Baby Caprices

     On the night of our Hanukkah party, I held one of my friend's newborn babies.  His tiny head smelled like angels or something.  Suddenly I felt little arms wrapping themselves around my leg.
     "Mommy!  Huggie!  Please huggie!" Clara said, craning her neck to look up into my face, her peachy little cheeks smeared with rugelach filling, and thus looking even more delectable than usual.
     I knew she was jealous.  Love and irritation formed a spicy curry in my heart.  For months, I've had to curtail my savage baby-holding appetite so Clara doesn't think her status as "pearl of my crown" has been compromised.
     I squatted down so she could see the baby's scrunchy little face.
    "See?  It's a little baby.  I'm just holding him."
    "No!  I me my baby! [anxiously splaying a sticky, pudgy hand across the chest of her pink poodle sweater]  My mommy! [slinging her arms around my neck] This baby's mommy! [pointing to the little guy's mommy, who stood near the buffet table]."
     Mother, perhaps you do not understand.  You are my mommy, and as such, you are entirely my possession.  This baby has his own mommy, and she is standing over there. The order of the universe is  gravely tested when you insist on holding babies that are not me.

                            ************************************

     One morning about a week later, while I was parallel parking my car, I decided to probe Clara's understanding of family relationships.
    "Do you know Jenna who plays with you sometimes?" I asked, awkwardly turning partway to make sure I didn't bump the car behind.  Clara had been playing in her car seat with two Pilgrims from her Little People Thanksgiving play set. The sun had just crested the buildings around us and was lighting up her hair like a halo. She bestowed a brief glance on me.
     "Jenna is going to have a baby!" I finished.
     Clara looked back up swiftly and scowled.
     "No!  My mommy and me my baby!"
     "There are more mommies and babies in the world than you and I," I told her, perhaps misunderstanding her confusion.
     "No! Denna no have baby.  I my baby and my mommy."
      Mother.  Please.  I am your baby.  Jenna does not have a baby, as everyone knows.  Why are you trying to give me to Jenna?  I like Jenna, and I like to play with her.  But she is not my mommy.  I don't know how many times I need to tell you this, but you are my mommy.  The whole world might shatter to bits if you continue to pursue this unreasonable line of logic.
     "Do you want me to carry you or do you want to hold my hand in the parking lot?" I asked, unbuckling her from her car seat and setting her down on the sidewalk.
     "No! No hold hand!" she shouted furiously, and would have run off if I had not grabbed the back of her coat.

                     *******************************************

     Two nights ago, Simon walked in the door from work as I was strapping Clara into her booster seat for dinner.
     "Hi, Sweetie!" he said.  Clara's usual response is to lavish him with hugs and kisses, but not that night.
     "No!" she said, looking at him thunderously.  She held her hand up as if to say, "Don't come any closer or I'll wing this spoonful of cottage cheese at you!"
     "Whoa," said Simon, raising his eyebrows at me.  "Did you have a good day?" he asked her.
     "No Daddy!  Just Mommy!" she shouted.
     "Hey, Sweetie, it's not okay to yell at me," said Simon, turning to rummage through the cupboards for a snack.
     "Yes," I agreed. "Daddy works hard every day so you can have cottage cheese for dinner." (Guilting: a shameless maternal indulgence)
     Clara continued her dinner in tyrannical silence, but, as Simon stepped to the microwave, she gave him her classic "Daddy" look: head tilted down and slightly to the side, eyes big and fluttery, sweet smile on lips.  She continued to shoot him these looks throughout her dinner, interspersing them, confusingly, with loud imprecations directed solely at him.

                    *******************************************

      Yesterday I sat down on the stairs to help Clara put her shoes on.  Wilbur came trotting up the stairs and pushed against me, raising a paw slightly to show that he was both willing to shake my hand and also bare his chest for a scratch, should I be interested in giving him one.
     "No, 'Bur!  This is my mommy!" shouted Clara, shoving him to the side.  "My mommy, 'Bur!"
     "Can I tell you something, Clara?" I asked.  "You are not a baby anymore."
     The universe shuddered.  The trees in the backyard creaked and threatened to fall.  An icy breeze blew through the house as the eighties hair band The Scorpions suddenly appeared astride the stair balustrade and began to sing, "The Winds of Change."
     Clara put her hands over her eyes and shook her head back and forth emphatically.
     "No, no, Mommy! I'm baby!" she moaned.
     "Let me finish though," I continued.  "You are not a baby anymore.  You are my girl.  My big girl. You are my Clara, and you will always be my Clara!" And I hugged her hard.
      "Say again, Mommy!" she crooned, smiling, liking the sound of "Big girl." So I said it again, and hugged her again.

                   **********************************************

     This morning as I picked up a sleepy, grouchy Clara from her crib, I said, "Good morning, Big Girl!"
     "No!" she grumbled, burrowing her face into my neck. "Not Big Girl! I'm baby!"

Christmas Eve Hike

     It was cold on Christmas Eve.  At the base of the foothills north of Boise, the sun was so bright I had to squint, and the wind so strong stray pieces of hair fell from my hat and got stuck in the corners of my mouth.  The hillsides were blond-gray with wet cheatgrass.
     Clara crouched down the trail from me, bulky with clothing, collecting pebbles and rocks.
     Simon, holding Wilbur on his leash and carrying our backpack full of provisions--gummy bunnies, cheese, water, and Cliff bars--stood over Clara, speaking gently.  I could sort of make out that he was encouraging her not to collect all the rocks on the trail, and reminding her that we had a long way to go.
     She suddenly stood up and, grinning, started to run, her winter boots and the Pull-up diaper under thermals and jeans making her little hips swivel awkwardly.  Arms pumping, head down, she looked like a tiny, very fierce linebacker.
     I knew it was only a matter of time before she would again hear the siren song of the trail's gravel.  So, as soon as she and Simon caught up to me, I had Simon put her into the baby pack on my back.
     Clara wasn't pleased about this. She screamed into my ear. Her speech, usually about seventy-five percent intelligible to Simon and I, plummeted to about five percent.  I finally put her back on the ground as we crested a rise.  Above us, Bogus Basin mountain was dusted with snow.  Below us, naked tree branches jutted sharply, dolorously, from thousands of Boise backyards.  And beyond that, the less-attractive wilderness, the desert, stretched bleak and cold, to the even more desolate Owyhee Mountains.
     "Come on, guys, awight? Awight, guys?" Clara said as soon as she'd regained her land legs and I'd wiped the snot from her cheek. She beckoned us further up the trail with a pudgy toddler hand.  Did she need help?  I wondered.  It was pretty steep and getting steeper.  Please, her body language said.  It's you who don't know the dangers of this terrain, the strength of thigh it requires to climb this mountain, the agility of foot needed to find purchase on this wind-blasted surface.
     She took several steps and then puffed to a stop.
     "Huggie," she moaned, lifting her arms.  I carried her to the summit.  She took off on a trail that bisected the side of the mountain, grabbing at the branches of sagebrushes while I tried to keep up.  Suddenly ravenously hungry, she systematically plowed through half of our cheese rations without breaking a stride.
     Finally she seemed tired enough to sit in the baby backpack again and eat gummy rabbits. One of them got stuck in her hair.  Later I would have to cut it out with scissors. Simon walked behind us, trying to keep Wilbur from asphyxiating as he pulled enthusiastically on the leash.
     "Dude, please, chill out," I heard Simon say.  (Wilbur's caprices always make Simon talk like a frat boy.)
     Halfway back down the mountain, the sun went behind some clouds, washing the landscape in anemic gray.  The shift from light to dark felt devastating.  The mountainside was exposed to the bitter wind and Clara started to cry from the cold.  We stopped to put her gloves on and then changed direction, so my body shielded her.
     "Wannu go on a plane, Mommy.  Wannu go on a plane with Aunt Nay-na.  Wannu go on a plane visit Gammy an Popi in dere house."

     "Someday we'll go on a plane again."

     I wondered if the physical pain of being too cold reminded her of emotional pain: her ever-present longing to ride in an airplane to visit relatives or simply people who seem more exciting than Simon and I. Or maybe it was the hawk, riding the wind currants above us, that made her think of the airplane.
     She talked about airplanes and how badly she wanted to ride one again--and how badly she wanted to visit Grammy and Popi at their house in an airplane again, and how disgruntled she was that her aunt (Simon's sister) had flown off in a plane the day before but she had not been allowed to go with-- all the way down the mountain.  I murmured condolences.
     Finally, near the bottom of the mountain, she sighed deeply, and then began to sing.  She sang, "The Wheels on the Bus," and something that Simon translated as "Bippety-Boppity-Boo" from Cinderella.  She sang, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," and then some sort of caterwaul that, after several verses, we discerned was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
    Since she was riding on my back, her mouth was essentially in my right ear.  There was no escaping the pitch problems and slurred consonants.  But I didn't mind.  I don't think I myself would have thought, as a very little girl, to sing as a way to feel better.  Or even that I had such power to make myself feel better.  In spite of the suddenly dreary sky, I felt sublimely happy for her.

Baby ticken

     Yesterday Clara got into the Tupperware container that holds her hair ties and head bands.  She put several hair ties around her wrists and some hairbands around her neck.
    "Neckyices, Mommy," she explained, preening.
    "Hey, please don't put those hair ties on your wrists! They cut into your skin!" I said, reaching for her.
     "No! Yet me do dis, Mommy!" She took off down the hall, ran into her bedroom, and then turned around just inside the door to enjoy the full deliciousness of being chased, the way it made her back tingle. Then she slammed the door with aplomb.  I opened it and she ran to the end of her crib, shrieking in delight.
     "You can't dit me!"
     I chased her into her closet, growling into the gloom, and then started flipping through the outfits hanging up to find one for her to wear.
     "Mommy! Hurts my wrist!" she said, coming out of the closet and holding up her hands.
     "I know!  What did I tell you!  These bands cut into your little wrists!" I pulled the rubber bands off her wrists and put them back in the Tupperware, snapping the lid on tight.  I handed her a shirt.
     "Would you like to put this on?"
     "Yes."
     It kept her busy while I straightened the bathroom.  After a minute I heard her muttering, vacillating between worry and exasperation: How come she couldn't get this darn thing on? What the heck was up with this shirt? Was she doing it wrong? Someone had made it wrong, for sure.  Didn't people even know how to make shirts anymore? For crying out loud.
     She had put one arm correctly through the shirt's armhole, but put the other arm through the neck opening.
     "It's too big fer me, Mommy," she said anxiously.
     "It's not too big.  It's just that that hole is for your head, not your arm.  It's okay, though.  Shirts are a very confusing thing.  Would you like me to help you put it on?"
     "Yes.  Mommy heps."
     I put it on her and then we went downstairs so I could make her some scrambled eggs.  She ran around the kitchen, yelling, "Wheels on da bus go roun and roun!"  Soon this morphed into, "Wheels on da bus go meow meow meow!"
     "Do the wheels on the bus go meow like a cat?" I asked, grinning down at her.
     "Noooo!" she said, snorting with laughter.  She cracked herself up.  She giggled so hard she collapsed against my legs.
     "Mommy, huggie," she finally said.  I swung her onto my hip so she could watch me make the eggs.
     "There's a baby ticken in dere," she said, pointing to the eggs, grinning like it was a special secret.
     "No, no baby chickens in there," I said.
     "Yep! Ticken in dere!  Ticken cookin', Mommy!"

Gramma Nina

     On Friday, my mom and my gramma came over for coffee and a sweet before Christmas shopping.
     "Hi, Sweetie!" my gramma said to me as she came in the door.  "Well, hi there!" she said to Clara, who I had been in the process of dressing.  We'd been having an argument about underwear.  Clara had won, and was wearing pink Cinderella Pull-ups with Minnie Mouse panties over the top.
     Gramma Nina recently moved to Idaho from West Virginia.  She's a self-proclaimed hillbilly who grew up in a little hollow in the mountains called, vexingly, Butt Holler. Butt Holler was named for the Butt family, who lived there first, I guess.  Gramma says growing up nobody ever thought twice about the name.
     Simon and I went to Gramma's hometown for a family reunion in July several years ago.  The town is verdant and densely forested, and not as hot in summertime as you'd think.  Patsy Cline went to high school there, just a few years ahead of Gramma Nina.  Gramma says she remembers Patsy always wore cowboy boots to school.
     While we were in Gramma's hometown, Simon and I caught up with my Great-Uncle Howard, one of Gramma's older brothers.  Great-Uncle Howard doesn't wear his dentures because they irritate his gums, and he chews tobacco incessantly.  The extra tobacco gathers in the corners of his mouth, so it always looks like he's been eating Oreo cookies.  He carries a spit cup in the cup-holder in his car, a very sensible solution, unless he hasn't emptied it in several days.
     In West Virginia, we also met Dump, one of my distant relatives.
     "Shouldn't we call her something else?" I asked Gramma.
     "Nope. That's the name she prefers," Gramma replied.
     Lest you think Gramma Nina has spent all of her eighty-some years back in the holler, going to church socials and singing old bluegrass songs in a plaintive alto, you should know she has moved back and forth across the United States at least a half-dozen times.  This will be her second or third time living in Idaho. She's adventuresome.  She's also like a person who can't get comfortable in bed at night, and thrashes around, finding each new position better at first, and relieving in its newness.
      "I love to move," I've heard her say on more than one occasion.  She even went to the Philippines as a missionary for five years, where the natives thought she could do magic because she was so tall and pale, with fluffy, white hair.
      Gramma Nina has never met Clara, only read about her and seen photos online.
     Clara's eyes widened when my mom and Gramma Nina came through the door.  She loves visitors.  She stood stock-still, eyeing them with a faintly cheeky smile.  Then, perceiving that the situation might call for some decorum, and that it was incumbent upon her to take charge, she puffed her chest out.  Then she pointed at me and said, "My Mommy," by way of introduction, but also as a way of establishing the power dynamic.
     Mom and Gramma Nina settled in at the kitchen table and I poured them Caramel Delight coffee in the china I got for my wedding.  Both take their coffee with lots of cream.  Gramma Nina also likes sweetened condensed milk in hers.
    I passed around the box of miniature Cheryl's cookies we got in the mail the other day. Gramma Nina pawed through them and found one with buttercream frosting.  Then she squinted at the nutrition information on the back.
     "I'm trying to cut back," she explained. This news pained me a little.  Both Gramma and my mom love sweets, and generally indulge several times a day.  Or at least they did when I was growing up.  Buttery Danish cookies, pans of homemade brownies, slices of three-layer red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.
     "If I let myself, I'll eat just sweets all day," Gramma Nina sighed at my kitchen table.
     "Well, Mom, they got me on thyroid," my mom said, selecting a chocolatey cookie.  "My metabolism hardly works."
     When I was little, and Gramma was living for a spell out here, she and Mom went to a weekly weight-loss club called Tops that met behind the offices of the Glenns Ferry Gazette.  The club's women all sat in folding chairs around a table, confessing their week's worth of sugary indiscretions.  Or fatty, salty indiscretions, as the case may be.  Whoever lost the most weight that week got to wear a red velvet cape and plastic tiara for the duration of the meeting.  Afterwards, everyone marched around the table and chanted, "Tomorrow is another day! Tomorrow is another day!" a la Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind.
     After I'd passed round the cookies, I wrangled Clara into a black and pink dress with a pink tulle skirt and striped leggings underneath.  My mom selected a cookie for her and sat her up on her lap.  Clara was intoxicated by the combination of gramma kisses and sugar.  She snuggled in close to my mom's chest and grinned with chocolate-covered baby teeth.  Not only was my mom super-snuggly and kissy, she had also worn a necklace with a sleigh bell at the end, and Santa Claus earrings that jiggled and danced around.  Clara took another bite of cookie and I saw her little pink toes curl under with delight.  I'd seen my mom's toes do the very same thing while she ate homemade ginger snaps or peach kuchen.
     We chit-chatted for awhile.  Gramma Nina said she'd finally found a church near her new place that sang out of the old hymnals instead of using an overhead projector.  She told stories about riding a flatbed truck and singing Christmas carols back in the holler.  She told a story about my twin cousins who, when they were toddlers, were selected to play Mary and Joseph in the Christmas play, and who got in a fight over the Baby Jesus in front of the entire congregation and started whacking each other over the head with it.
     Mom and Gramma Nina finished their coffee and it was time for them to go.  As they stood, Clara wanted to know, solicitously, if they wanted to come downstairs and play for a little while.  I told her they couldn't this time, and she came and stood by the door while they said their good-byes.
    After they'd gone, I put the box of cookies away and Clara wandered about the kitchen, looking for her toy bunny. Both of us feeling a little deflated, I think.

Holiday Psychosis: Parts I & II

                                                                       Part I


     This morning, when I woke up, I lay in bed for awhile, trying to envision the Mary Poppins cake I'm going to make Clara for her second birthday in a few weeks.  I want to make one of Mary Poppins standing vertically with her umbrella unfurled above her.  In my mental image this morning though, the umbrella stem--which was made of cake--drooped flaccidly.
     Of course, you can't make the dang umbrella stem from cake, I told myself, getting up.  Downstairs the dining room table was covered in glitter and scraps of white paper.  I'd been making a bunch of snowflakes and decorating them with glitter for a Hanukkah party we planned for this weekend.   Which reminded me, I needed to practice making latkes.
     "Mommy, I want to doe outside," said Clara, looking up at me from under her mop of curly blond hair.  "I want to doe to the park."
     "Okay, okay, we will," I said, trying to find the measuring cup for Wilbur's breakfast.  Clara had put Wilbur's Christmas collar--the "Collar of Shame" we call it--on him, and the bells on the ends of the ruffles jingled merrily every time he moved his head.  He looked at me with deep embarrassment.
     "Sorry, Buddy, but you look pretty cute in that," I told him.
     "Mommy! 'Bur is eating my boogers!" Clara yelled ten minutes later, while I was upstairs brushing my teeth.
     He had pulled one of her dirty Kleenex from the trash and was "killing" it, viciously snapping his head back and forth, and making the Christmas collar jingle like a passel of psychotic elves. I pulled the collar off and cleaned up the shredded Kleenex.
     "Bad, bad dog!" I told Wilbur.
      Then I looked up and registered that, while I had been upstairs, the horsemen of the Apocalypse had ridden through our house on a morning reconnoiter.  Every single item had been pulled from Clara's toy box. The living room floor was littered with, among other things, tiny furniture from Clara's Calico Critters dollhouse.  The main inhabitant of this house, Bunny, was riding naked in a blue Cinderella Lego carriage nearby.  Bunny's dress was on the stairs.  Various rubber insects from a bug-themed birthday party Clara had gone to were strewn--rather tastefully, I must admit, with a definite eye for spacing--across living room furniture and shelving. Additionally, Wilbur had pulled one of Clara's urine-soaked Pull-ups from the kitchen garbage (probably when he managed to get the Kleenex) and shredded it.  Little, pee-engorged moisture beads glistened across the the expensive Turkish rug Simon got on a post-college trip to the Mediterranean.
     I put on a pot of coffee.  My husband and various of my friends have issued a decree: I shouldn't drink coffee. I am one of a cluster of ultra-sensitive, somewhat-neurotic people to whom coffee and caffeine in general can have beastly effects.  But this was an extreme situation, I reasoned.  I needed the extra energy to clean up this mess and muster up the verve for Hanukkah revelry.  My heart leapt as I realized we were D minus 48 hours.  And the house needed to be perfect.
     I drank half a cup of Starbucks dark roast and whipped through three loads of laundry and cleaned the bathroom.  I put all the furniture back in the Calico Critters playhouse and put it up on a shelf, out of reach of little hands. By early afternoon it felt like a cyclone was building inside me.  I began to fantasize of ways to attack Simon when he got home from work.  Had he picked up the dog poop in the backyard? Probably not!!! Did he remember to break down all those cardboard boxes?  I whipped open the door to the garage.  He had.  Well, but, I had to remind him like....ONCE!!!!
     "Wow, I feel so...nutty," I said, putting my hands to my head.  It felt like someone was squeezing it with a vise.  Somehow the idea I might be experiencing effects of extreme holiday/birthday stress combined with contraindicated caffeine didn't occur to me.
      There is only one thing that makes me this crazy! I thought.  I dug around under the bathroom sink until I found the pink box of pregnancy tests.  I peed on one of the sticks and waited.  Negative.
     "Come on, you dang thing!" I said, whacking it against the wall next to the toilet.  Still negative.  "Dang it!" I said and tossed it into the garbage.
     Downstairs Clara marched back and forth across the kitchen, dragging along the box her Calico Critters playhouse came in.
     "Where's my house, dang it! Dang it! Where's my house?!" she yelled.

                                               
                                                          Part II


      "I think I might be pregnant," I told the girls at work later that day.
      "Congratulations! How far along do you think you are?" asked Mallory.
     I quickly calculated in my head.
     "Three days."
      "What?! You can't even get an accurate test until, like, two weeks from now, right?"
     "Yes.  But I just feel like something is different...I feel so weird."
     "It's a very weird time of year.  Very stressful," someone else said.
     "Anyway, even if you were pregnant, you're not supposed to tell anyone until you hit fourteen weeks," said Shelly.
     "Bah!" I waved her off with my hand.  "You know me.  I can never keep my big mouth shut."
     There followed a discreet, suspiciously long pause.  Yes, this is true, everyone seemed to be thinking.
     Later Brian knocked into my chair.
     "Stop it!  The fetus!" I hissed.
     "Are you kidding me?  You are not pregnant.  You're just doing this so people will feel sorry for you."  Brian was around when I was pregnant with Clara, and bears the battle scars.  And I have to admit, he had a point.  The thought of being coddled through the holiday season was infinitely comforting.
     Back home, I told Simon my pregnancy suspicions.
     "But the test was negative," I finished sadly.
     "Of course it was," Simon said. "You can't defy the laws of physics and biology.  Even if you were pregnant, it would still be really, really early for a test."
     "You don't understand! When I get pregnant, I get really, really pregnant!"
     Simon's eyes widened and the pupils twitched imperceptibly. Since getting married to me, Simon has learned to roll his eyes so subtly and quickly, if you don't know what you're looking for, you might miss it.
     "Why don't we just hire someone to clean the house before the Hanukkah party?" he said.  "And we don't have to have Clara's party here.  We could do it somewhere where they provide the cake and everything and all you have to do is show up."
     "No, that is too expensive," I said firmly.  I envisioned myself industriously baking and cleaning for the parties, a veritable June Cleaver.
     You should see all the crap Cinderella does in one day, I thought.  Then, Yes, but she is half your age.
     The next day, I had our handyman, Ezra, come haul away some furniture so I could better organize the playroom.
     "I'm going to help you move the furniture to your truck," I told him. "Don't worry, I'm very muscular."
     Halfway up the stairs with an overstuffed recliner, the footrest popped out, yanking me forward and severely testing my abdominal stability.  I sensed, not pain, but a weird release in my low back.  By the time we'd finished loading the old love seat, I was walking stooped over.
     "I have never ever had this happen before," I assured Ezra.
     After he left, I affixed a bag of frozen peas to my lower back, winding duct tape around my middle to keep it in place.  I couldn't stand long enough to cook, so I ordered a pizza.
     "Niiiiccce," the pizza deliveryman said when I opened the door. "Rockin' the duct-tape back brace."
     That evening we went to our neighbor's for a Hanukkah meal (on a side note, our neighbor, who is a Latter-Day Saint, makes rugelach as delicious as any I've tasted in any Jewish deli in Brooklyn).  Clara wept because she wanted me to carry her across the lawn. Simon had to explain to her that I had an ouchie on my back, a concept that really alarmed her.  Finally, I discovered if I walked bow-legged, with my feet wide, and leaned over a bit, like a praying mantis, I could hold her for brief spurts.
     Simon looked on with grave disapproval.
     When we got home that night, I said to Clara, "Honey, I can't give you standing huggies before I put you in your crib, but I will sit on the floor and give you as many huggies as you like."
     I cradled her in my lap as I haven't done since she was just an infant, and kissed her on her firm, peachy cheeks, and kissed her blond eyelashes.  I even kissed her little white teethies.
     "Okay," I told Simon after we'd put her down. "We can hire a housecleaner before the party."

Park Daze

     "Oh, the cold! The cold! I can't feel my feet!  I can't breathe!" I said, staggering up the grassy knoll at the park. "Will we ever reach the top?"
     "Yes, Mommy," said Clara, looking at me in puzzlement.
     "We're mountain-climbers, remember?  We have to get to the top of the mountain!"
     Clara, not knowing what a mountain climber was, but understanding the importance of pretending things, mimicked my giant, ponderous steps and wheezed and gasped with pretend effort. Yes, we were mountain climbers, which were very, very tired people who had trouble breathing and staggered around a lot.
     At the top, I yelled, "We made it! Let's run down the other side!"
     I started running, but Clara yelled, "No Mommy, no! Hold hands!" It wasn't out of fear.  Rather, running places is always more fun if you're holding hands.  So I grabbed her hand and we ran down together.  She doesn't have the hang of downhill running yet.  Her legs go faster than the rest of her, which makes her look like a tiny, giggling puppet.
     We were compelled to climb the "mountain" three more times to establish that we had, indeed, conquered it.  
     The swings were next.  Ah, the swings.  Clara likes to try out each one.  I tell myself she's testing the nuances between height, comfiness and durability of rubber seating, and the different perspective each offers on the rest of the park (though they're only about two feet apart).  And when she asks to switch swings after a mere thirty seconds on each one, I tell myself it's because her taste in swings is so refined, she must try each multiple times to fully gauge their differences and find one that suits her sensitive palate.
     I finally took her off the swings and she ran to the slides.
    "Hey, how about a smile for Grammy and Popi and Gramma and Grandpa?" I asked.

     "Hey, that's not a smile!  Smile like you usually do!  Show some teeth!" I encouraged her.

     "Wow.  That's not how you usually smile, but I like it.  I do.  I appreciate all the effort."

Clara Wakes Me Up...Again

     "Hey!  HEEYYY! Hey!" Clara shouted into the darkness early this morning.
     What the? I thought, trying to get out of bed.  Accidentally stepping on one of Wilbur's paws.
     "HEY! Hey!"
     It's like having Robert DeNiro sleeping next door, I thought, feeling around for my bathrobe. It was 3:30 am.  It's been months and months since Clara woke up in the night. I figured she might be getting her two-year molars.
     "Hi Baby, what's wrong?" I asked, lifting her from her crib and giving her a kiss.  "Do you have an ouchie in your mouth?"
     "No," she croaked. Though dainty of feature, Clara has a naturally husky voice that gets downright gravelly at nighttime.  Plus, because she's a toddler, she has thug syntax.  If you hung around her in the evening, you'd swear I'd watched The Godfather all day everyday while she was in utero.
     "Are you hungry?"
     "No.  Wannu snuggle."
     "I will give you some huggies, but it's not time to snuggle right now.  It's the middle of the night!"
     "Wannu snuggle, Mommy!"
     I hugged her for a second and put her back in the crib. She roared, her voice reaching a new, exquisite level of intensity, fueled by a terrible combination of sleep-deprivation and righteous indignation. I tried to get her to lie down, but she gripped the top of the crib railing with soft, dimpled hands that belied her brute strength.  Then she slung a delectable toddler thigh over the top rail and made as if to bail out of her crib.
     "Okay, okay, we'll snuggle, but just for a few minutes," I said. I know if she makes the leap from her crib to the floor, she'll not only survive, she'll be empowered. She'll practically rip the jammies off her chest like Superman rips off his shirt.  After the discovery that her crib can no longer contain her, there will be no stopping her.  No one in this house will ever, ever sleep again.  For this reason, I plan to keep her in her crib until she's eighteen.
      We're not making a habit of this middle-of-the-night snuggling, I thought, wrapping her in a blanket and settling us down in the rocking chair in the corner of her room.  After a moment, she said,
     "Wannu snuggle Daddy."
     "Daddy's sleeping."
     "Wannu snuggle big bed."
     "Heck no, Baby Girl.  We're not opening that Pandora's box."
     "Yes. Peese, Mommy."
     "No.  No way," I said, standing and putting her back in the crib.
     She gave out a low, dirging bellow that rivaled Marlon Brando's in A Streetcar Named Desire. I promised to stroke her hair for an extra long time if she laid down. Finally she acquiesced.
     After this, she's going to sleep until like ten tomorrow, I thought gleefully when I got back to my room. I nestled down into my delicious bed.
     "Hey!  HEY!  Hey! MOMMYYYYY!!!!!" I heard at 6:40 am.
     "Alright, alright," I said as I entered her room.  "Do you want to come snuggle in the big bed?"
      It might buy me a couple more minutes sleep.
     "YES.  Yes, yes, yes, Mommy."
     I brought her back to our room and settled her next to me.  Simon had just gotten up and was taking a shower.
     "Daddy, it's wake-up!"
     "Yes, Daddy's going to work."
     She settled into the bed and was still for approximately one-eighth of a second. Then she pushed her little foot into my hipbone, using it to leverage herself deeper into the pillows.
     "Ow!" I yelled, turning to face away from her.  She thrashed around some more and kicked me in the kidneys.  I moaned and rolled onto my back.  She grunted and climbed on top of my chest.
     "Eyes....nose....mouf," she murmured, picking out each of my features with none-too-gentle hands. Then she laid precisely prone on my chest, little arms pressed into her sides, nose squished tightly into mine, mouth pressed into mine.
     "What are you doing?" I muttered through closed lips. It was the one of the most irritating things I'd ever experienced. Call Hillary, I thought.  I've found a way to deter Assad from chemical weaponry. 
     She slid her runny nose, warm and wet and smelling faintly of yesterday's Go-Gurt, down until it was pressed against my mouth.
     "Yuck! Yucky, Honey!  Please don't put your nose in my mouth.  Don't you want to snuggle and rest some more?"
     "No, Mommy! It's wake-up! Wake-up! Mommy! Yes!"

 

The Very Young and the Very Old

     When we pulled up to Papa's assisted-living complex in Florida, he was waiting outside in his maroon Jazzy electric scooter. It was just after Thanksgiving, and Simon and I were visiting one last time before flying back to Idaho.
     Papa is Simon's grandpa, the father of Simon's mom (not to be confused with Popi, who is Simon's dad).
     As we got out of the car, Papa was talking to an older woman resident of the same apartment complex who I initially mistook for his wife, Great-Grammy.  She had the same hairstyle as Great-Grammy, but when I got closer I saw she wearing eyeliner and lipstick.  Her face was flushed with health.  Her age spots sort of reminded me of freckles.
     "There are a lot of single women here," Papa had confided to Simon and me during a visit the day before.  "And most of them don't want to be single," he had added meaningfully.  "But what are you gonna do?" And he had shrugged.
     Papa was happy to see Simon and I, but most happy to see Clara.  He wanted to take her for a spin on the Jazzy. I'm told he nestles iPod speakers into the scooter's seat and drives it up and down the halls of his apartment complex blaring big band and Debussy.
     Clara looked at him with deep suspicion. I attempted to sit her on Papa's lap. Papa's had bad knees since high school, long before he got married and had Simon's mom.  World War II didn't help matters.  Now his knees splay stiffly out to the sides of his Jazzy's chair. In an attempt to make more lap to sit on, Clara hooked her little ankles around his knees and pulled them closer together.  She grimaced with effort.  I'm certain having his knees wrenched together could not have been comfortable for Papa, either.
     The Jazzy made a low whining sound as they drove down the sidewalk.  Looking somewhat put-upon, Clara glowered darkly out from under her bangs and held onto the sides.
     We--Simon, Simon's family and I-- followed them under the shade of palm trees until we came to the nearby building where Great-Grammy lives.  Papa makes the short trip between his apartment building and hers every day. On the first floor, he attempted to execute an elaborate, eight-point turn before backing into the elevator.  Simon's mom rolled her eyes in the way of daughters who have spent a lifetime dealing with a parent's idiosyncrasies.
     When the elevator doors opened on Great-Grammy's floor, we saw her sitting in a wheelchair at the corner of a hallway.  There was another lady resident sitting with her, and also a man.  Great-Grammy's white hair was cut short and combed straight.  It looked soft as cornsilk and was styled sort of like a flapper's.
     "Hello, Dear," said Papa, expertly driving the Jazzy up to Great-Grammy's chair.
     Great-Grammy nodded slowly at him.
     We wheeled Great-Grammy into a little room away from the hubbub of residents and their aides and found chairs that we arranged around her.
     "Mom, do you know who I am? What's my name?" Simon's mom asked, placing her hand on Great-Grammy's arm.
     "Oh, yes, yes," Great-Grammy murmured, blinking her dark eyes with deliberation.
     "What's my name?" Simon's mom asked again.
     "Mmmm-hmmmm," said Great-Grammy.
     "She doesn't know me," said Simon's mom to me.  Still, she told Great-Grammy her name and then pointed out Simon and Clara. Great-Grammy smiled down at Clara, who wore blue jeans with butterflies on the back pockets and a hot-pink shirt.  Looking at her, Great-Grammy even shrugged her shoulders a little like she used to do when she found something delightful. Clara flitted around Papa's Jazzy, eyeing the joystick that made it go.
     "Dad, put on your brake," Simon's mom instructed.
     "I'm fine, I'm not even touching it," said Papa, intractable.
     "Just put it on!"
     Papa made a show of swelling up a little, like a rooster, but then abruptly changed his mind and put the brake on.  Simon's mom had told us the day before that, much to everyone's horror, he had recently rearranged the furniture in his apartment.  Apparently he had relocated the eight-foot-tall curio cabinet in the corner of his living room using the Jazzy's footrest like the bottom slat of a forklift.
     We all sat watching Clara play with a deck of cards from a Carnival Cruise.  After a bit, Great-Grammy shut her eyes. Papa rested his elbows on the arms of the Jazzy.  His jowls and his drooping lower lip--my favorite feature of his--made his whole head seem to hang more than usual.  And perhaps he was a little tired.
     "Come here, Honey, come sit on my lap," he said to Clara.  She had made her way to my lap, and was hanging onto my knees, sighing with boredom.  She shot Papa Jack a look of pure coquetry and then tilted her curly blond head up and away.  The classic spurn.
      In the folding chair next to me, Simon's dad had dozed off, face resting on upturned palm.
     "Wake up!" Simon's mom said.
      Without lifting his head, Simon's dad briefly opened his eyes a fraction. "Leave me alone! I can nap if I want to!"
     Great-Grammy's breathing was soft as she slept.
     Clara seemed exhausted but restless. She kept eyeing some therapeutic toys stored in plastic bins high on a shelf.  Finally she ran from the room.
     There were toys in this place, but she couldn't reach them.  There were people here, but they sat in chairs and didn't talk.  And if they did, it was slow and filled with wonder, like a baby awaking from a dream.
     She raced down the hallway and pushed through a door that led to a screened-in porch.  She pushed against the porch's screen.
     "Mommy! This! Out!"
     "We're going back outside in just a minute. I promise," I told her.
      When I brought her back to the room where Great-Grammy sat, everyone was getting ready to go.  Simon leaned forward and took Great-Grammy's hand and murmured to her, trying to find a way past the tangled mass of broken brain circuitry that concealed her heart.
     Papa went cruising off down the hall, following closely behind two older nursing staff, their white hair puffed out like halos.  I had the odd sense he was chasing them, but then he turned the scooter around at the end of the hall and stared contemplatively through a doorway for a moment.
     Outside, two of the wheels on Papa's scooter went over the edge of the curb. He muttered deprecations against the sidewalk and the scooter. Simon's dad had to muscle it back over the curb.
     Simon walked ahead, staring intently down the sidewalk, his shoulders stiff.  Silent. Clara raced down the sidewalk in front of us.  She wanted to run around and around the complex, looking at tall trees with no branches, just bunches of leaves at the top, listening to the bright songs of strange, beautiful birds.
      We heard the whine of Papa's Jazzy approaching behind us.
     "They got signs up.  Don't feed the wild animals," he muttered.  "They mean the women."
      He pulled abreast of Simon and adjusted the scooter's speed so they could go along together, two men side-by-side.