You're Only as Old as Your Kids Make You Feel

A few weeks ago I celebrated (and I use the term loosely) my 50th birthday and I’m not happy about it. I went to bed feeling fine, but I woke up looking like this.


Well, I might not look exactly like this on the outside, but it sure seems like my brain does on the inside.

It was especially apparent to me when I went home to visit my parents in Indiana again. My last semester of college started today, and I’m taking 18 hours – so before my brain started to bleed from reading a couple hundred pages a day and writing endless papers, I headed home to see my parents. My agenda was pretty simple: I wanted to gorge myself on fresh garden tomatoes and Indiana sweet corn, and I wanted to go the Indiana state Fair.

Breakfast the first morning - Check.


Item number two – State Fair. As a kid, it seemed like we went to the fair every year as the last hurrah before school started. The anticipation started with the local movie channel showing the “State Fair” movie, and then Cowboy Bob and Janie worked us up to a fevered pitch.

Back in the prehistoric era, before Cartoon Network ran 24/7, Cowboy Bob and Janie were the only two cartoon shows on Channel 4, WTTV Indianapolis. Cowboy Bob was on at noon and he wore a black hat, stood around the chuckwagon with his dog “Tumbleweeds” and told bad jokes in between cartoons. “Popeye and Janie” came on after school and she usually had a Girl Scout Troop or a little league team as guests. The kids sat woodenly on risers in the background, waved at the camera on command, and if you were destined for stardom, a kid might be allowed to introduce the upcoming cartoon. Janie smiled a lot, but word on the kid street was that she was kind of mean in between cartoons when the cameras weren’t running.

Every summer, both Cowboy Bob and Janie would broadcast live from the Fairgrounds, spotlighting the attractions and sometimes interviewing kids who were the proud owners of a Grand Champion cow or pig. Watching their shows “on location,” seeing the flashing lights of the midway and hearing about all the delectable treats, was a 10-year-old’s version of hanging on the fence at the Red Carpet.

When Fair Day finally arrived, our whole family went, and if you think four kids were remotely interested in tractor pulls or home-canned preserves, think again. My parents dragged us at a snail’s pace through exhibition halls and cattle barns, when all we really wanted to do was make it to the glorious midway where we could ride nausea inducing rides, beg for deep fried treats to throw up colorfully on aforementioned rides, and somehow convince our parents that we were destined to win a jumbo stuffed monkey if they would just give us ONE MORE DOLLAR to spend on the shooting gallery/ring toss/ping pong ball in a fish bowl game.

We usually arrived home late that night hot, sunburned, and sticky, stuffed with food our mother would never let us have otherwise, and sporting some ridiculously overpriced, air-brushed t-shirt or a key ring with a pithy saying embossed on it (even though we had no keys to put on it, nor a car to drive). Good times.

Since I went to Indiana alone this trip, because my kids had already started school (and because I pulled out of the driveway really fast and they couldn’t catch me), it was just me and my parents heading to the fair.

The first order of business was to buy an all-day train trolley pass for $3 that allowed unlimited on/offs as it made a constant circuit of the fairground. We started in Pioneer Village and we never really seemed to leave. We heard lectures on gourds and their many uses, and antique woodworking tools. We watched demonstrations on tapping maple trees and grinding corn, and saw log splitters powered by steam engines.


I mooned over prize winning quilts in the “Home and Family Arts” exhibition hall.


I cruised the food vendors for roasted corn, elephant ears and fresh squeezed lemonade. I was fascinated by the lengths people will go to in search of a gastronomic sensation, but I resisted the lure of deep fried butter.
We went back to Pioneer Village where we admired candles made from beeswax, watched wool being spun and listened to an old-time piano player. When we needed a break, we sat and watched blue grass bands play, and some people even sang along to “I’ll Fly Away” (but not me, because I’m not THAT OLD… yet.) My step dad had his picture taken with "Possum Molly" and I gotta tell you, there was definitely some inappropriate pioneer flirting going on.


My parents loved Pioneer Village because they could remember using some of the old tools, or seeing their parents and grandparents do things the old-fashioned way, and we arrived home hot, sunburned and sticky, with our bellies full of food I normally don't let myself have.

But most of the exhibits we saw didn’t have anything to do with my life, so I’m left wondering again why I’m so drawn to these relics of the past. I can’t seem to make up my mind where I belong. I spend my days on a college campus where some of the students are so painfully young it’s hard not to spit comb their hair and hold their hand when crossing the street. Yet I was pretty ticked off when the guy at the fair wouldn’t sell me the discounted pass to ride the train trolley because “It’s for 55 and over, honey.”

I remember my mother telling me once that she always felt like she was about 26 inside and I thought, “Yeah, right.” Yet when my daughter reminded me that she will be 21 in about 6 weeks, all I could think was, “Really? Seems like I was just 21 – how can you be 21?”

My brain doesn’t feel any different than it ever has...except for those times when it sees me in the mirror and is shocked speechless. So I guess I'll just keep throwing away the AARP crap that is now flooding my mailbox, and scurry past mirrors without looking.

Besides, I know I’m not quite ancient yet…because I couldn't stop myself from buying a cool keyring at the fair this year. Although now that I look at it closely, it’s commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Pioneer Village…*sigh*.
Housekeeping Details: I've been tweaking the blog and you can now click on the "Subscribe" button and the blog will show up on your homepage. I used the ATOM button and it did it no problem.

Are Those Your Keys?

Standing in line at a fast food restaurant, 3 year-old Sawyer was eye level with the keys dangling in the hand of the man in front of us. He looked at the keys, craned his neck to scope out the man, and then looked longingly back at the keys. Finally, with a speculative gleam in his darling blue eyes, he said, “Hey mister, are those your keys?” Pete and I both sprang into action, as if the kid had dynamite strapped to his chest and his finger on the detonator. “Don’t give him your keys!” Pete shouted, while I barked at the bewildered man, “Don’t even let him hold them!” Sad experience had taught us that the child had mad Houdini skills when it came to keys. My sister once innocently let him play with her keys while we were visiting in Indiana and three weeks later, back in Ohio, we found the whole set in the garage of his Fisher Price playhouse. (Because that’s where you keep the keys, of course.)

He loved, collected, carried, hid and played with them endlessly. He shaved about 4 years off my lifespan when he stuck one in an electrical outlet just to see what would happen. What happens is the house shorts out, the socket turns black, mom makes an NFL worthy tackle and the child gets the shock of his life.

When Pete bought a John Deere tractor to mow our large yard in Ohio, Sawyer could not keep his hands off the tractor keys. We fastened them to tennis balls and chained them to yard implements, but every time Pete went to mow, the keys were missing. When Pete would ask, Sawyer would say, “I’ll get ‘em, Dad” and then disappear into the Fortress of Lost Keys (his bedroom) and come out dangling a set on his little kleptomaniac fingers. Well, sometimes. Other times Pete would just sheepishly drive back to the John Deere dealer and buy another key. We had to do this so often they kept them in stock for us.

One of the happiest days of our life was when my Aunt Rita gave him an entire box of old keys saved from the Harley Davidson dealership she once owned. Keys, glorious keys! There were golf cart keys, and motorcycle keys and old skeleton keys and they were ALL for him. We thought this would satisfy his urge, but after a short while he seemed to realize those keys didn’t have the same power to make mom and dad run shrieking through the house, turning trash cans upside down and begging a 3-year-old to “please tell mommy where you put the keys…”

That blue-eyed 3-year-old is now 16, 6’ 3” and shaving. A couple of days ago, he got in the car with a driving instructor at the DMV and turned the key. I watched from the curb, stomping on my imaginary brake, as he parallel parked and backed up for the test. They drove away for the road portion and I entertained myself watching two twin sisters taking their test. The first one returned and hit the ground running, exuberantly waving her test paper, shouting, “I passed, I passed!” The second twin drove off for her test and I idly listened as the first twin replayed every acceleration and turn for her happy parents. Then there was silence…and then tears….the second twin had returned and apparently failed her test.

Unable to bear her tearful recital of nervous mistakes, I went inside to wait and selfishly hope the same thing wouldn’t happen to Sawyer. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, for him or the twin, but it could certainly seem like it when you want something so much.

Minutes crawled by until the door finally opened and that crooked grin announced the good news.

I gave him another set of keys today. I don’t think he’ll lose them. In fact, I don’t even think he’s coming back.

All is Forgotten

THINGS ELI HAS FORGOTTEN: How to walk. This is because Eli has a brain injury.

THINGS I HAVE FORGOTTEN: How to sleep. The word for scissors. What being cold feels like. This is because I am “pre-menopausal.”

THINGS MY HUSBAND HAS FORGOTTEN: Where he put his phone. Where he put the keys to Eli’s van. Where he put Eli. (Clue: Eli was in the van with the keys right before Pete locked them both inside.) This is because he is … “pre-elderly." (Except he’s always done stuff like this, so…)

THINGS MY OTHER THREE CHILDREN HAVE FORGOTTEN: How to close the basement refrigerator door…for two days. How to close the basement freezer door…for one week. How to turn the thermostat back up to 76 after they turned it down to 62 “just for a minute because I was hot.” (Only took six hours to notice the frost on the windows.) This is because they have brain damage. Brain damage is different from Eli’s brain injury. According to Bill Cosby, all children are born with brain damage. This is compounded by the fact that we have apparently taught them from an early age that money comes from Grandma and food is free.

When I was a new parent, I had visions of gathering my children around my tanned, flexible knees (It’s MY vision, ok?) and teaching them to be fiscally responsible citizens of the world.

I must have forgot.

Write Me Down in History

When I was eleven years old I received a red leatherette diary, complete with lock and key, for Christmas.

I started writing in it on the first day of 1973 and one of the entries reads:

Today was kind of busy. After school I went to Camp Fire Girls. After that we picked up Jill from music lessons and then went home. I got a big gold star in my English notebook. Mrs. Frey said she was only going to give the big gold stars to the “almost perfect” notebooks and I got one. I’m so happy and proud of myself.”

Other entries chronicle fights with my brother, sleepovers with friends, and the saga of my best friend Debbie’s 6^th grade romance with Eric Lindgren. I had a secret crush on Eric, so I scrutinized the ups and downs of their relationship with keen interest, waiting for my chance to comfort him, should the path of true love not run smoothly. I wasn’t terribly dedicated to my journaling; my last entry was only 5 months later in May, but I started another journal at 17 and managed to write in it for almost two years before stopping three blank pages from the end. The handwriting is better and the entries are a little deeper, but the cringe-worthy content is of little interest to anyone but me.

 Or so I thought, until my 10 year old began reading quizzically over my shoulder. “It says you ‘slept in’ – did you do that back then?” he queried innocently. “Didn’t you have to get up early to work the crops on the farm?” There wasn’t really room for crops (or a farm) in the suburban neighborhood I grew up in, but his question made me realize he knows very little about my childhood, and that’s my fault. I guess I haven’t told him nearly as many “I walked to school barefoot in the snow” stories as my mother told me.

Mom began a tradition years ago of including a story from her childhood in her annual Christmas card to her children. One year she told of frog-gigging in the river bottom before the TVA flooded the Cumberland River to make the Cumberland Reservoir. Another year, she reminisced about her Aunt Pat teaching her to iron handkerchiefs with a flat iron heated on a wood stove. My mother has faithfully kept a journal for several years and the memories she’s recorded have provided the impetus for many of her stories.

When I asked her why she kept a journal, she said it was mostly because she dearly wished her grandmother had kept one; she would have loved reading about her daily life and its struggles and joys. My mother decided she didn’t want her posterity to have the same regrets.

I never knew my great-grandmother, Margaret (Maggie Jane) Humble, but my mother wisely wrote down her memories of this hardy, Kentucky farm woman. Maggie Jane was born 84 years before I entered the world, yet in the space of only three generations my life would bear little resemblance to hers.
  

I married at the modern age of 24 and, except for a few months in an apartment when we were first married, we’ve always lived in a home that had at least 4 bedrooms, central air conditioning, hot and cold running water, and carpeting or hardwood floors. Maggie Jane, one of 11 children, married Pleasant Bolden Bell when she was 19 years old. He built a two-room log cabin for them to start their married life in and they never left it or enlarged it. She never in her life had running water or electricity.

* * * *

At last count, we had 4 computers, 2 iPhones, 3 iPods, and 5 TVs. When my internet was recently out for a few days, I was nearly crippled in my efforts to pay bills, do schoolwork and find the answer to the all-important question, “What is a helgamite and what does it look like?” (It’s an aquatic larvae often used as fish bait; it looks like something that will bite you and make you wet your pants at the same time.)

Maggie Jane had a radio that her husband only allowed her to turn on in the morning for the news and weather, but her favorite program was The Lives and Loves of Helen Trent. She would turn it on when Pleasant left to do the chores and post my mother as a lookout by the window. If Grandpa finished early and was spied coming up the lane, my mother would run tell Maggie so she could turn it off.

* * * *

I would be embarrassed to count how many pieces of furniture are stuffed in the rooms of my house; we have at least eight couches spread over three floors of our home. When my clothes dryer recently broke, my husband came home with TWO dryers because he found such a great deal. The thought of ever moving again makes pyromania seem necessary.

Maggie Jane’s front room held two feather beds, a little table for the radio, some rocking chairs and a ladder made from hickory saplings resting against the wall that went up to the attic. The kitchen held a round oak table covered with an oilcloth. In the middle of the table was a canning jar filled with silverware, a covered butter bowl, and blue salt and pepper shakers.

* * * *

My husband and I recently spent several frustrating hours sorting out his company’s new medical benefits. We filled out papers for a Health Savings Account and debated the merits of Dental and Vision insurance and their deductibles. I run to the local pharmacy for everything from prescriptions to cough drops.

Maggie Jane was considered a doctor/midwife and people came from around the county for her to “doctor” them. She knew all the herbs and plants in the woods and their uses. In the corner cabinet she kept a glass jar that held the “cancer medicine” she made from the sheep sorrel plant. She gathered the leaves of the plant (about a million of them) and boiled them down into a gooey, black, stinky mixture, and it’s said she really did remove skin cancers with it.

* * * *

I once painted my bedroom wall 6 different colors before finding just the right shade called “Moroccan Leather.”

Maggie Jane papered her walls with pictures from magazines that people gave her.

* * * *

I shop at one of three nearby grocery stores that stock items from around the world. My pantry shelves bulge with canned goods, balsamic vinegars and gourmet pastas.

Maggie Jane had a hand-dug cellar under the back porch where she would send my mother some mornings to get a blue mason jar of peaches for breakfast. She canned food from her garden by cold packing, and it was done in a big black kettle over a fire, in the yard. There were never enough canning jars, so when the green beans were picked, my mother helped snap and spread them on a sheet in the yard. Covered with old lace curtains to keep off the bugs, they put them out in the morning and brought them in at night until they were dried by the sun. Once dried, they were strung on a string and hung from rafters in the attic.

* * * *

I had my first child at 26 in a hospital, attended by an obstetric team and a queasy husband. I would have three more over the next 15 years. When my kids got sick, I rushed them to a doctor, and when one was seriously injured, the combined efforts of hundreds of trained people pulled him from the brink of death and saved his life.

Maggie Jane had her first child at home at the age of 20 and over the next 24 years she had 12 more. When she was 33 years old, she buried her 1-year-old baby girl, Zona Elizabeth, who died from the whooping cough. She wrapped her in a little hand-stitched quilt, walked to the woods and buried her in a pine thicket. Eight years later, when she was 41, the flu epidemic of 1918 hit her home in Wayne County, Kentucky, and every member of the family was stricken. Her son, Jim Roe, was 14, healthy and handsome. He died on New Year’s Day. Her beautiful 16-year-old daughter, Lucinda, died 5 days later on January 6th. The ground was frozen too hard to dig a grave, so a neighbor built two wooden boxes and they put the bodies in the barn until the ground thawed enough to bury them.

* * * *

I never met Maggie, but I feel like I know her because she came to life in my mother’s memories. I do remember my Grandmother Dora.

She loved to quilt and garden, and she was partial to brightly patterned blouses and dangly earrings. She thought the Avon catalog held the latest and greatest, and she gave birth to my mother on her mother’s round oak table in Maggie Jane’s two-room log cabin by the light of a kerosene lamp.

But my children won’t know those things about my grandmother Dora, if I don’t follow the example set by my mother and write down my fleeting memories of her: she was an identical twin who never outgrew dressing like her sister, she created art out of tin cans and Styrofoam egg cartons, and she was a genuine country cook who could make cabbage and corn bread taste like gourmet cuisine.

Memories fade so easily if they aren’t recorded. Details that seem perfectly normal and commonplace at the time might be fascinating to our posterity. Do they even have Campfire Girls anymore? Maybe Eric Lindgren is now famous for something besides eating twelve dog biscuits at Eddie’s party (March 19, 1973’s entry – he did it on a dare.) One day, your journal could be a very interesting historical document. But if all it ever does is make your life more real to family who didn’t have a chance to know you, then a big gold star to you.

Back Home Again...

I was born a poor black child. No, wait, … that was Steve Martin in The Jerk.

I was born a middle class, suburban white child, but lately I’ve been pretending my roots are more Little House on the Prairie.

As a child of the suburbs, one of the few times I saw anything remotely rural was when we visited my cousins in the “country.” We played in the hayloft, chased the pigs in the barn and pelted each other with unripe peaches and persimmons yanked from the tree. I would then return home and say condescending things like, “I’m so glad I don’t live out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do.” I was blithely unaware of the irony since the dead-end street we lived on wasn't exactly a hotbed of metropolitan culture.

My other rural experience as a child was our annual visit to my mother's relatives in Kentucky. It was painful. It was hot. It was boring. We spent a lot of time outside, sitting on scratchy, aluminum lawn chairs, when there was a perfectly good air-conditioned house we could have occupied. There were mass quantities of old people and all they did was sit around and talk about other old people I had never heard of, and hoped to never meet. Their television received only two channels, but it didn't matter because my elderly aunt and uncle acted as if they paid for reception by the minute, so they never turned it on. There was nothing to do, nothing to see and I vowed nightly to NEVER torture my children in such a manner.

Last week I took my 10 year old on a road trip to Indiana to visit my parents. They live on a farm waaayyy out past the city limits.

There is a chicken coop. With chickens.

There is a log cabin.

There is a hayfield and a garden and a barn and some old people. (Sorry, Mom and Dad.)

I'm as happy there as a pig in slop. (Even my metaphors become bucolic.)

I called my mom the day before we left to see if the garden had any ripe tomatoes. I dragged my son out into the hayfield so he could see the deer running into the woods. I made my mother drive me around so I could take pictures of cornfields and barns and Indiana summer skies. Honestly, I don't know what has happened to me, but I'm worried it has something to do with getting older.

Could it be that my parents really enjoyed visiting their ancient relatives on those long-ago death marches to Kentucky? Did they LIKE sitting around in 98% humidity, swatting mosquitoes and saying things like, "Well, I always knew he'd come to no good end..."?

My parents' house is beautifully decorated and icily air-conditioned, yet every evening we wound up outside on the patio by the barn. (Yeah...It's a high-class barn with its own patio.) Papaw would settle in the hammock, Grandma would sit in front of an old box fan plugged into the barn outlet, and I happily sat in a scratchy, aluminum lawn chair while we talked about who died, why the zucchini plants weren't thriving, and the crazy dove who built her nest in the artificial tree on the front porch.

(It's a real dove. In a fake tree. Seriously.)

I tore through the weekend, snapping pictures like crazy, as if I needed to embrace as much healthy, heartland Americana as possible.

I took pictures of cows.

How can you resist a leaning cow matching a leaning birdhouse?! I couldn't!

I took pictures of cornfields and hay fields.

Then I found the barns. I admit I got a little out of control at the barns, but the one lady was very nice and agreed not to press charges.

I gorged myself on homespun images as if I had been forcibly removed from Tara in my youth and was just now returning, even though when I’m at home in Georgia, I only venture outside on my way to the pool or my air-conditioned car.

I’m not quite sure why I suddenly seem to be channeling Green Acres. Maybe as I get older I’m just realizing that a simpler way of life has its attractions; tomatoes that aren’t square, afternoon naps in a hammock, and conversation about real people instead of celebrities.

Then I noticed my 10-year old casting longing glances at the house with its satellite TV and Popsicle laden freezer, and it all came clear.

I’m just trying to give him what I had as a child: an annual visit to his mother's relatives where it's painful, hot and boring, and mass quantities of old people talk about people he doesn't know and hopes to never meet.

He’s really going to thank me for it later.

Between the Bricks

In the spring, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love*, my middle-aged husband’s fancy turns to thoughts of lavish landscaping. His neck swivels at an artful display of mulch the way other men ogle scantily clad women. He regales me endlessly with grandiose plans for building a “simple little” retaining wall/covered deck/gazebo . This is generally where I call a screeching halt to the conversation by waving our sadly deficient checkbook around and crush all his horticultural hopes and dreams. He then helpfully suggests that my heart is three sizes too small and our compromise eventually shakes out to purchasing hanging baskets for the front porch.

My husband scouts out the offerings, and inevitably falls deeply in love with something that looks like this.

I know this looks lovely, but he conveniently forgets that we live in Atlanta where the median summer temperature is 146 degrees and the front porch gets direct sun 19 hours a day. Like any new lover, he faithfully waters the baskets morning and night and tenderly whispers sweet nothings to them as he gently plucks their dead leaves, but as in most relationships, sooner or later…. he has to go out of town. You thought I was going to say he forgets, didn’t you? Well, HE doesn’t forget . I do. I halfheartedly try, but morning comes really early, and I’ve heard you shouldn’t water in the heat of day, and at night it’s… dark, and, ….I just can’t remember, ok?

So quicker than you can say, “Miracle NO”, our baskets look like this.

For those of you with inquiring minds, that green thing sprouting is probably a misguided acorn that fell there last fall. Why yes, now that you mention it, we DON’T have any shame and we DO leave these specimens on the porch year round so we can be confronted by our inadequacies on a daily basis.

As I came in the front door the other day, thinking how beautifully the burned out porch light complemented the desiccated flower baskets, I noticed this:

In case you can’t believe your eyes, apparently one lone petunia seed from a bygone season’s basket fell and sprouted BETWEEN THE BRICKS.

This seed thrived for more than a year in a hostile environment between two bricks and mortar, through one of Atlanta's coldest winters (including multiple snowstorms) with absolutely no care or attention, yet last spring the entire basket was deader than a dodo in less than a month under the protective onslaught of all my husband's ministrations. (Pay no attention to him mumbling that my black thumb needs to take responsibility...)

I know there's a lesson here somewhere and I'm looking really hard between the bricks to find it. "Bloom where you're NOT planted" doesn't seem quite right, yet “Why Bother?” is a little too fatalistic to motivate (and probably won’t get embroidered on a pillow anytime soon).

I suppose, as with most things, the happy medium is somewhere in the middle. The first couple of years after Eli’s accident, we figuratively fertilized and watered that child darn near to extinction. He initially thrived, and then, like the baskets, inexplicably dried up around the edges and seemed to plateau, making very little progress, just eking out a minimal existence. Everyone adapted; Pete went back to work, I went back to school, Maddy, Sawyer and Hudson did their thing, and we settled into a new normal.

But lately, we’ve seen a couple of little sprouts in the most unexpected places, so we’ve hauled out the watering can and are spraying Miracle-Gro like mad. I’ll let you know if something breaks through.

*Courtesy of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” - I knew that English degree would be good for something someday.

Let Me Count the Ways...

76 answering machine messages.
19 phone calls in a two hour period.
253 hours of South Park and That 70’s Show recorded on the DVR.

Remember the scene in Rainman where Raymond counts the spilled toothpicks in the diner and his brother, Charlie Babbitt, is amazed that he gets it correct? That scene is Charlie’s first intimation that Raymond has unusual skills at counting, ultimately leading him to use Raymond’s abilities to count cards in Vegas. There is a lot of counting that goes on at my house, but so far, no one has made any money at it. Now that I think about it, it isn’t always just Eli who’s doing the counting – often it’s me muttering under my breath, “1…2…3…breathe Tanya, have patience Tanya….”

The accident that caused Eli’s severe brain injury happened almost four years ago. He’s come a long way in those years, progressing from being in a coma for several months to studying (and excelling at) high school algebra in preparation to take the GED. Yet it seems that most of our breakdowns involve numbers. Eli can remember my cell phone number, but he doesn’t remember that he’s already called me 6 times to tell me he would like some gum. He very cannily remembers the code to order Pay-per-View movies, yet doesn’t remember ordering the same movie 16 times (at $4.99 a pop). My answering machine stays full because he can’t remember no one answers it since we all have cell phones. Once a week, I have to stand by the machine, push the play button and listen to the robotic voice drone on and on, “You have…76 messages. First message…” Every single message starts outs, “Mooommm…” and then I hit delete, because there are only about 4 reasons he calls:

1) He wants his socks off,
2) He wants some Coke,
3) He wants his iPod/phone charged,
4) He wants a cheeseburger.

He calls at 2:00 a.m. wanting to know why he’s in bed. We tell him it’s the middle of the night and he says, “My bad…I thought it was 2:00 in the afternoon.” He calls to tell us that he’s leaving his daycare center. He calls again to say he’s on the interstate. A third call informs us he’s getting close to our neighborhood, followed by the fourth call that conveys the scintillating news that he’s coming down the hill toward our house. All those calls translate to my counting out large sums of money to pay the cell phone bill.

I count packs of gum to determine how many days it will last him.

I count the hours until he goes to bed and relinquishes the TV remote so I can have some peace and quiet.

And then I count the many ways I should be ashamed.

Because there was a time I sat in an ER waiting room counting down the critical hours that would determine whether he lived or died (24). There were days we watched in horror as the bolt screwed into his head monitoring his ICP rose to 50 and above (and normal should have been about 15). There were months we anxiously watched for a sign that he understood what was going on around him, telling him to blink once for yes, twice for no.

My bad, Eli. You’d think by now I would have learned how to count my blessings, huh?