Catherine Newman Weekly Blog: 9.17.07

Dalai Mama Weekly Blog

Catherine Newman chronicles life parenting Ben, 8, and Birdy, 5

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September 17, 2007

All I Want for Christmas . . .

more in dalai mama:

9.10.07 : In the Dark

9.4.07 : The Annual Camping Episode

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Listen to Catherine

Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

Birdy is crying and crying. "Owww!" she sobs tearlessly, "Yowwwwwch!" and we say, "Wow, that must have really hurt!" We're not exactly leaping out of bed, though. I mean, it doubtless hurts a very great deal to bang your finger on a doll. It kills! Or at least it sure seems to. And Baby Chunky isn't exactly the softest doll, it's true, what with her molded newborn oversized head and grimace, just waiting to passively attack her human caretakers; she does have a little something of the Pod People about her, that doll. But this seems like a comfort-from-
under-the-comforter situation, sans alarm, even though Birdy holds up the injured pinky, sniffles, and says, "Ice pack?"

Maybe it's all the more comical somehow because just yesterday I was holding Ben in my arms, holding a paper towel to his face — a paper towel that was already soaked with blood from the moment it touched his mouth, the blood that was everywhere and dripping on my pants and mixing with Ben's saliva into a pink stream of spit and blood and also leaking from one of his nostrils.

I had been juicing limes for a marinade, chatting with a friend who was here to pick up her daughters. They and Ben were out in the hammock, playing the usual lunatic swinging game that I can never bring myself to watch but must endure, because Extreme Hammocking is my cross to bear. And then suddenly there was Ben with a hand up to his face, slurring, "I lost my tooth." Which made good sense, because that tooth had been hanging on by a thread, by the grace of God, by our collective hallucination, because how could it possibly hang on for so long? Only it did, giving Ben a little bit of a drunken sailor look to him, like maybe he'd been in a bar fight in some port city somewhere. But this was only a momentary presumption, about the loose tooth, because at exactly the same time that I was noticing the blood, noticing that Ben was white as a sheet, he was saying, "My other tooth."

An accident! Understanding was dawning only very slowly. I held Ben in my lap, and just like one of those ads for Mexico or Club Med, the ones that implore you to "Fall in love all over again!" I fell in love with him all over again. He was shaking and bleeding, but too busy comforting his friend's sister — who had been pushing the hammock — to cry or complain. "Itsh weawy not your fault," he slurred, and this was absolutely the truth: "That was bound to happen" is the understatement the year.

But something went awry with my own coping mechanism. Which is to say that I blacked out. Or maybe what I did was grey out. I was suddenly slick with sweat and sick to my stomach and not quite able to see anything. Which was surprising, not only because I think of myself as a closet coper, but also because I had no doubt that Ben was fundamentally okay. "Here, honey," I said to Ben and handed him to Michael. "Sit with Daddy for a minute." While I press my cheek to the cold linoleum of the bathroom floor and try not to vomit. Who knew I was such a wuss? I mean, you did, but I thought I was secretly quite brave. I held Birdy, newborn, while they tested her sweat for cystic fibrosis; I rode in an ambulance once with Ben while he hyperventilated from stomach pain; I smiled reassuringly at him when he was 3 and they scanned his bones for suspected tumors; I have, as has been well documented here, been barfed on with both frequency and ferocity; I am always cheerful and fine when the phlebotomist approaches. But lots of blood? I guess I am so secretly brave as to be, um, undetectably brave.

"Honey," Michael said, when I finally made it palely back out from the bathroom. "Could you look at his gums for a second?" And I had to say, "You know what? I actually can't look at his gums." Because now I need to return to the bathroom and press my cheek to the cold linoleum because you said the word "gums" to me. So Michael brought him to our pediatrician who works just up the street from us, and she predicted that Ben would be absolutely fine, especially after his other tooth fell out, which happened approximately 10 seconds later.

Sure, he was bloody and bruised and swollen, but Ben is a silver-lining kind of a guy. "Wow!" he said. "I wonder what the tooth fairy bringth for lothing two teeth!" He is suddenly very Cindy Brady, complete with the retro good nature. "Wow!" he said this morning, upon waking. "Three Thacagawea dollars! One ecthtra for the acthident, I gueth!"

Poor Birdy is recovering only slowly from her doll injury, lying with her ice pack, groaning forlornly. But I can't stop staring at her brother. When Ben catches my eye, raises his eyebrows at me, and smiles his gappy, toothless smile, it feels like the end of an era.

P.S.
As of September 17, the column is going to be over on Family.com too — a kind of miniaturized syndication! — and one good thing over there is that I'll be able to join in the conversation a little bit, and respond to some of the comments. So let's look for each other! I don't know why I'm making it sound like we're meeting for a play date at a crowded beach, but I'll be the one in the sagging brown suit! With the smashed-in peanut-butter sandwiches! Come find me!

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir,
Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic
Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family,
available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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