Eagle Ey

Our Tootsie earned herself a new nickname last weekend, "Trauma, Eagle Ey."

Tootsie trained her Eagle Ey on a dog at Concert in the Park on Saturday, and when she reached out to pet him, he reacted with animal instincts. To make a long story short (and to avoid the accompanying "control your child vs. control your pet" debate), I'll simply share that Tootsie required some exploratory surgery to rule out vascular damage and to stitch up wounds on her head and neck. She has minor (unnoticeable to the untrained eye) nerve damage to her face, but she's otherwise fine, acting like a typical toddler, alternately charming and defiant to her doctors and nurses and Mom and Dad. We remain in the hospital only to get comfortable with the PICC line and antibiotic infusions we will take on after discharge. 

Every event in the hospital leaves us bowing with gratitude for how fortunate we are: Only one more inch to the right, and then...only one centimeter deeper bite, and it could have been...

 We are thankful.

We are scheduled to leave for Boston and Maine on July 14. Need I mention that Tootsie got close to hijacking another Boston/Maine trip? Geez! I should probably knock wood until we are on the flight there...and BACK, as planned.

 So here I am again, rooming in the hospital under unusual circumstances with my third baby. This time, though, she's mobile. This time, I'm not allowed to leave the room unattended. Last time the two of us were confined to the hospital, she was a baby in a bassinet. I could leave her there for an hour in the care of her nurse and venture forth into the sunshine. This time, the one time I defied the nurse and went to the in-room bathroom without putting her bed's side rails up, she bailed out, stretching her IV cords to painful limits. Last time, each moment I breastfed her I was triumphant that my preemie was latching on and taking advantage of my rich bounty. This time, I'm wondering how we got to almost-two-years-old still breastfeeding. AFTER THIS, I swear, WE ARE WEANING!  

Not unlike last time, I'm at peace with our present and future. Once the paramedics arrived at the park and assured me our baby would live, I figured we could handle the rest.

So our two greatest challenges on the current horizon appear to be: 1) helping her kick her popsicle habit (averaging upwards of four a day plus lollipops), and 2) reaching consensus on a hairdo strategy (she's currently rocking the Rihanna).

Meanwhile, in typical Tootsie fashion, she's commanding the attention of the floor by doing laps in a push tricycle while declaring, "Ooooh; I like this!" and showing off how she administers her own oral meds via syringe.  She's also seizing the opportunity to potty train herself.  Why not?

In the ER at Children's Hospital, before formal names are established, patients are given "trauma names," established by alphabet much like hurricanes. Our Tootsie is "Eagle Ey" on my bracelet and hers. Which is just a new moniker for the same indomitable spirit which inspires us.

Hearty thanks to all those community members, neighbors, and friends who came to Tootsie's aid at the concert and who have provided support for all of us since. 

And we send our healing energy to the dog's owners, who were devastated by the events, and as we can only imagine, feeling helpless and hoping for the best.  We assure you we are well.  

TGIF: 35 Weeks and 4lbs. 14oz

Tootsie news yesterday by statistics:  It's Friday, so she's 35 weeks.  And she is on the ounce-a-day gain train, now only two ounces shy of a nice round five pounds!  She passed her hearing test (which I anticipated, because she reacts so strongly when I sing to her.  Ahem.  No comments, please) and I got to wash her hair.

Her biggest obstacle to surmount before she is sprung from the NICU is taking all her feedings by mouth.  She needs to be alert at each three-hour feeding first, and she still sleeps through several a day (which means they hook up her milk by tube).

I've found myself having to avoid reading too much news, as there is too much depressing coverage, with crashing planes, kidnappings, protesters dead, babies abandoned.  As a friend wrote on Facebook, "I wish I could unread that Hannah Anderson article..."

We are also at a place in the NICU where Tootsie is stable and basically what they call a "Feeder/Grower."  Yet we are surrounded by very sick babies, and I pass by their rooms with hope and reverence, mindful of where their parents are on their journeys with their newborns.

My family--determined to have someone here to support me at all times--provides uplift and distractions and opportunities for fresh air.  And the internet comes through with some sources of inspiration.

Here's a video about a teacher, dad, and human being determined to enrich others' lives:

And here's a mother panda reunited with her baby (I can so relate to this one!)

Note, however:  syrup or honey or whatever they used to distract Mom while they sneaked her baby away wouldn't work on me...but the promise of sleep, maybe, would...

Back in the Shark Tank

It was a nice run we had for a few years, fish free.  Since the arrival of Spot the Bunny, we haven't had any requests or yearnings for gills and fins.  Which is fine by me, since I'm still atoning for the death of Lily three years ago. 

A few days ago, a student shared that she had a present for me.  She couldn't bring it to school yet, she said, but it was coming. 

"Cookies," I suggested hopefully. 

"Nope," she grinned. 

"A gift certificate to Souplantation?" I joked, referring to the restaurant where the student in question had dinner with her volleyball team after their playoff loss, in the same room as the triumphant team.  Awkward. 

"Ha," she answered.  "You'll see." 

I was deep in conversation at lunch today when I spotted the student trying to catch my eye.  Her mom was right behind her, carefully holding a box. 

"We have your present!" she nodded at her mom excitedly.

"Wow..." my eyes widened at the box and her mom, who was clutching it gingerly.  "Does it...crawl?" 

For a minute there, I imagined a kitten, or a puppy.  It would be a bold gift!  But I'd take it. 

"It doesn't crawl!" Mom replied. 

I peered into the box, where a fish bowl was nestled in some bubble wrap. 

"A fish!" 

"We were in charge of the decorations for the volleyball banquet and we brought you one of the centerpieces--look at the Tiki in the fishbowl!  We knew you'd love it!  You can keep it on your desk!" 

I love the Tiki (our school's mascot) in the fishbowl.  I even love the Betta fish--a deep reddish purple.  Gorgeous. 

But I didn't love the realization that I'd have to take our fish home for break--he had to be fed over the next week, right?  And then I'd bring him back?  It was too much to think about, so I asked for feeding guidelines and thanked my sweet student/friend and her mom. 

Lucky for the fish, there was heavy traffic on the way home, so sloshing was kept at a minimum.  He/she made it home safely with me, and I don't know that he'll return to my desk during the period between Thanksgiving and Winter Break.  That's too many dangerous round trips.

As for names, I'm considering "Spike," "Setter" or "Side Out." 

Please, no "Shank."  Gonna try to keep this little digger alive.

Heart of a Whale

Yesterday I spent the day with thirty students and a few colleagues in an experience our high school hosts called Human Relations Day.  The aim is to bring together students from diverse groups and grades and engage them in activities and dialogue that help them build community and see one another differently--or for the first time at all, in some cases.  The facilitators are teachers and counselors, and by the end of the day there's been soul-baring, tears, lots of laughing, and vows to go forth and make a difference. 

One of the most powerful games we played was "Cows, Chickens, and Ducks."  Each participant was given a slip of paper with the name of an animal on it, and we were directed not to reveal our species.  The task was to roam the room acting out and/or making the sound of our animal, and we were forbidden from using words to give hints or ask anyone explicitly if they were what we suspected. 

I was found by my fellow dolphin in no time, despite the fact that I sounded like a strangled kitten.  It was my diving--apparently spot on. 

But not every animal had a partner.  And not every animal communicated his species clearly enough to find his pair, either.  We had two separate whales at the end, one who thought the other was a bird.  The two pigeons were among the last to find each other (that pigeon noise is a hard one to make), and a single, lonely seagull.

And that's where the metaphor started kicking in.  What if you're a whale who doesn't know there's another of your kind in the community?  What if you are a whale who sounds like a bird, and that really throws off the other whales, who don't see themselves in you?  But then, what if you are a whale who is actually for the birds?  That works if the birds accept your birdy whale-ish-ness. But if you're a whale mistaken for a bird, at what point do you reveal your true identity?  It's no wonder the birds assumed our chirping whale was one of them--there were lots of birds around.

One observant student noted that it was a mistake to assume the only interest in the game, and in life, was finding one's own kind.  He admitted to feeling sometimes, as a dog, that he wished he could fly.  He admired other animals' abilities to "breathe" underwater.

He also argued that if you're a wolf looking for your pack, it doesn't help to wander around murmuring growls.  Wolves who embrace and celebrate their inner and outer dog and who howl and bark wildly are more likely to draw other wolves to them.

He apologized to those animals in the room that he ignored.  If you're a cat, for example, he might have only given you a cursory nod.  "No offense," he reassured, "it's just that you're meowing, and I'm looking for someone who woofs.  It doesn't mean I don't respect you, even if others assume we're opposites."

I thought about our students and the troubles and worries and identities they share with trusted adults behind closed doors.  And how we attempt to reassure them there are others who've experienced similar pain and understand, on some level, who they are.  I think of the whales I know who have been mistaken for birds, or who pretended to be birds for the sake of safety or sanity or stage of their development, or who needed to really be birds although somehow manifested in a whale's body.  Or who waited too long to hear someone else recognize and say, "I know you're a whale.  And I love whales."

It's not as simple as sorting ourselves in a room by species.  Even whales distinguish themselves from one another--some seem more like dolphins, others like sharks.  We've got to avoid over-generalizing our categories and characters.

Here's to the whales among us--with the largest hearts of any animal--who sound like birds.  And who might dance like gerbils and look like elephants and feel like monkeys.  We each have to be our very own kind of whale.  Because as Oscar Wilde said, "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

Hissy Fit

Sunday morning we noticed something was missing.  It was the sound of claws pattering across linoleum and insistent squeaks as I poured myself my first cup of joe.  The cat was not following routine.  Her food from yesterday sat in her dish, uneaten. 

I left for my run, driven by denial but taking my phone along, as I feared what husband and daughters would find while I was gone.  Though she doesn't look it, Koshka is old.  Almost fourteen. 

Armed with flashlights, bait, and determination, my search-and-rescue team found our angry hunger-striking feline under the wardrobe in our bedroom.  When I got home and peered beneath the armoire, she hissed at me.  She's not the friendliest cat, but something wasn't right. 

I eschewed analysis and went straight to action, sensing that our little family needed to err on the side of caution as it relates to mortality of loved ones right now.  I borrowed a cat carrier from a friend, managed to wrestle the cat inside, and headed off to the money pit emergency vet. 

"Make sure she doesn't die," admonished Big Sis as I drove away. 

The vets were kind and knowledgeable. Koshka was probably dehydrated.  She might have pancreatitis.  She could have heart failure.  Perhaps she was constipated.  They would check her, both inside and out.  For an extra $300 I could get blood work results back in an hour.  I went for immediate IV fluids and slow lab analysis.  The vet promised to return shortly with an estimate. 

Alone in the exam room adorned with photo tributes to passed pets, I prepared myself.  A thousand bucks, I thought.  I'll plan on a thousand, so the $500 they come back with won't sound bad.  I gulped, and waited.

Thirteen hundred dollars would be the known amount, I was informed, with an upper end of four hundred smacks more, depending, you know, on possible other stuff*.  I signed on the line, doing the math in my head that our up-till-now healthy cat was really only costing us a hundred dollars per year of her life.  Worth it, I sighed, and headed home, trying not to equate that amount with mortgage payments, plane tickets, and the cost of replacing our broken clothes dryer. 

But you can't quantify how badly you want your pets to live forever. 

We missed our cat all day.  So we went back for a visit in the afternoon, as we were invited to do.  "Ahh, yes, Koshka..." The woman at the front desk raised her eyebrows.  "She's not being very nice to us."

They took us to "the back," where the vet pointed out our wide-eyed and wrathful cat, outfitted with an IV and cone around her head.  She crouched in her cage, which was emblazoned with orange stickers warning "Caution:  Will Bite."  A quick look around the room suggested she was an outlier on the aggression spectrum.  She allowed us to pet her and scratch her behind the ears, but she wouldn't look at us.  We left her to stay overnight for more fluids and observation. 

"That's mean, Mom," Big Sis frowned as we walked to the car.  "'Caution:  Will Bite'," she scoffed.  "It's Koshka!"

"Yeah," chimed in Little Sis.  "She didn't bite us!"

"Hmm, let's think about this for a moment.  I wonder what the doctors write on your charts about how you behave when you're getting shots?"  I nodded at Little Sis, recalling one harrowing well-child visit when she turned five. 

"Caution:  Will Scream," offered Big Sis ruefully. 

"Yeah, and that's before we even went into the exam room!"  We laughed.

The vet called that evening to say that one of her electrolytes was off; they were supplementing it. Final word yesterday morning was that they couldn't find anything wrong with her; husband could pick her up.  He waited an extra hour and invested a supplemental *$55 for sedation because our 6-lb. hellcat wouldn't let the vets take her IV out.  I think they told her not to let the door hit her in her perfectly unconstipated rear as we escorted her out. 

Guess who bounded up the couch, purring, to greet me at the door when I came home from work? 

That Darn Cat. 

Waiting for This Moment to Be Free

I heard a coworker's pet had died. I told her I was sorry, and mentioned that we're feeling the mortality of our own aging pets.

"It was our bird," she shared. "I stepped on him."

Her confession conjured the guilt I've felt at our kids' sunburns; at my toddler's backward tumble, head on pavement, after propping her in a chair on a paved slope; at drops of blood and tears I induced trimming my daughters' infant fingernails.

But my friend wasn't clipping her parrot's wings. Charlie pooped in his cage but apparently lived everywhere else. He cruised from room to room; he perched in the trees above her and chattered with the wild birds as my friend gardened. The family's German Shepherd and he were fast friends, following each other around the house.

Charlie was hopping toward the living room, where my friend's son lay on the couch home sick from school, as she ran back into the house to grab something and caught him underfoot.

It was, ultimately, his freedom and his integration into the household which hastened his demise. Would she have had it any other way? I wondered out loud. No, she readily admitted, regretting the shoes she wore for her dash inside, shoes normally left at the door, shoes which added injury to the not-uncommon insult of accidentally "kicking" Charlie as he sprung about on the floor.

There's always that niggling detail, isn't there, which causes us to push the rewind button and mentally revisit the might-have-beens: the shoes which shouldn't have been on, the route which normally wouldn't be taken, the place we wouldn't normally be. These are the variables--the flapping wings of the butterfly--that sometimes seem to save our skins, too.

It hurts when we feel we've had a hand--or foot--in our loved ones' misfortune. "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out" isn't funny when you bought the stroller that strangled your infant. When you left your child in the car on a warm summer day. When your child drowns in the swimming pool. There's carelessness, and then there's chance, and there's bad confluence of events. There's "there but for fortune go I," because none of us is perfect, because none of us is the right kind of vigilant at the right time, all the time.

I have a fear of falling. It's a funky fear, related to a fear of heights, but based only on my potential to fall, and not how far: I avoid standing on stools, climbing fences, walking on wobbly surfaces, descending stairs. My falling phobia, thankfully, is met head-on by my determination to be tough. Nevertheless, my greatest challenge is not projecting my fear on my kids. I do my best to subdue cringeing, flinching, and gasps while I watch my daughters ride bikes, run headlong down the sidewalk, climb the monkey bars. I owe them that: to live. To be humans in our dangerous and unpredictable world.

I want to imbue them with common sense and self defense, but I know the freedoms we afford them may cause them harm, nonetheless: driving, traveling, dating. I admire the parents whose children require extra care--children with brittle bones, allergies, weak hearts--moms and dads who navigate the demilitarized zone between overprotecting and encouraging adventurous living.

Charlie was no caged bird. His little life was richer for it. And so is my friend's, with that parrot she let hop-fly in her midst, walking among the big people, living large.

The Story of Rose...errrr...Spot, the Rabbit.

Last year, while she was in first grade, Big Sis got a bunny in her bonnet.

All I want is a rabbit, Mommy.

"Wishes for bunny" is probably a box in the developmental flow chart of the average little girl, in this case right before "loses first tooth" and right after "masters two-wheeler."

We hoped it was a phase that would pass. We're dog-and-cat folk, after all, of the "one each" variety, and occasionally reluctant goldfish owners. We don't know rabbits.

But we found it difficult to explain to our daughter why a rabbit wasn't a reasonable request. "We don't want one" was the most truthful answer. Truth is, we didn't really want a big plastic talking dollhouse in our living room either, but such are the things we do for love.

Attempting to both stall and discourage Big Sis, we required her to research rabbits and explain to us their care and feeding. She dutifully checked out bunny books from her school's library and reported her findings.

In the meantime, my mother helpfully clipped newspaper articles (the kinds which appear around Easter) detailing the reasons Why Rabbits Make Poor Pets.

And then, we all forgot about bunnies. Maybe. I suspect our daughter was taking a break from her campaign and preparing for a Fall Blitz.

At any rate, she developed a genuine loving interest in our current pets, growing into their best friend and advocate and taking charge of walking the dog.

At my school, meanwhile, we have a French teacher/4-H Rabbit-Raiser/Dr. Dolittle, who from time to time has broadcasted her bunnies available for adoption (and fresh eggs available for purchase). Back in the initial stages of Rabbit Research, she detailed her own daughter's journey through rabbit raising, and both dispelled and confirmed my fears about taking on a bunny ourselves.

This week, in an email about classroom supplies and schedules, she slipped in mention of a sweet bunny looking for a home.

This week, The Week Before Big Sis's birthday.

And that is how Rose the Rabbit came to spend a day in the Vice Principal's office and then a lifetime in our home (gulp). I mean, backyard. We're looking for a hutch.

Our daughter was surprised and amazed that her wish came true so unexpectedly, and giving gifts under those circumstances is just awesome.

After we got over the initial euphoria, we still had a bunny. So we set out to get to know him. Rose. Rose the Male Bunny.

Turns out he is a show rabbit, a "Dutch." Our teacher's daughter tattooed his ear, as is customary with show rabbits, before learning that He was not a She. Rose will have "Rose" forever emblazoned inside his long lobes. I suggested "Axl" or "Bud" as appropriate male additions to his feminine moniker, but he has been dubbed "Spot" by his new owner. Allrightythen.

The first time she held him, Big Sis's eyes grew wide, in awe of what she'd asked for and gotten: Bunnies are nervous. Bunnies scratch. Bunnies, we have learned, bite.

"Do you have buyer's remorse?" I asked her.

She gulped and nodded solemnly. "It's a big responsibility, Mom."

But she is determined. She is holding that bunny as often as she can, and enduring some rascally rabbit habits.

Thus, Spot has joined the fold, is part of the team. And my husband is happy to have another guy around.