pfft
I am on the fat bear diet this month, troweling in bread and then returning to bed. I think of this as honoring the natural rhythms of my body and the seasons. “G’night again,” I say to Noodles.
“Did you see the article about testosterone?” he asks.
Every middle-aged house in the country saw this article, which looked at the Faustian bargain of using off-label T to trade the perimenopausal hollowing out for a raging libido and possible beard.
Noodles developed a six-pack on the way to his 3:12 marathon (every time he shows it he makes a “ching-ching-ching-ching” sound like Iron Man) but he has his own problems: a cracked tooth.
“If I could choose any dentist in an emergency, honestly it would be Dr. Lee,” I say, thinking of the time our pediatric dentist took 20 minutes to coax Japhs under the nitrous nose cap then capably attached a metal crown while our boy thrashed around. Noodles likes the idea. He walks into the next room to call, just within listening distance.
“Hi, my children are patients there,” he says in his government agency voice, “I have what I believe to be a cracked tooth and wondered if I could possibly get in to see Dr. Lee.”
We both hear the long silence that follows on the other end.
“Of course, of course, no problems at all, thank you so much,” he says and ends the call.
He walks back into the blue room, his abs a little deflated. “She said they don’t take new patients over 18.”
Japhy is sitting on the floor with his SNACK PLATE. I wrote it like that because of how he asks for it. Watch me! he says.
His head is tipped back on the ottoman, and he’s holding a piece of popcorn to his mouth, then hoisting it up, his arm a fully extended crane, and letting go. Again and again, the popcorn bounces off his eye, his chin, his cheek, or falls behind him.
Keep watching! he says.
An hour later, he is throwing them in the air and catches one. He runs around the room with aeroplane-gangster arms. His new sound this month is “pfff.” He uses it all over the place. What do you want for breakfast? Pfff. How was school? Pfff. Lands a piece of popcorn in his mouth: Pff.
Our pediatrician told us that preparing kids for transitions can help with behavior, but what do we do when fall, and all of life, is a transition. While the squirrels and I are cramming acorns into our cheeks, my friend can’t eat anything. It falls out of her like a hoop without a net. I have a thigh gap, she complains, defeated. I am the opposite, smoothing out like the quilting on a Colemans hooked up to a pump.
Scout has learned to braid, and practices on me using small sections of hair and magic loom bands. She wants to show me, so takes my phone and points them at an array of tiny blonde braids. I look like I’ve come back from Bali in cornrows. “I love them!” I say. “I’m not going to leave them in, but I LOVE them.”
I ride the train down to the city for work, forced to reckon with my reflection in the dingy tin hammered to the Amtrak latrine wall. Down in midtown, my business is being without child (SNACK PLATE), without attachment. I lounge in the doorway of both my bosses, reminding them that I exist.
Do you need anything? Do you have what you need? They ask, and the answer is no, because what I need is for everyone to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a “coworker’; we made up that word to convince everyone these weren’t our real lives and the core characters of our lives! Hardly any of my friends weren’t at some point a “coworker.” I have to write down goals for the next year. I want UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. Or a standing desk. I have one friend who I can newly say “I love you” to. I’d like some more, a real stash of them in the trees around my house.
Next, there is no afterschool. The children pool on the couch under fuzzy blankets, amoebas with eyes. “We need to go outside before it gets dark,” I say hours later, and convince them to walk to the teepee at the school. Not to brag, but we started the first teepee (I called it a cubby, but whatever) in the woods there, and it became a sensation every day after school for any lingering children. Soon, armies of them were dragging logs from the drainage ditch and tearing bark off trees to fill gaps. The sheer weight of pent-up play energy threatened to flatten the first child who ever dared climb inside the triangle of space beneath a two-foot thick stack of branches.
We check on Japhy’s “farm,” where he planted carrot seeds in June. Now, as then, the soil is ash-colored and rock hard. “Pff,” he says at the dirt, hoping as always for shoots even the world is shedding its color in heaps every day.
We move over to the school play equipment in the dark, and hear a “Japhy!” from a small child silhouetted by the cafeteria lights behind him. The child chases Japhy and Scout aroud the playground, pointing his wrists and flicking his fingers as he goes “Szzzzt! Szzzoo!” in different directions.
“Aw buddy, are those spiderwebs you’re shooting?” I ask.
“No it’s knives,” says the small boy.
“Ah,” says his dad in perfect scouse, “greet.”
Walking to school
Japhs: Did you know someone farted five times in class and that it was Vinny
I am once again plugging MOTHER TONGUE, in which I have a profile of India Knight
let out an evil laugh seeing this clip of Michelle Obama roasting people who give parenting advice before the fontanelle has even knitted over (via Jo Piazza )
Why quote a bit when you can read the whole thing from Catherine Lacey:
I cannot wait for this <3
on the TBR, the latest from Catherine Newman (WRECK) and Kate Baer (HOW ABOUT NOW) <3 <3
This was exactly what I needed during my third night feeding.
Oh my god Noodles. Janet!! "Ching ching ching ching." I imagine Japhy watching and learning. He did a 3:12??? Trying to get in to see a pediatric dentist with his government voice. I'm howling.
Keep watching! he says.
I have to write down goals for the next year. I want UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. Or a standing desk.
I love you, Janet Manley!!!!