Ezra

About two weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a link to a blog on Facebook in her status. She goes to church with a family whose little boy, just two years old, is in grave crisis. His name is Ezra Matthews.

As the "quick story" link on the blog details, Ezra was diagnosed with stage 4 neauroblastoma a year ago, October 4, 2009, at the age of 13 months old. Two days later, his young parents found out they were pregnant -- with twins. While Ezra struggled through the unspeakable obstacle course of treatment for his aggressive and invasive cancer, his twin brothers were born early, at just 26 weeks. A few days later, one of them, Price, passed away from complications of their premature birth. Little Charley has had a long road but is now at home, smiling and babbling.

A month ago, Ezra turned two and his parents threw a big barbecue at their house, celebrating his birthday and his "No Evidence of Disease" status. A day later, the grim news came that he had relapsed already. A week ago, it seemed that Ezra's body was shutting down and that he was dying. There was little hope.

Today, there is some hope. He is stable. He is still here. His father wrote a post today that I think is important to share, because he says that instead of reading his family's story and being grateful for what you have and hugging your kids, he hopes that what has happened to them will make people think about being nicer to other people, more compassionate, more giving, more helpful. Read that post here.

We're all carrying burdens and experiencing our own rocky paths. We're all finding joy along the way. It is a wonderful life, but as Kyle Matthews asserts, it's not a life full of butterflies and roses. Let's all try to be a little gentler on each other, in Ezra Matthews' honor.

This video about the Matthews family will make you cry, but it will also make you marvel at the strength of a mother.

The Ezra Matthews Story from Kyle Matthews on Vimeo.

will.i.am and "What I Am"

With thanks to Elizabeth at Boy Crazy [clarity in the chaos], one of my favorite musicians and some of my favorite Sesame Street denizens sing a song good for big souls and little:

Was it worth it?

Baby B. (Can I still call him that? He now says, "I'm not a baby, Mama. I'm a big boy. I THWEE" and he holds out three fingers) turned three in early August. Two days later, I had to potty train him. He was starting his three-year-old program a few weeks later, and his school -- like every other preschool in the area -- requires three-year-olds to be potty-trained.

I briefly thought about just holding B. back and asking the preschool director to let him be in the "Almost 3s." If I did, he could go in pull-ups. It was a tempting choice. But the teacher I love teaches the 3s, and I am not sure whether I will send B. to Kindergarten "on time" or not (that's a whole 'nother Oprah show, if you know what I mean), and I wanted to hedge my bets and keep him with his own age group. So I commenced potty-training.

Potty-training went great for a week. Then B. started having "accidents," probably a misnomer for what I am sure are conscious choices on his part not to make it to the potty. We are now a few weeks shy of THREE MONTHS of potty-training, and B. is exactly where he was August 20: he has had exactly zero accidents at school, a handful of accidents in public (including one memorable afternoon when he peed AND pooped in his pants outside the elementary school where we were waiting for his brothers, then ran from me in front of all the other parents, excrement dropping out of his shorts) and approximately a zillion "accidents" at home.

Most of the time, when we are home now, I just send B. around half-naked -- no underwear. MOST of the time, he will go to the potty if he is naked. Only about five percent of the time will he go to the potty and make it if he has any clothes on his bottom half. It has become a way of survival for me and our carpeting. We are coping with what I see as a giant battle of wills from a Threenager, and at this point, the only way out I can see is to actually wait it out. I can't threaten, bribe, plead, or reason him into using the potty all the time, because he doesn't want to. I just have to wait for him to grow up a little. At some point, it will hold less allure for him to potty in his pants. At some point, he will make it his lifestyle choice. I hope.

And so I find myself wondering -- was it worth it? Was it worth putting him in the three-year-old program to go through this? Our relationship has definitely suffered greatly from this potty-training mandate. Neither of us like each other as much as we did on August 9. Try as I might, it is hard to show no emotion at all when your child drops a load on the floor two feet from the toilet or pees directly in front of the bathroom, giggling. The frustration of throwing away pair after pair of (cheap) underwear and wiping down his whole lower half has worn on me. But the true PTSD comes from not knowing when or where the next load or pee will fall -- can we risk a trip to Disney? Can we make it all the way to violin practice from school pick-up? Will he pee on the brand new IKEA $250 sofa slipcover? The unpredictability, the utter helplessness, is relentless and exhausting.

Even though he has the teacher I love, even though he adores school with a thrill and delight that I find completely endearing, even though I left all my options open, even though he is in class three days a week and leaves me open for volunteering and the occasional lunch with friends... I miss my baby. I miss the child who didn't have such expectations placed upon him, who didn't feel the need to push back against something that is very important to me whether I like it or not about myself. I am not sure it was worth it. I would be happy to be changing diapers right now. He's all of 38.5 months old and I could have waited a few more months. This tug-of-war that I feel so often with my older boys, the tension of what I need for them to do versus what they want and choose to do -- it wears me down. It makes me sad. It reinforces that, once again, I have to be the Heavy, the Bad Guy, the one asking them to do something they don't want to do. I could have had a little longer with my baby. I'm not sure it was worth it.

Walls

For whatever reason -- sleep deprivation, hormonal funkity-funk, a perfect storm of anxieties and thoughts and needs crashing together in my head -- I am hitting a wall this week.

I would love to write a witty, articulate post about how I am feeling, but you see, I have hit a wall. So, forgive the brevity that follows. I am due for bed.

My whole house smells like pee. This is a result of a six-year-old boy who refuses to wear a pull-up to bed even though his bladder is not yet ready to make it through the night without wetting. I am so tired of doing extra laundry because of this.

I also have a cat who now refuses to pee inside the litter box. Instead, she lets her hoo-ha hang over the edge and she pees just outside the litter box. I am both baffled and incredibly annoyed by her impressive physical feat. I am really tired of cleaning up extra cat urine.

Nobody -- and I do mean NOBODY -- picks up their clothes in this house. I am completely befuddled as to how to rectify this. Stating that it is unacceptable has not worked. Leaving the clothes there has not worked. Yelling, begging, pleading, cajoling, bribing, rewarding, and punishing? Yeah, not worked. I can walk around the house collecting wet towels, underwear, used pull-ups (if I'm lucky), dirty socks, school clothes, pajama pants, work khakis, you name it... every single day. So glad I am using my college degree this way.

I hate cooking, but I do it because that's kind of the way it goes and it's economical and healthier. And then, once I stumble through making something for dinner, pushing against my own personality and skill grain and frustrated all the while? The children refuse to eat it.

B. is a total threenager and has accumulated an impressive amount of bad habits from his brothers. Bad habits like calling me, his beloved mama, a "stupidhead." And telling me to shut up. He's only newly three, and I really don't think he understands the gravity of the situation, and I have absolutely no idea how to discipline him.

B. snores like a three-piece band. He needs a sleep study and probably an adenoid-ectomy, however that should actually be spelled. I'm worried and overwhelmed by the thought of my first surgery as a mama and I'm worried about him in the meantime, because I don't think he gets good sleep and I listen to him snorting and have ridiculous thoughts about oxygen deprivation and brain damage. Neurotic much? As an added bonus, the snoring wakes B. up almost nightly and I often find a loud, snoring three-year-old in my legs, tangled up with the sheets and his Mickey Mouse doll, at 4 AM. Fun times. Last night, I moved to the couch to escape both the snoring three-year-old and the snoring thirty-five-year old in my bed, and my cat decided to sit on my head and harass me until I would feed her.

At least it wasn't the cat who pees just outside the litter box.

All little, puny, petty things, things I am privileged to be dealing with instead of bigger, scarier, things. But nonetheless, walls. Maybe soon? Straitjackets.

A letter to my niece I cannot send, for obvious reasons:

Dear M,

In a week, you will be fourteen years old. That's, like, a real teenager. High school material. Crazy talk.

It's no secret that you were a bit of a shock and surprise to us in the family. We didn't expect you. At. All. I didn't even know about you until you were over a month old, and it blew my mind to imagine my baby brother a father. I felt sorry for you, if I am honest. You entered the world in a messy time in our family's life, and the people around you really didn't have their bull hockey together when you arrived.

Luckily for you (and all of us), you kind of motivated everyone to get their acts together, and you have a pretty good set up now: a professional and responsible father, an involved mother, two younger siblings, a room and (score!) bathroom to yourself tucked away in a brand new suburb with an awesome neighborhood pool and a cul-de-sac full of kids. You have a good church community and a good school and a lot of close friends.

Still, I worry about you. Fourteen years old is a turning point, and next year you will be a freshman in high school. I receive your Facebook status updates and I wonder why the heck you useeeeee aaaaaall thoseeeeee exxxxxttttttrrrrraaaaaaa letttttttersssss in your sentences. Seriously, what is up with that? I want so badly to ask you, but my child therapist friend advises me never to point out that I am actually paying attention or I might get the big Unfriend. I look through your posted pictures and see that you are wearing a lot of eye make-up and lip gloss and maybe even a little contraband blush, and I worry that you think you need all those things to appeal to someone, when I think you are absolutely adorable in no make-up at all. You post song lyrics and you quote thoughts about love and I wonder who and what you are talking about, and do I need to kick his ass?

Your parents are a wee bit controlling and, I think, punish you for their own sins. They conceived you at sixteen and seventeen themselves, and I think it downright terrifies them to see you creeping towards your mother's age when she had you. As a result, they are pretty hard on you. I kind of hate it, because you are a great kid and you don't really deserve to be ridden quite so hard. I see you desperately trying to please them and I worry, because I don't want you to feel desperate for the approval of other people as you get older. You are great just the way you are, but no teenager would ever believe that.

I want to hang out with you and tell you I think you are wonderful, but your mom and dad are a little afraid to hand you over to the Scary Liberal Aunt, so I don't get to see you as often as I would like. They don't want me putting any free-wheeling ideas into your head. I won't remind them that I am the one was incredibly squeaky clean while they got drunk and had a kid in high school. That never goes over well. So instead, I just hang back and try to lift you up when I can. You are special to me.

As you enter your major high school years, all I want you to know is that exactly who you are is enough. You are beautiful, especially when you are yourself and not modeling yourself on your best friends. You are a wonderful, thoughtful friend. You are a great thinker. You are observant of people and it makes you more considerate and helpful because you see what people need. You have crazy long legs that sometimes trip you up and a genuine smile that doesn't come out often enough. You deserve to be surrounded by people who make you feel good.

Don't ever let a boy make you feel less than. Don't pine for boys who don't treat you well. I listen to the high school swimmer girls while they are drying off on the pool deck and my boys are getting into the water, and it scares the living daylights out of me. They make so many excuses for boys' bad behavior. Don't ever excuse it. Demand better.

I wish I could save you from the heartache I know is coming. I wish I could surround you with bubble wrap and unpack you when you are twenty-five and a little bit more fortified. Most of all, I just want you to know I am here. I'm not your parent, I love you, and you can't disappoint me.

I just wish I knew how to tell you that in a way that you would believe it and understand it.

Notice anything different?

Thank you to Shalon at Pretty Lovely Designs for giving me a little blog makeover. My friend Melissa at Another Lunch recommended her, and she was very easy to work with and she tolerated a lot of indecision from me. Anyway, I hope the new design will make my blog easier to search and read. I also hope you like it as much as I do!

Anniversaries

My blogging anniversary, October 2, came and went quietly. I knew it was around this time that I started blogging, but I didn't have time to check. Ironically.

October 2, 2007, I had an infant, a three-year-old, and a five-year-old Kindergartner. I was still sporting the porn star boobs of a nursing mom and I was juggling a lot of balls in the air. I can still remember the nights of bathing small children, my creaky knees on the floor, while wearing a newborn in a wrap on my chest and hoping to get dinner made on time.

Now I am the mother of an incredibly leggy (seriously, sometimes I just stare and marvel that a child of mine has such long, thin sticks!), ridiculously wise-ass eight-year-old third grader, a somewhat gigantic Ferdinand the Bull of a six-year-old (who sports his mother's less lengthy, more substantial thighs, unfortunately), and a crazy, mostly naked three-year-old.

The past three years have seen us move, change schools, gain promotions, lose very little weight (*grumble*), and learn so very, very much about ourselves and the world. They were a big three years, and not just for the little people. Going from thirty-three to thirty-six -- that is a bigger leap than I would have imagined.

In a few weeks, Husband and I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary as well. And while the past three years of parenting have seemed to fly by in many ways, the past ten years seem like they should have been much longer. Was it really only ten years ago that we were round-cheeked 26- and 25-year-old babies in grown-up clothes, standing before a bankruptcy judge (fittingly) and reciting Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" as our wedding vows, surrounded by our dear college friends? It certainly has been an adventure, a journey, a very open road. Neither of us would have ever guessed on that November day that we would be here, doing this, now.

The air has changed, and the temperatures have dipped just enough to give sweet relief from the unrelenting heat and humidity of summer. My beloved college football is on the television set in the background, full of emotion and passion and heroes and underdogs. I love the stories of college football. I broke out the pumpkin this morning and baked my first loaves of the season, and the house smells like a home to me now. I never expected ten years ago to be here, and I never expected three years ago that I would still be writing now, but here I am. And it is good.

The words of Whitman still stir and soothe me at the same time. There is still an Open Road; life is still an adventure. Therefore, Allons!

The earth never tires,

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,

I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

The second born

When C. was nine weeks old, my mother dropped him. On his head.

We were at my alma mater for a reunion weekend, and my parents were with us, in part to serve as babysitters and in part because my dad is an alumnus of the same lovely campus.

There is one problem with going to a university that is over 250 years of age: sometimes the walkways are a bit uneven. On that afternoon, we were walking down the main thoroughfare when my mother, who was holding tiny baby C. in her arms, stepped into a divot in the pavement and her knees buckled beneath her.

I, ever the control freak, was walking right beside her, pushing the stroller. When she went down, I was so close to her that I couldn't see what exactly happened, but I did see her let go of C.'s small form and I saw him hit the ground. I couldn't tell how hard he hit because of the angle, or what hit first, but I could see his head and his back bounce a bit when they hit the ground. (Thus, it's true: babies do actually bounce.) I scooped him up quickly and checked him for blood while he screamed hysterically and my mother keened beside me.

After a ride in an ambulance and X-rays and a lot of traumatic everything, it was determined that baby C. seemed completely fine. His mother and his grandmother, however, were forever scarred. We now refer to the incident as "The Day Grammy Fumbled C." Of course, it wasn't my mother's fault, and it was unavoidable, and she probably protected him from worse by not falling on him. But as with anything, it's hard not to replay the scene and run through all the what ifs.

It was also hard not to think of that day every single time something came up with C. over the last six years and wonder if he was truly "fine." Firstborn was crazy verbal as a toddler, but C. was not. Eventually, he had to go through three years of speech therapy. "Was it because he was dropped on his head as a baby?" my mother would ask me, tears in her eyes. "Did you tell the therapist I dropped him?"

Unlike Firstborn, C. is sensitive and dramatic. When he is upset, he has a tendency to throw himself on the floor and wail and yell. At times, Husband and I have looked at each other with questions in our eyes. Is something wrong with him? Is it because he was dropped on his head as a baby -- literally?

While I didn't have an issue sending Firstborn to Kindergarten "on time" even with a summer birthday, I wondered about C. Was he mature enough? Could he handle it? Would he be able to withstand a long private school day and adhere to the expectations?

I admit it: For much of his young life, I have wondered if C. is okay. I have tortured myself over how to protect him, how to keep him out of his big brother's dazzling shadow.

About a month ago, the phone rang. "We're going to test C. for the gifted program," the school psychologist explained. "I have been hearing some great things about him." Immediately, my reflex was to start hedging my bets. He doesn't warm up right away, I warned. He's shy. He needs to build rapport with a new adult. He might be too young for this kind of testing. Maybe we should wait until he is older.

"It will be okay," the psychologist said. "I will make sure he is comfortable first."

A few weeks later, we were in the guidance office at the school, having our meeting about C. The psychologist started talking about C.'s test scores, and I almost had to ask if she was talking about the right child, the right C.? It's not that I didn't think C. was bright, because I did. I knew he was bright, and artistic, and that he has a huge smile and an even bigger heart. I knew that children at the private school and now the public school loved C. and saw him as a leader. But I am being brutally honest when I say that I wondered if C. would always live in Firstborn's academic shadow. For Firstborn, things come easily and quickly... just like they did for me. My own little brother struggled his whole school career to live up to me, just missing the entire time. In my heart, I feared the same fate belonged to C.: that he would always be the also-ran. In the back of my head, the image still lingered too -- that while Firstborn has the privileged only-child, white-gloved babyhood, C. was dropped on his head. I wasn't able to protect him then, and I feared I wouldn't be able to protect him in the future.

Obviously, academics matter to me, but they are not the most important thing to me -- that spot is held by my children's happiness. My only goal in elementary school is for my children to love school. Entrance into the gifted program for me only holds value because it means that one day a week, my children go to a classroom where they are allowed to study subjects outside the box and play brain twisters and finish puzzles. It's an oasis away from the curriculum dictated by standardized testing and state standards. Every child should get the same opportunity, and it makes me a little sick that isn't the case. In the meantime, though, I am greedy because I want my kids to have it. Firstborn started the year in the program, and C. knew that.

So there we were, sitting in an office that used to be the classroom where I went to my own gifted class back in the '80s. The psychologist pointed out C.'s scores to us, and I had to hold back tears. The little baby who fell on his head, the toddler who dutifully went to speech therapy for three years and blew into horns and bit on sticks so that other children (and his own parents) could understand him when he spoke, the child who has to endure a cocksure, relentless older brother, scored as high as a child can score on the verbal section of his test.

He scored higher than his older brother did.

And I don't care if he is considered "gifted" or whatever, I know the tests are arbitrary, and I don't care what that means to society, and I know that it is hard to talk about how our children score on tests without sounding like McBraggalots and I know in the grand scheme it doesn't mean anything at all and it might even mean that he could have a harder life because sometimes these kinds of labels are hairshirts of their own and... and... and...

For that one day, it felt like a big, reassuring neon sign that said, "HE IS OKAY." And right now, I am hanging on to that. Tomorrow I will forge ahead and worry about the next issue, but I am going to hang like crazy onto the small signs that say something, anything, might be going well.

Carry that weight.

I like Facebook. There, I said it. I don't spend hours playing games or uploading pictures or any of that stuff -- I don't dabble in Bedazzled Blitz or tend to any farms or wars. But I have a lot of friends on Facebook and I love that it has returned some people to me that I thought I had lost forever.

One of those people was my friend D. D and I were as close as it gets in high school. Both editors of our school paper, both lovers of pop culture references and good (or bad) food, both adventurers. Because I was naive and because I was a bit sheltered, I never questioned why D and I could be so close without any awkwardness at all or why D was so anal about ironing his clothes. Later, of course, it didn't shock me at all to find out he was gay.

After high school, I only saw D occasionally -- a trip to Vermont and a spontaneous road trip to Montreal; an overnight at his Boston apartment on my freshman Fall Break from college; a Chili's dinner at home. Ironically, we both ended up in Los Angeles for many years -- but because the inventors of Facebook were likely still at middle school dances at the time, I had no idea how to get in touch with him. We missed each other.

This past summer, I finally found D on Facebook. We got in touch, we caught each other up. We told each other about our grown-up lives, our significant others, our careers (and now lack of careers). We made plans to meet up this winter.

Wednesday night, also on Facebook, I found out that D passed away of a heart attack this past weekend. When I read the words, it felt like the floor dropped from beneath my feet. D, who had been so much a part of my high school years, was just gone. Just like that.

Last night I went to D's open casket visitation, and the only word to describe it was awful. Awful and hard. When I walked in the door, the first thing I saw was his hand, and it stopped me in my tracks. I have been lucky; I haven't buried many people yet. I lost my uncle after years of cancer had mangled his body and tortured his soul. I lost my grandmother, but not until she was well into her 80s. I have lost acquaintances, but I haven't lost someone like this, someone my age who was so integral to a big part of my life and development as a person.

When D and I grew apart, we were setting out into the world. We knew each other in our most perfect forms, overflowing with life and excitement and potential. We weren't jaded yet; we hadn't had our hearts broken yet. Sitting at the funeral home last night, I stared at his body. It looked exactly like him, like a Madame Tussaud rendition of the boy I knew when we were young. I almost held my breath waiting for him to jump up and yell, "Just kidding!" The expression on his face was familiar, the temple bone in in his forehead exactly as I remembered. Nearby, a slideshow flipped through pictures of D's entire life: a fat-cheeked baby, a toddler dressed as Raggedy Andy, a little boy beaming from a race car at Disney, an awkward tweenager, an adult surrounded by friends, hugged by family, snuggling his puppy, traveling the world.

When his mother approached on the aisle, I stepped forward to introduce myself to her. She whispered my name and smiled. "You look exactly the same," she said. I started to cry. Her child was lying in a casket nearby, while I stood there whole and alive. How did this happen?

Today was the funeral mass, the graveside service, and the luncheon. I cried throughout the morning, angry and sad and wondering what and why. When the priest spoke about his life, I marveled at how he encapsulated it into just a few sentences. Thirty-seven years, six continents, so many friends and so much family, and just a few sentences seemed to sum it up.

I watched his mother walk the casket down, tears wetting her face, and I couldn't hold back the ugly cry: if I had to bury one of my own sons, you would have to pry me off the casket. I don't think I could let him go without me.

D was one of those friends you could cackle with under your breath. He had a comment for everything and he was the perfect partner in crime. Now that all is said and done, I am a little comforted in knowing he is just up the road, in a quiet place where I can go and sit and talk if I need to, knowing he would understand. But I wish he was here in the flesh, hard to get a hold of and racing through life, instead.

When I spoke to his cousin today, she recognized me. "D was just talking about you to me," she said. "He showed me pictures of your children on Facebook." I had to smile. Facebook is many things, but not all of them are bad. I am thankful for Facebook today.

And a message to all of my people who are out there reading this: You take care of yourself, do you hear me? Because I am not ready for this to be a part of my life. I want my people above the ground. If you need me, you tell me. Promise me. Don't make me come after you.