Sympathy for the cockroach.

I took my son to see “WALL-E” yesterday, mostly because it seemed to meet my normally unattainable criteria for kid movies. I’m usually pretty strict about what I let the Bug watch, at least compared to what seems to be the standard today. I even thought twice about “Lady and the Tramp”, because it’s obvious that Tramp knocks up Lady after a wild night in the park. How are you going to explain THAT to your toddler? And I’m not sure he should ever see “Bambi” (too traumatic), “Pinocchio” (too terrifying) or “The Lion King” (too sad). I am shocked that kids at his preschool have watched “Pirates of the Carribean”, which I still can’t see without closing my eyes. Besides, if you’ve seen it all by the time you’re four, what’s left to look forward to in life?

Anyway, “WALL-E”, though rated G, was somewhat over the Bug’s head. He was the same way with “Cars”. He prefers animals to robots anyhow – or to humans, for that matter. Thus, the character he related to the most was the art-deco cockroach sidekick. He even cried at one point when he thought the cockroach was sad.

This was a bit surprising to me, since the Bug normally is afraid of… well, bugs. I have tried hard not to pass on my deep-seated phobia of anything with more than four legs, but he seems to have a natural revulsion for creepy-crawlies.

At our local children’s museum, they have a cage full of Madagascan Giant Hissing Roaches. These are absolute proof that if God doesn’t exist, Satan surely does. Just kidding, all you cockroach lovers. According to one website, these are actually sweet, harmless insects, just perfect as pets for young children.

That’s all fine and good, except that they are COCKROACHES. And they are giant, about the length of my palm. Oh, yeah, and they HISS. A friendly teenage staff person held out her hand as if to show the Bug a surprise, and when she opened it, hey presto! – nightmares for life. Then the creature let out a blast like a steam engine crossed with a viper. The Bug tore off screaming and disappeared into the depths of the glacier cave, where he could only be coaxed out after half an hour by promises of Cheetos from the vending machine.

Fortunately, we don’t see that many bugs here in Alaska (the unofficial Alaska state bird, the mosquito, being the exception). So when I visit my family in India, I have to do a little paradigm-shifting, because cockroaches are ubiquitous. People have no fear of roaches at all. My cousin Rita once picked up a live roach and chased my sister and me around their apartment. On the other hand, they live in mortal fear of “chipkuli”, those little green geckos that eat roaches and represent Geico.

In order to prevent orange-alert adrenaline levels when staying with family, I’m forced to start thinking of the cockroaches as – not exactly relatives, but almost like pets. Heck, at least they’re our cockroaches, not some nasty street vermin or transient disease-bearing hotel-dwellers. Ugh. The hotel roaches are the worst, hands-down, for size and boldness. They will look you right in the eye, kneecap you in the night. While traveling in south India, my sister once tried to pull a hair out of a hotel sink drain, only to discover that it was attached to an enormous roach (or as she likes to say, “waterbug”), too big to get out of the pipe.

The Bug’s only wild roach experiences so far have been in Hawai’i. A couple of years ago, Jyoti and I took the Bug, then 18 months, and her 8 year old daughter to a friend’s beach house. Both of us being from India, we expected we could handle any pest situation, even the two mile long parade of sugar ants in the kitchen. That is, until the night we came home, switched on the lights and saw three big roaches scuttle into hiding. The next day, we startled one IN MY BED. That’s what happens when you let children walk around eating Hawai’ian sweet bread.

You know how you have moments as a a parent when you wish someone else would be the adult, so you could shamelessly cry/throw something/wet your pants? This was one of those moments.

Thankfully, Jyoti had the presence of mind to beat it to death with a flip-flop while both of us screeched and the kids stood frozen with fear. She must have pounded that sucker for five minutes straight. I was about to sweep up the carcass when, with a hair-raising twitch, it flipped over and started reassembling itself, “Terminator”-style. I can’t describe the pandemonium that ensued, but I was certain it left a lasting impression on my child.

Apparently it didn’t, because driving home from the movie, he said to me wistfully, “Mama, can we get a pet cockroach?”

I stopped myself short of saying “FUCK, NO!” and instead told him to ask his father. Only because his father is afraid of anything without fur (snakes, lizards, hedgehogs) and some things with fur (moths), and I was pretty sure of his response: “FUCK, NO!”

A three hour tour.

We took my sister-in-law on a fateful three hour cruise out of Seward last weekend, Gilligan’s Island notwithstanding. It was a beautiful day, cool but sunny, and we saw otters and porpoises within five minutes of heading out. As we got further from shore, the captain announced that humpback whales had been seen that morning, which sent everyone into a frenzy of searching the open waters for spouting.

The Bug added to the chaos by shouting, “DERE! I see one! No, OVER DERE! Look, Mama, an ORCA!” and pointing wildly. The problem is, he has a really vivid imagination. Driving to preschool, he likes to pretend he’s on safari, spotting elephants and cheetahs by the dozen. This is a fantastic way to pass time in the car, but not at all conducive to making friends on a genuine wildlife-spotting cruise.

“Honey, please don’t say anything unless you really see a whale,” I begged him, as the old lady in front of us gave him the evil eye.

Eventually someone did spot a humpback whale, and the gathering lynch mob dropped their rope to get a better look. The Bug was ecstatic. “I SEE IT!” he yelled.

The captain stopped the engines to reduce noise. Awed and fascinated, we watched the whale surface, spout, flip her tail. The Bug lectured me about the characteristics of humpback whales. And the boat drifted along, peacefully rocking. And rocking.

And rocking.

The Bug is a puker. He’s notorious in my family for his weak stomach. He can throw up so suddenly and copiously that Linda Blair would be jealous. Just about anything can make him lose his cookies. Orange juice followed by a car ride is a favorite recipe for disaster. Plane trips, carousels, even a little too much tickling and the chocolate ice cream spew-fest is on. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been in the middle of his favorite activity, wrestling on the floor, and had to rush him to the bathroom for a quick bout of reverse peristalsis.

Some people reminisce about the time their kid did something particularly cute. My husband and I tell vomit stories: the plane ride where he threw up neatly into my lap, the family trip to Florida when he projectile vomited oatmeal onto my head. More recently, there was the time he got up from the couch, walked to the bathroom by himself, puked his guts out in the toilet, and returned calmly to watching TV, just like a professional puke artist. He’s that used to it.

I, on the other hand, have not thrown up since I was eleven years old. We were on a glass-bottom boat in Florida. One minute I was watching the tropical fish under my feet, the next moment hurling on some poor fellow tourist. It’s been thirty-one urk-free years. There have been plenty of times when I have wanted to vomit – hangovers, flu, prop planes – but the phobia of half-digested food creeping up my throat (emetophobia) overcomes me every time.

I do, however, get extremely queasy on boat rides. So it’s remarkable that neither parent thought about seasickness on the Bug’s first boat ride ever. As the boat rocked in a gentle, stomach-turning way, I began feeling faintly nauseated.

All of a sudden, the Bug got that sweaty pale look on his face and wrapped his arms around himself. “Mama, my tummy hurts!” he wailed.

I rushed him to the “bathroom”, a closet with a toilet plopped over a hole that probably drained right into the ocean. The lack of air and sewery smell did not help either of us. I held him as we swayed, bent over the toilet. We spent at least ten minutes like that, with me asking “Are you going to throw up?” and the Bug moaning “I don’t know!” The evil eye lady opened the door, glared at us, and slammed it shut again.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. I yelled for my husband, who came in and replaced me on vomit duty. I staggered to a seat and sat back with my eyes closed. An untold amount of time later, my husband placed the Bug in my lap. He had a greenish tinge. “Did you throw up?” I mumbled.

“No,” he replied sadly. Then he put his head on my shoulder and fell asleep. We remained that way through the rest of the boat ride, through sea lions and an island of gulls and puffins. I woke him gently when we got to shore. He blinked and looked around.

“Mama,” he said, worried. “Did you see another humpback whale without me?”

“No, baby,” I told him. “We didn’t see another whale.” And he smiled.

My five days off…

A new entry has been posted! I took a short hiatus from Scoop Dat! while I was in Hope with no real internet access. And amazingly, at least three people asked me when I was going to post again. So, many thanks to those of you who are actually following my nonsense. I’m certainly enjoying the chance to write and be read. Comments and encouragement are always welcomed, and criticism will be accepted bitterly as well.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

The phone rang at 7:50 this morning. It was my mother, calling from the East Coast, four hours ahead. My husband stumbled out of bed to answer, his voice groggy.

“Oh my goodness, did I wake you UP?” my mother exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!”

Bear in mind, we’ve only lived in Alaska for SIXTEEN YEARS now. Granted, it’s Thursday, and she probably expected us to be up and about, not sleeping in. But STILL.

For a while, we put up with these little misunderstandings with friends and family. We heard a lot of “Four hours behind? I thought you were four hours ahead!” And “Isn’t it light there all the time now anyway?”, as if Alaskans don’t sleep for three months straight in summer. Funny, funny. Sleep deprivation: it’s just the price we pay for living here. But now that we have a child and exist in a permanent state of exhaustion, the early morning phone call is not just annoying, it’s crippling.

Plus, when you live far away, the unexpected ringing at odd hours can send you instantly into a flailing panic, because no one calls in the middle of the night unless it’s an emergency. Except, of course, my father.

My father couldn’t care less about time zones. He’s always gotten a perverse joy out of waking people up, especially when those people are his children. He can’t stand to know that his family is sleeping when there are things to be done. During our summer vacations, he would call from his office and let the phone ring until one of us answered, then holler “WAKE UP, DAMMIT!”

Thus, if the need to share a thought occurs to him, or if he feels the sudden urge to chat with the Bug, he simply picks up the phone and dials, no matter what time it is. Even worse, when you answer, he acts like YOU’RE the one who called HIM, snapping “What?!” to disorient you as a kind of “the best defense is a good offense” strategy.

The last time he called us at 5 a.m. on a Sunday, my mother found out about it. She informed me that she was going to make him send us a fruit basket as an apology. My mother’s answer to every breach of etiquette – in fact, for every problem in general – is a fruit basket. In college, she sent me so many fruit baskets that we couldn’t eat them fast enough. This is why I have photos of my friends and I competing to see who could stack the most apples and oranges on our heads.

“You really don’t have to do that,” I said. “Just stop waking us up!” But she insisted that forcing him to pay would teach him a lesson.

Sure enough, two days later the doorbell rang and a giant basket arrived. Only it wasn’t fruit. It was the “Super-Deluxe Basket O’ Diabetes”, containing an artfully arranged assortment of chocolate, nuts, crackers, gummy bears, and one of those little summer sausages – not an apple or a tangerine in sight. It was probably my father’s idea of revenge on my health-conscious mother for making him apologize.

This morning, my mother’s excuse was not that she had forgotten the four hour time difference between us. It was that she didn’t know what time it was in Boston.

“I thought it was almost 2:00, not noon,” she said apologetically. “I’ll send you a fruit basket.”

I can’t wait for the doorbell to ring at 3:00 a.m.

Whose son is it anyway?

I went out to lunch today with my husband, his sister and mother, and the Bug. Picture us: a jovial 6′2″ guy, a little white-haired lady, a tall blue-eyed brunette, and a four year old with light brown hair and a porcelain complexion. And of course me, small and dark, holding the little boy’s hand.

I sat next to the Bug during the meal, cutting up his pizza and entertaining him by making animals out of these clever little wax sticks our waitress provided. The rest of the group relaxed and chatted happily. Now and then the Bug would order me around in a peremptory manner: “Now make an ostrich!” or “I want more pizza!”

As I watched the people around us, mostly tourists, smiling at us, I couldn’t help wondering: do they think I’m the nanny?

It’s happened before, especially when I’m alone with the Bug. At the park or in the mall, we’ll get those curious double-takes, that lingering glance. People have asked me how much I get paid to take care of him (I’ll tell you how much: NOT ENOUGH). Sometimes they’ll be more polite about it – “Is he really yours?” Please. Like I’d be putting up with his shit if he hadn’t sucked out nine months of my lifeblood in utero.

One time at the airport, the woman taking our boarding passes asked him flat-out, “Are you her little boy ?” I held my breath waiting for his answer. “No way,” he replied, and my heart stopped. I imagined myself hauled off in cuffs, kicking and screaming. Then he added, grinning, “I’m her PANTHER, silly!”

Of course, not looking like your child’s mother can have real advantages. The three of us were on a long flight to Boston, and the plane was just backing away from the gate when a certain unmistakable stench emanated from the Bug. He was two at the time, still in diapers. “I pooped!” he announced happily.

A couple of rows behind us, two young Indian guys began to complain about the smell to each other in Hindi, not realizing the source. One of them flagged a stewardess. “Excuse me, madam, something in this plane is really stinking like shit.”

“I don’t know what – ” the stewardess began, flustered.

The other guy interrupted her. “Could it be bathroom problem?”

My husband, squirming in his seat, turned around and said, “I’m really sorry, but my kid just took a crap and I can’t change him right now.” Rows of stricken faces stared at him. He looked to me, pleading for help.

“Oh my GOD,” I said loudly, leaning away from the Bug. “I can’t BELIEVE your son isn’t toilet trained yet. How old is he, anyway?” I got some seriously sympathetic glances, and my husband didn’t speak to me for the rest of the flight.

So far, the Bug has not noticed how different he and I look. Right now he’s at a wonderful stage in which he is completely in love with me. He still holds my hair at night to fall asleep. His first word in the morning is “Mama?” And when it comes to my attention, he openly views his father as the arch-enemy. In family wrestling matches, we’re always on the same team (the Rainbow Panthers), because – and I quote – “all boys love their mama best.”

Plus he thinks I’m the most beautiful woman on earth after Princess Jasmine from “Aladdin” (only because she’s a cartoon skank who shows her belly button 24/7), and being only four, he’s not afraid to say it out loud. This blinding adoration makes it easy to overlook the fact that 99.99999% of the time, he is driving me stark raving mad.

One day in the checkout line at the store, he saw Salma Hayek on the cover of People magazine.

‘Look, Mama, right there! Dat’s YOU!” he shouted gleefully.

“I didn’t hear you, honey,” I whispered. “Could you say it again, louder?”

$4.99 is a small price to pay for that kind of ego boost.

To be honest, I’m not sure what to think when people assume I’m the nanny. Maybe I’d be doing a double-take too, looking at the two of us. Mostly I’m too tired and cranky to do the necessary outraged deconstructive analysis; it’s just so draining. So I just keep telling the Bug about his Indian heritage, hoping he’ll always see his desi blood as something to celebrate.

After all, we Rainbow Panthers have to stick together.