Sometimes Jake, my mush, has these sentimental moments that he doesn’t yet know how to process.He will say things like, “this music makes me want to cry, it’s just so beautiful.”Last night he came in as I was putting Ryan to bed.He said, “I can’t help it I just need to hug you one more time.I don’t know why.I just need to hug and kiss you.I love you.”
Ryan:(Who you can’t buy a hug from.)“What about me?Can you help hugging me?”
Jake: “No, you too Ryan,” He said, ‘cause he’s good like that. (He went over and hugged and and kissed her.)
He left and came back two more times because, in his words, “I can’t help it Mommy, my heart is addicted to you.”
“MY heart is addicted to YOU.”I replied in awe of this immensely touching statement.
My heart is addicted to you, can you even handle it?How beautiful, in a why does my 6 year old understand the concept of addiction, kinda way.Is his father’s heart “addicted” to me?I mean my G-d that’s better than “You complete me,” or “You had me at hello.”
For how many more years will his heart be addicted to me?Will he turn in the middle of his wedding vows, walk away and announce to the crowd, “I just can’t, my heart is addicted to my mommy.”Part of me pathetically hopes so.
My daughter began hosting an intervention.“Can you stop Jake?Can you do it?Can you be brave and strong and stop your addiction?”She was saying, in a breathless distressed Scarlet O’Hara kind of voice.She is just 4 and oddly, also seems to understand the word addiction.You’d think we were all in some kinda 12 stepper.
So, Jake bravely found his manliness and retreated to his big boy room.Within seconds Ryan lunged at me “I, can’t help it I must have a hug.I neeeeed a hug” her voice trailing off as she fainted into my arms.Somewhere the sentimentality was lost, but she definitely wins for most dramatic.
For 4 days I have been sick. Nothing crazy, just the usual sore throat in the morning, coughing, fatigue kind of thing. Yet in those four days, the world miraculously kept spinning, my children’s schedules did not disappear, nor did mine. They made it to school, and to baseball, and the Doctor. They did not suffer from starvation because I decided to forgo grocery shopping, making them breakfast, or packing their lunches, so that I could lie around and do something trivial, like recuperate.
Last night I happily turned out the lights at 11PM, hoping to make up for that 4hour “nap” I had the night before. At midnight my dog Buddy, pacing and panting like a sex caller, sent me out like a shot for his first pee break of the evening. At 1AM my son ran in soaking wet, exclaiming, “I think I sweated too much.” Unable to peel myself up, I let his little naked tush into my bed where he continued to whine for about an hour straight. “Mommy, I neeeeeeeeeed pants.” “I’ll get you pants,” and let our heavy breather out for the 2nd time. “Mommy, I neeeed my favorite pillow.” “I’ll get your favorite pillow” and give our letchy dog a bowl of water. By 3AM Jake had tried 12 different positions. Including the one where you go all the way under the covers to the end of the bed and push until you fall to the floor taking the comforter with you. He complained about 20 different things, from being upset that I had to remake the bed after he fell out of it, to having an actual dislike for color of my sheets. “They’re white.”
In the midst of this chaos, my husband was completely oblivious during those last few hours. Some could argue that this has been the case for the last 9 years.
He was sleeping with his body pillow, the one he stole from me in the 3rd trimester of my 1st pregnancy. It has been our small person sized bedmate ever since. A bedmate that he shoves in his crotch and smothers between his knees. Well, better the pillow than me. He had 2 more pillows over his head and was taking up 73% of the bed. He had built and Iron clad barricade which my son could not penetrate or budge. Jake and I were so snug I’d have to rebirth him to get him to school. Finally , I gave up and wooed him back into his room by promising to make him a fort, “just like Daddy’s.” Of course I had to remake his bed first, as the sweat had an uncanny resemblance to pee. I got back into bed around 4 AM, after reading my dog a story and letting my son out. Wait, scratch that and reverse it.
By 4:45 my son was back in the womb. “Mom, can I be your snuggle bunny?” For how many years will I get to hear that? At 5AM my daughter was squeezing in on the other side of me. We laid there like a hermetically sealed package of sausages, my arm coyoteed under Ryan’s head. Then she started complaining. “Its too hot with this blanket. Mom my PJ’s hurt. Mom I hate the color of your sheets.” Somehow, 6:30 managed to roll around.
I banged on my husbands fort with the door knocker he installed. Bang…Bang…Bang. “Please get the kids ready for school. I was up all night.” Mark is a morning person so I imagined it would be no big deal. “Grumble grumble… no.” “What do you mean you won’t help me?” “Grunt, I’m sick, my throat is killing me. Besides, I was up too.” “What kept you up? Was it the sound of your snoring? Or maybe the pillow over your head wasn’t soft enough.” “I just can’t I’m too sick.” My husband’s cold might as well be the plague, as the Earth has halted on it’s axis.
It would take a hemorrhaging artery to get him to the Doctor, excuse me the clinic, as he has never officially acquired a Doctor. But, why go? It’s easier to lay around and tease my children with his untouchable presence. He’ll spend his day creating an impressive mound of snotty tissues, large enough to pitch off of. Tissues which he is too sick to bend down and pick up, however he is not too sick to work, or to make sure to keep up with his fantasy football team.
He’ll refuse to use sanitizer, and sluggishly mosey around the house, putting his grubby, germy hands in every bag of chips, touching every door knob and remote, and talking on every phone. He may even lick the straws on the juice boxes for good measure. All in a effort to ensure that as soon as he gets better, both my children will surely contract his illness and I will have no shot at personal recovery.
Now I should Mommy him, which in my bitter and sick state, I cannot even feign an attempt. Listen, if I wanted another child I would adopt one from Indonesia. If you need to be babied, call your Mom. Better yet, go stay with her. I don’t ask that my sickness or lack of sleep take precedence over yours. I just ask that you go to a hotel until your’s passes.”
I believe my last post was on “momnesia,” though I can’t recall.Well, at some point you read about my “momnesia,” and here is a perfect example:This weekend I missed a wedding.Yep, a bona fide black tie, husband’s biggest client, save the date on the fridge, fortune per head kind of wedding.
It was Saturday afternoon; my kids were getting ready to go to my mom’s for a sleepover. A sleepover I had to make my mom cancel plans for.I went to the mail pile to pull out the direction card.I grabbed it and did a quick once over of the invite.Please join bla,bla at bla, bla, on Friday, the 28th of November.I reread that thing 7 times and grabbed the Post just to confirm that this was in fact the wrong day.You know, just in case there was a typo on the invite and the 28th was actually Saturday and no one caught it till this very moment.Alas, it was the 29th, the invitation writer really checked her facts.
“Mark… Mark… all right, don’t kill me, but…” “We WHAT? THE WEDDING WAS YESTERDAY! You’re kidding right?”“Ummm, nope.” Both of us just stood silent and contemplated how bad it was.How really, really bad it was.After many minutes he got on his tux, I got on my gown, we put the kids in the car, dropped them off at my mom’s, came home stripped down, watched R rated movies, cussed out loud, talked about adult stuff (like insurance), ate ice cream without sharing, shtupped with the door open, and went to sleep.
What?A night off is a night off.My mom was none the wiser… till now.
I can still hear the faint murmurs of my son’s 40-minute meltdown when his pet ladybug, “Lady,” flew away. We kidnapped this 4 year old, or 4 day old bug (whatever the spot things mean), at the top of Mount Aspen.Jake loved her, cared for her, nurtured her, taught her to ride a bike, and started a 529 plan in her name.About a quarter of the way down the mountain, Lady flew to the floor and made a mad dash for freedom.
Jake jumped out of his seat and flew towards the door.This caused the gondola to start swinging.According to the warning sign that pictured a man falling backward out of the gondola to his unexpected demise, wild swinging is strictly forbidden.“Jake, you can’t jump around.Do you see what happened to the unfortunate man on the sign?”
Jake continued searching, solely focused on the whereabouts of Lady.“Hey, do you guys hear her?I can hear her.Do you hear her?” he said with desperation, like someone who could put a straight jacket to good use.
Though we tried, we could not decipher the cries of his lost ladybug through the cranking sound of our transport. “There she is!!!”Jake screamed with the delight of a boy finding his long lost puppy (or recently lost ladybug).Regardless, it was with total elation that he offered his stick, which she eagerly climbed onto.A few more minutes of bonding, and she playfully climbed up his shirt. “She’s sooo happy,” Jake cooed.
His joy quickly turned to horror as Lady made yet another stab at freedom.I caught her, only to have my daughter Ryan beg for a turn.I put her on Ryan’s hand as Jake frantically tried to woo her back to his stick.She crawled up Ryan’s arm, pulled out what appeared to be a miniscule pair of binoculars, and scoped out the opening in the window.She looked back at Jake, with a tear in her eye, and with one final heroic effort, vanished into the thin mountain air.
A guttural wail came from Jake’s mouth… “I TOLD YOU NOT TO LET RYAN HOLD HER!!! I TOLD YOU!She loved the stick!She hated that spot on Ryan’s arm, and now look what you did!Sheeeeee’s gooonnne!I want Lady back, I WANT LADY!She loved her stick, and she loved me!She wanted to live with me on her stick!”
Mark and I looked at each other, him losing it, and me wiping away a smile as not to diminish Jake’s loss.Calmly, I looked at Jake.“Honey, she’s a ladybug. I think she wanted to go free.That’s why she found the open window and flew out of it.”
“NOOOOOOO, she loved her stick!”Jake cried, tears uncontrollably streaming down his face.“I want my ladybug, I want my ladybug! I want her!”
Now both Mark and I are openly laughing. Well actually, I am laughing on the inside, which is causing me to cry. “Jake, in the short time I was lucky enough to know Lady, I knew her to be a free spirit.Yes, she liked you, and your stick, but she’s not the type of bug to waste what might be half her life on a single stick.She wanted to explore and see as many sticks as possible.”
“NO, NO!!!She hated Ryan’s arm and it made her leave!I told you not to put her there!” Jake continued, as I officially lost it. While holding up the stick like a lighter, I started singing “Lady.” A song we later recalled was ironically sung by STYX. It went something like this: “Lady, LAY-EE-DAY why’d you have to fly out the wi-i-i-in-dow?”
“Mommy STOP it!It’s not funny! I MISS LADY!” Jake wept, reverting to a grief-stricken state.Mark and I looked at each other in awe of this display of inconsolable, illogical, Oscar worthy, unceasing hysterics. “Jake…honey…baby, she lives on this mountain.She’ll find us at the bottom, I promise.”
“No-She-Won’t!” Jake screamed, stamping his foot on each syllable.“I promise she will,” I said, resolving to find another ladybug, or spend the rest of our trip trying.
He then paused, and answered with the irrefutable rationale of a six year old:“She won’t!She doesn’t even know which hotel we’re staying at!”
