the garden today --with a zucchini squash. 

Ah-hem. 

Let me introduce you to King Kong. 

I've been complaining about my two impotent squash plants all summer. Together, they produced just one.... ONE! ... small fruit. Looks like somehow this guy got into the Viagra.

"Oh my God!" I screamed when I saw this thing, this REALLY BIG THING, lurking beneath the green vines of my garden. I felt a little bashful actually. Like I'd stumbled upon an open copy of Playgirl or witnessed a wardrobe malfunction at a Chippendales show. 

Then I found a second one. And it's nearly as big. 

I walked back to the car from my garden plot laughing. And blushing a bit. 

Kent couldn't move beyond "Wow" when he laid eyes upon it. 

It is a creature to behold, to be sure. You can't help but make jokes. 

"Is that a squash in your pants or are you just excited to see me?"

Bad jokes. I know. We're still 14 years old here. 

Kent cracked me up with imitations of the old ladies from the garden plot happening upon my bounty.

"Oh my!" he said, putting his his hand to his heart.   

"Heavens!"

"Tut. Tut."

Garden porn. Who knew?

S.M.O.T.Y

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this public service announcement: Don't eat the pokeberry.

 

Seriously folks, if your children are little naturalists like mine you probably let them collect all manner of flora and fauna. You may even own a collection table like we do where the daily treasures are stowed for further review. Ours is a beat-up, plastic piece of garage-sale detritus that sits on the front porch. 

On any given day, it features seed pods, rocks, sticks, dried flowers, feathers and, today, a stem of berries from a pokeberry plant (also called pokeweed). 

The berries are beautiful; the plant itself, not so much. It's a glorified weed, really, that grows in sidewalks and forlorn lots like this one. 

 

The berries are deep purple, almost black, and hang along a pink or red stem. The contrast of colors is gorgeous and, of course, enticing to curious youths scanning the sidewalk and their surroundings on hikes to and from the park. 

I suppose they're also enticing for a 12-month old boy whom I sometimes call a bear because of his fondness for blueberries. Indeed, take another look at those fruits, ripened to perfection in this case. 

They look just like blueberries, no? Who can blame him?

Anyway, I didn't know pokeberries were poisonous until Tobias walked toward me with purple juice on his chin, his clothes and his hands, clutching the berry-packed stem in his pudgy fist.

At that point, I didn't even know the plant was called a pokeberry. 

There's a term for mothers like me in moments like this: 

S.M.O.T.Y or "Shitty Mother of the Year."

A friend's older sister coined the phrase years ago when her two-year-old son pulled a Christmas stocking down and got clocked in the head with the 5-pound weight she used to hang said stocking. Her other sister writes a blog by the same name. You can check it out here. 

I looked at my neighbor, who actually spied Tobias first, and wondered aloud whether the plant might be toxic. Go on, call me naive. I'll cop to that. But I immediately set about trying to figure out just what he ate. 

My neighbor suggested pokeweed; another, pokeberry. 

Ding. Ding. Ding. 

Correct answers, both. 

So, I did what everyone does nowadays and consulted my Internet physician. "Is pokeberry poisonous?" I asked Dr. Google.

Ding. Ding. Ding. 

Correct again. 

Next step: Poison Control. 

Now, to my credit, this is the first time in five years of raising children that I've had to call Poison Control. They're very helpful, by the way. Mary Beth took control immediately. Asked one question after another in a relaxed, matter-of-fact manner and dispensed advice the same way. 

Tobias didn't have more than 15 to 30 seconds with the plant, as best we can tell, and it didn't look like many berries were missing. So, he probably ate four or five, definitely not the handful Mary Beth said it would take to make him really sick and necessitate an immediate trip to the emergency room.

Eating the plant causes stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Symptoms can appear from 30 minutes to five and a half hours after ingestion. There's no antidote for the poison; doctors treat the symptoms instead. So, they provide fluids to stave off dehydration from excessive vomiting, for instance. 

Geez. 

Thank heaven 7-11 Tobias didn't get sick. Mary Beth called again this evening to assure me that if Tobias had not developed symptoms five hours after eating the fruit, he wasn't going to. 

Phew!

We went on a nature hike this afternoon to find the offending plant. My 5-year-old marched us right to it. It's big and beautiful. And toxic too we now know. Esme brought a letter from her kindergarten teachers today that noted, among other things, the science experiment they did this week with colors. I'll hazard a guess that the science we talked about today - pokeberries are poisonous! - made a bigger impression than the co-mingling of different-colored Play-Doh samples. 

But what do I know? I'm just a S.M.O.T.Y.

P.S.  Want to see what we brought back for the collection table today?

This...

 And these...

 

...and THIS!

 

"A voice as loud as a blast of buckshot"

Lately, I feel like I'm living with Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett. She's the lead character in the children's book of the same name who came out of her Mama's belly on fire. 

"I can out-talk, out-grin, out-scream, out-swim and out-run any baby in Kentucky," she crowed to her nine brothers. She delivered her challenge - seconds after being born - in a voice "as loud as a blast of buckshot."

I know that indomitable attitude. I know that piercing voice. We call her Josephine. 

Our own Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett woke this morning at 2:19 in a five-alarm blaze of personality screaming at her Papa, "Sleep with me! Sleep with me! Sleep with me!"

The torrent of sobs that followed a sharply delivered "No" shook my bed. At the other end of the house. 

The morning before, our heretofore star sleeper got up at 4:30, ready to tackle the day. Like an NFL linebacker. 

Today, I feel like I've been tiptoeing around her, trying to steer clear of the sparks and flames shooting from her ears, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, THE TOP OF HER HEAD. The Nobel Prize goes to the scientist who learns to harness her tumult and thereby ends our country's dependence on foreign oil. 

So why is Josephine waking when she never used to? Why has she ratcheted up the drama? What's with the sparks and flames?

Our Sally Ann has a different side as well. She's not all alligator wrestling and mountain top racing. She can't sedate an angry bear with a smile or calm furious birds with a scream. Ok, maybe she could do that. She is really loud.

My point is, Josephine is like an egg. The hard shell protects her gooey inside. 

I've watched her take spectacular falls at the park only to get up, smile and quietly walk away. The forced smile fools other parents. Not me. 

My mother once rebuked Josephine for misbehaving and nearly died as she watched her granddaughter's lips start to quiver and her body shake before she collapsed into gut-wrenching sobs. 

It's hard to remember Josephine is so fragile when she's whipping up an alligator tornado like Sally Ann.

She worked so hard all summer to collect what she sees as the merit badges of big girldom: wearing underpants and using the potty, putting on her own socks, drinking from a cup. Going to preschool was the most coveted one. 

This week, preschool started. Josephine was the picture of confidence her first day. And again today. 

But here's the thing: I think it takes guts and great bravery to do what she's doing. And while she's one tough cookie, as tough as Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett (who, you must know, sprayed herself with the funk of a skunk and donned a hornet's nest as a bonnet to woo her husband), she is still just two years old. 

And the world is a scary place when you're two.

The recent tempest reveals what the brave veneer hid well. Until now. 

I think when she wakes from her nap we'll go for a custard cone. And try to calm the storm that brews within.