It Takes a Worried Man (13 page)

Two Sundays before Christmas we have this fully-packed day. We go to church and Rowen is going to be in the Christmas pageant as a sheep. This is what passes for a rite of passage among Unitarians–you start as a sheep, then move up to angel, then to townsperson, then, if you are lucky, to Three King or holy family. So Rowen is beginning her journey as a sheep, and after one practice during church school we hear that she was the best sheep in the place, but then when it comes time to practice it in the church in front of people, she starts sobbing: “I don’t wanna go up there without you! I’m scaaaared!” So, in another Unitarian rite of passage, I take over the role of father ram from another parent who has played the role for three years.

I have brought Joe and Katy’s camcorder to record the event, but now I have to be up there, and I can’t really be taping it then, so I hand the camcorder over to my mom and explain that it’s very simple to operate, basically just point and shoot, and I should know that we are in for trouble when she looks in the wrong end and says, “I don’t see anything.”  But ok, I figure it’s no big deal, if the camcorder is in my mom’s hands, I have a small but greater than zero chance of getting the event taped, and if it’s just sitting in a pew, there is pretty much zero chance that it’s going to tape the pageant on its own.

So the pageant goes ok, and afterwards we go to coffee hour in the parish hall and grab a snack, and my mom just disappears. I spend about ten minutes looking for her–I stand on the stage and scan the crowd and try to be polite to the nice people who come to talk to me without really looking at them, because then I won’t be able to see her, and eventually I see her and smile and wave.

Rowen and I go over to her, and I see that she has tears in her eyes. And I am convinced that she thinks I blew her off, because this is kind of a theme of our relationship so I immediately say, “I’ve been looking and looking for you, and I couldn’t find you,”so as to make the point that I didn’t just ditch her, because that is what I am sure she thinks.

Well, I don’t know why I am still learning this lesson after thirty-two years, but it is folly trying to read my mom’s mind, because when she gets home, she starts crying full-on and says how she couldn’t work the camcorder and she felt like that ruined the experience of the pageant for her, and she is never here to see these kind of things, and she had bought this new outfit for Rowen that doesn’t fit, and she wanted to brush Rowen’s hair but I wouldn’t let her, and Rowen looks like hell.

I am explicitly indicted on the last count, because my mom has been sort of obsessively trying to brush Rowen’s unruly hair all the time and I told her that Rowen’s routines are very important to her and now was not the greatest time to be adding new ones. I am implicitly indicted on the other two counts because I am the one who gave her the camcorder and, okay, perhaps unreasonably expected her to be able to work it, and I rushed her out of the store when we were buying Rowen’s outfit because it was late and it was full of insane Christmas shoppers and I felt like screaming.

I apologize, but I am mad. I am mad because she said that Rowen looked like hell while Rowen is sitting right there, but most of all I am mad because I just don’t have the energy to deal with this right now. My wife is in the hospital, I have to worry about how my four year old is feeling, and I just don’t have the time or energy to worry about taking care of my mom’s feelings. Perhaps that makes me an asshole. I don’t know. All I know is that I am so fucking tired and it’s all I can do to take proper care of myself.

And I also think, well, here we go again. Every visit these days seems to involve tears, and it always seems to boil down to me being a bad son in some way, and this is difficult to deal with at any time, but right now it is enough to just send me to bed.

My mom calms down, and Rowen and I head off to the fourth birthday party of one of her classmates. And it is, without exception, the coolest birthday party I have ever attended. Including adult ones. They have rented out this club which is under a pizza place and is like half club, half bowling alley. They have this jukebox stocked full of CDs by the knowledgeable guys who run the record store next door, and I feed it dollars and play, “I Want You Back,” “Pressure Drop,” “I say a Little Prayer” (The Aretha Franklin version–I had heard the Dionne Warwick version in the car driving to the hospital earlier in the morning and thought about the fact that that is one of only two songs I could think of with two really great, really different versions. The other one is “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”, though now that I think of it, the Clash also do a killer version of “Pressure Drop,” so go ahead and add that to the list) and “It’s Not Unusual.”  Other people make good selections too–it’s tough not to when there are so few bad CD’s on offer, and I am just delighted.

I must take a detour here and say that one of the CDs they have stocked is the first Devo album, and as I am flipping through I see it and remember that it has a song called “Mongoloid” on it. And we kind of thought that was funny when we were twelve listening to it at Danny’s house, and I say this as a Devo fan, but is a cruel and shitty song. There is a kid at this party with Down’s syndrome, and I now know enough about living through tough situations that I am not going to say that her mom is a hero or that she is this perfect little angel or anything, because I’m sure her mom gets frustrated and I am sure that the kid is a pain in the ass sometimes as all kids are, but nevertheless, they are very loving, and the kid is just incredibly cute and sweet, and I just think how shitty it is that that fucking song is on the jukebox here. And I am horrified when, later, somebody from the other birthday party also taking place in this space actually plays it. I can only believe that they were oblivious to this girl’s presence, because any other explanation is just too horrible to contemplate, but anyway, I look nervously at the mom, and she is totally oblivious, she’s totally got the music tuned out, and I guess she’s not familiar enough with the Devo oeuvre to recognize it.

If I were God, there would be hell to pay for that kind of insensitivity, and I would also make sure that every one of those plastic-helmeted motherfuckers in Devo had about five kids with Down’s syndrome that they had to one day explain that song to.

But, you know, if I were God, I’d change a lot of things.

Anyway, with that one horrifying exception that happens at the end of the party, the music is cool, the kids are bowling and having fun, some of the adults have beers, and all of this is so unlike the usual kids birthday party, where you usually stuff a whole bunch of kids into someone’s house and play really horrible music and they all get squirrely and overstimulated and everybody goes home a little crankier than when they came. We eat great pizza, not that cardboard shit that the chains throw in front of kids because they can get away with it, and it is really nice. I like Rowen’s classmates a lot, and I am in awe of this party.

And as we with there and eat our pizza, I get this uncontrollable urge to cry. I run to the bathroom, and I stand there and just cry and cry. I am just so sad. There is something about the fact that this party doesn’t suck that makes me miss Kirsten so much it almost physically hurts. Hell, it does physically hurt–it makes me cry in a way that I am unable to hold back, which almost never happens. I want her here, enjoying this party with us. I want her back, as Michael Jackson said. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Ooo-oo Baby.

Driving home from the party, we have to go by our old house. When we turn down the street, Rowen says, “Hey! We’re not going to the old house! We’re going to our new house!” and I say, “Yeah, but we have to go by the old house to get to the new house from here. Believe me, I don’t even want to be on this street.”

She digests that for a moment and says, “Why don’t you like the old house? I liked it.”

“Well,” I say, “It’s complicated. One day I’ll explain the whole story of why we had to move.” We have tried to protect her from the horrible reality of the Troll, especially since we don’t really want her to know that it was her walking around that set him off, because God knows how that information could screw up a kid’s mind.

She, however, is a smart kid and will not be put off.  “You can tell me now,” she says, and I come back with, “well, there are a lot of reasons,” still trying to stall, and she says, “Tell me what they are.”

“Ok,” I say.  “Well, you know how three people owned that house, and we were one of the people? Well, it’s just easier to make decisions and stuff when only one person owns the house, and we are the only ones who own our new house.

“Also,” I decide to go for it, because why not, “remember that guy who yelled at Mommy?” And Rowen says, “No….” which is nice, because we were convinced she was scarred for life by that whole incident, and I say, “You know, that guy who yelled at Mommy in the driveway one morning when you were going to school?”

“Oh yeah!”

“Well, that guy was just not a nice guy, and he used to do stuff like yell like that, and we just didn’t want to live around him anymore.”

She digests that, then says, in this totally matter-of -fact, almost bored tone,“Well….I guess he’ll probably yell at other people now.”

I just start to laugh.  “Roo,” I say, “You are so right….” and I am still laughing, and she adds, “He will probably yell at the people who moved in after us,” and all I can do is say, “Yes he will,” and laugh some more.

My mom seems kind of contrite the day after her outburst. I come home from work and find the house filled with a delicious smell–she has made black bean soup, and it turns out to be surprisingly good. I gave up on black bean soup a few years ago because I just couldn’t make it interesting, but this has a little extra zing, which she reveals comes from a can of tomato sauce. Plus there is liquid smoke involved, and I love liquid smoke so much I could probably eat it over ice cream.

We have a very nice evening, and things seem back to normal–we are relaxed and enjoying each other’s company, laughing and joking and generally having a pretty good time. She makes a couple of conversational salvos about yesterday–“Yesterday was a tough day for me” and such like things, but I don’t take the bait because I don’t want to ruin a nice evening with a Meaningful Talk.

The next day, Rowen and I are walking home from school holding hands, and she is in a really good mood, and we are talking and laughing, and these are some of my favorite times, when the two of us are not really doing anything but enjoying each other’s company.  As we reach our street, out of nowhere she starts doing a little dance and chanting, “I got the luck! I got the luck! I got the luck!”  (This bears a strong resemblance to her “I’m the bomb” chant and dance that she did a few weeks earlier) I have no idea where this came from or exactly what it means, but I look at her smiling and jumping up and down on the sidewalk and I am just so full of love I could explode, (and I know that’s one of those sappy parent things to say, but it’s really true) and I think about how I have this great little girl, and a mom who is cool and who I really love, and a wife who I love more than anything, and my own cozy home, and even though Kirsten is in the hospital I feel really happy and blessed and I just start jumping up and down on the sidewalk with Rowen, the two of us going, “I got the luck! I got the luck! I got the luck!”

“They finally got me a new pump,” Kirsten announces over the phone one day.  “I love it so much. I think I’m going to have to leave you for it.”  She has been agitating for a new pump basically ever since she got in here. She has had three or four things pumping into her at all times, and each substance has its own pump, and each pump hangs on this pole that is huge and sturdy, and Kirsten must wheel the entire thing, which probably weighs at least fifty pounds, with her every time she goes to the bathroom or gets out of bed, and it’s a gigantic pain in the ass.

But now she has gotten one of the brand new pumps that can pump three things at once. This is much lighter than three separate pumps, so it can be attached to a much lighter pole, and it continues to be amazing what constitutes good news these days, but there you go. I go and visit her and she is just elated. She still has to drag a pole with her everywhere she goes, but it is much easier than before, and it feels like a partial reprieve to her.

I look at the pump and notice that it’s called the “Colleague 3” and I tell Kirsten that she really should have told me she was leaving me for a colleague. The company that makes the pump is called Baxter, so she says, “Yeah, his name is Baxter. He’s been pumping me all morning.”

We laugh, and then she says, “I’m sorry, but I just felt like I had to preempt you before you pulled a Gingrich on me.” Newt, you may remember, the stalwart of the family values party, served his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital undergoing treatment for cancer. And while I rolled my eyes at that factoid when I first heard it, now I really understand in my bones what a complete asshole you have to be to do something like that. And that makes me almost wish I believed what all the lunatics who loved that guy believe, because then I could at least take comfort in the knowledge that Satan is devising some really horrible punishment for him as we speak, but as it is I’ll have to content myself with the knowledge that he is fat and out of a job, and if he would only lose his home and get addicted to crack and have to beg for change on the streets that might start to even things up as far as I’m concerned, but of course he is probably pulling down fat speaking fees and doing all the lucrative shit that failed politicians get to do, while, for example, the guy who wrote “96 Tears” is probably pushing a broom somewhere.

Anyway, I am in no danger of pulling a Gingrich. Kirsten’s Baxter joke just reminds me again, not that I really need reminding, that I am lucky enough to have found the perfect woman for me, and how many people in their whole lives ever get to say that?