The Height of the Beanstalk

The Saturday ritual of Andrea Bocelli's Sacred Arias DVD at 9:00 a.m. has, of course, already been discussed here. As has Beanstalk's ability (and now mine) to sing every word in the original language and direct every beat of the accompaniment. 9:00 a.m., people!

Something else has happened, though, over the last year. Slowly, but surely, I've lost track of the goings on in front of me all together. The secondary ritual to the viewing is that Beanstalk sits in my lap for the entire thing. He directs and sings vigorously, his sharp little butt bones jabbing me in the legs with every energetic hop to the tempo.

I lost my perspective on the world because my very first baby stopped growing and started spurting. The boy went and got TALLER.

Instead of being able to lean his head back on my chest or my shoulder and instead of me leaning on his shoulder to spy on the screen as I usually do....shoulder blades! That's all I see. Two scrawny little razor sharp shoulder blades and a similarly boney little (ok, not so little) spine. If he's feeling particularly magnanimous, he likes to sit cross-legged on my lap and let me watch as he throws a gangly arm around my shoulders and leans his head on mine. Kinda like when he's making sure his Curious George stuffed animal can see everything, too.

Welcome to Smallville.
Scat.

I Have A Plan

Plans are good. They make us feel like we have some sort of control over the world around us. The majority of people in my life outside my family, of course, have plans. They actually plan their lives and things sometimes actually go according to plan. We stand amazed at those folks. We also stand bored.

It seems as though the Scat family has always been destined to exist just past the edge of all things plannable. We are always far enough into the unknown to become somewhat comfortable with the idea of complete uncertainty from one moment to the next. Learning to be 'somewhat comfortable' with that takes a very, very long time for some people.

When you exist out there, you are constantly bombarded by problems that need solving and often you have to solve them in new and unique ways. It's not just that you have to think outside the box. There is no box.

I try to instill the basics of problem solving in my kids.

Squib called to me from the kitchen last night. "Mom! I need your help!" He had gone in there to get some ginger ale.

I replied along the lines of "get your stool out of the bathroom" and/or "try to find a way, kiddo" or some such constructive advice. Yes, he's height challenge, but he's feisty and smart. I've seen him climb the pantry shelves like a monkey. He can do this.

"I already have a plan!" He hollered back. "I need you in order to do it!"

So I went into the kitchen and there he was. He had both refrigerator doors open wide. He was evenly spaced between them. He was crouched like a spring-loaded, angry, little bear cub--claws and everything--boring a hole in a ginger ale can on the very top shelf. He was totally ignoring the ones in reach, of course. The reason for this is that the cans on the top shelf get a little slushy. They are, admittedly, the best. So I can't argue. I go top shelf myself.

"What's the plan?" I asked. I was still thinking step stool or bar stool.

"I'm ready!" He growled. "Just throw me at it."

He had such a wild, committed look on his face. He was obviously dead serious.

"No." I said. He deflated like a balloon.

"What?!" He even stomped a foot. "I had a plan!"

"Have you thought through what could really happen?" I asked.

He looked at the refrigerator and back at me.

"I'm just going to grab the can and fall back. I'm not going to knock anything else over. I promise." Pitiful, pleading eyes. The monkey could probably do it.

"Step stool? Bar stool?" I asked.

"Not at all fun." True.

I handed him the can of ginger ale and he shuffled along his depressed path on this earth. One plan less for this world.

Hopefully they figure out solutions that don't cause more problems. ;)

Scat

How To Recognize an Emergency

Earlier this week, I had one mother of a migraine. I have a spectacular supervisor, so I took my meds and emailed her and said I was going to sleep off the yuck and come in for a half day later that day. She emailed back saying they were stalking me to do sub work so perhaps I'd like to have a longer headache, LOL.

This meant I was actually there when Dad waltzed in and casually announced that Baba was gushing blood out her ear and they had been told by the doctor to go to the emergency room as soon as possible. So they both were showering and getting ready and then going.

**she was not gushing blood out her ear, but I'm bound by certain...things...to not exactly tell 'stuff'**

Dad stood in my bedroom as he said, "Well, her brain keeps coming out her ear. Normally she pokes it back in, but it's not staying in there this time."

I had to take several long blinks. He said it like it was normal, for one. He also wasn't acting emergent at all, for two.

"I think you should go to the ER." I added some emphasis. It flopped on the floor like a dead minnow regardless of the fact that her doc had said to get the h-e-double-hockey-sticks to the ER without stopping.

They went. The ER doc, bless his malpractory socks, proceeded to cram it back in (Hmmm...let me see here..has this been tried yet? Then there's the blood.) and send her home. And they were blissfully headed out the door despite my screaming via text about the potential harms of brain twisting and hemorrhage, etc. Then, Baba stood up to go and her brain flopped out again. Duh. So they did cram it back in, but with strict orders not to move her again and to bed she went and there to stay in the lovely hospital.

Needless to say, he called a surgeon at that point who determined (over the phone, heh) that a surgical fix was necessary and now it's 24 hours later and the fix is fixed and we're sleeping away the morphine. Well, not 'we' but her.

So just a helpful hint to you. Innards belong in the innards.
Scat

What It All Comes Down To...

...is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet.

I haven't really had time. You see, around here we do crisis like pros. It's been that way since I first remember anything at all. One of my first memories, in fact, was my mother walking down a long hallway at a church toward me. I was at a bible camp. She came to tell me they were putting her in the hospital and someone else would be there to pick me up other than her or dad. Truthfully, it's been that way--one medical emergency after another--ever since.

Baba picked me up that day and took me home to get some things I needed and then took me to her house. My mother struggled with her health ever since then with multiple hospitalizations. I learned to sleep in chairs, forge her signature to pay bills (give dad a break...someone had to earn the insurance), clean, take care of my brother, and once I even attended a "parent" conference. I'd alternate nights at the hospital with dad except for that week or so that he and attrition got the raging flu and were banished. That week I made my home at the hospital. I did relief duty several years later on Thanksgiving break from college when everyone was spent. It was just something we learned to do. There's a rhythm to it. A way of life. We each dug our foxholes and learned how to make a life there.

In every way it was like a war. There was the battle we watched tediously whether or not we wanted to. Then there was the time we filled like any soldier between skirmishes. Card games. Music. Reading. Sleeping, etc. We'd dream of meals eaten on actual plates and nights slept in real beds and silence. Pure, smooth, unbeeping silence. We'd pray.

The war on illness is also waged in the soul. This is not to say that all illness is the result of sin in the sense that, for example, you contracted a cold because you lied to someone. Illness exists because we're in a broken world. If you think it isn't broken, then you aren't hanging out in the right places. Or the wrong places. I don't know. But when the hour gets quiet, there is only you alone with your soul's aching. Pleading for this to be the last of it. The end of all life lived out of a back pack and a duffel. The desire to feel completely clean and rested. The desire for the pain of your loved to stop.

After so long, you begin to see the benefits to things you knew nothing about before. The same woman that picked me up the day this all got started almost forty years ago had surgery on Friday. Was I worried? No. You want to know why? If she died during surgery, then she got what she wished for. Go ahead and think me crude. She's ready, people. Losing her mind in bits and pieces and suffering through various surgeries and chemotherapies isn't something I can hope for her. She's got a better place to go to. I'll favor that over most treatments almost any day in her case.

When Beanstalk was born, we refurbished our foxholes and made room for more. Same with Squib. Talk about difficult things to pray for. Suddenly, even the foxholes weren't safe anymore. We proceeded like usual, but with a child? They don't make walls to protect you from the damage of watching them struggle. How those two have emerged as the happiest two kids on the planet is a miracle of epic proportions.

Now Baba is in the hospital and we are back in foxhole mode. Perhaps that's our learning experience. Maybe it's just a safety zone. Whatever it is, I know that this sort of emergent disaster is something I'm more used to than anything else. I want it to end, but I just don't know what I would do with myself if it did. Perhaps we're not supposed to live any other way. No big, comfy, uneventful lives. It's just possible that we are to be taking care of each other like this. It's hard. Brutal. Exhausting. But...it's THE thing that matters to them at the time. THE thing that matters, period.

You aren't living life if you don't get it on you.
Scat