Three moments with the Bug.

On Friday, the Bug and I were at Pier One Imports picking up tea candles for Diwali. Taking the Bug into a place like Pier One is like smearing yourself with bloody liver and jumping into a pool of starving piranhas; you’re asking for trouble. I fully expected him to knock down a pyramid of wine glasses or at least take out an entire display of Christmas ornaments.

But he was surprisingly calm, and so was I, at least until he said to me, “Look at this cool stuff, Mama!” and – before I could really look – handed me a bag full of DRIED LOTUS SEED PODS.

For a moment, I thought I could hold it together in the face of my worst phobia. After all, the bag was labeled in some deceptive way, like “Potpourri”, not “Hideous Bag O ‘Fucked Up Shit.” And I couldn’t exactly scream and fling it away with the Bug standing there. But then I felt my hands go numb and I literally had a moment of light-headedness.

“Please put that back, honey,” I mumbled. “Mama really doesn’t like things with holes in them.”

I ask you: who in their right mind would pay for, let alone DECORATE with, these things? Do I hang baskets of snakes out on my porch, or leave ornamental tarantulas lying scattered among the dinner plates? Trust me, five years old or not, if the Bug takes up decorating with lotus seed pods, he’s out on his own.

***

Yesterday I took the Bug to JoAnn Fabric to buy the rest of the materials for his Halloween costume, because I’m not the kind of person who waits till the last minute or anything. Unfortunately, the store was filled with a bunch of other shoppers, who were just that kind of person. Assholes.

Anyway, after we got our elastic and single fold binding tape, we went over to the decorating section to look at Halloween and Christmas stuff. I am a complete sucker for Christmas decorations (the shame!), and the Bug is currently fascinated by grotesque Halloween masks. So, after a strong warning not to touch any bags of hole-filled things, I left him browsing the Halloween aisle and went to peruse floating candles shaped like peppermints. When I came back, he was crouched gazing into a tiny tin haunted house adorned with ghosts and bats.

He didn’t say anything when he saw me, knowing my rule about not asking for stuff in stores. But I had a moment of remembering what it was like to be a child and my own fascination with miniature worlds, and how it felt to long for something you had no way to have.

“Do you want that, baby?” I asked. His eyes grew big, and he nodded.

I picked it up and looked at the price tag – $20 – then at a sign saying certain Halloween stuff was 50% off. “Okay, if it’s $10, we can get it. But if it’s not on sale, then it’s too much money.”

He promised to carry it carefully and brought it up to the counter gripping it so tightly his fingers were white. “Can you tell me how much this is?” I asked the cashier.

She scanned it and reported with a smile, “Seven dollars.”

The Bug’s face fell, and he took it off the counter. “I’ll put it back,” he said sadly. “It’s not ten dollars.”

When we got home that afternoon, we put the little house on the dining table and placed a tea candle inside. The Bug set a cup of water next to it, just like they do at pre-school when a candle is burning. Then, his face glowing with anticipation, he waited and waited and waited for it to get dark, so he could finally see what it looked like lit from within.

***
This morning, driving to pre-school, the Bug said to me (as they say, apropos of nothing), “Mama, I really like being a kid.”

“Why?” I asked. Normally the Bug is all about his violated rights as a preschooler, like his right to stay up all night, to eat Cheetos for breakfast, and in general to do Whatever I Feel Like.

“Because I get to love so many things. Animals, dinosaurs, candy corn. I wish I could stay like this forever.”

This was such a small and yet profound statement that I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I’m the one who’s supposed to wish he could stay like this forever; silly, loving, full of joy at a clear blue sky or a dog’s wagging tail or a little haunted house. How did he have the self-awareness, the comprehension of time passing, the sheer insight to feel the preciousness of his own life as a four-and-three-quarter year old? I didn’t know what to say.

“You know,” I told him finally, “you can always stay a kid in your heart.”

He pondered this statement. “And can I always love panthers?”

“Always,” I told him solemnly.

He grinned. “Okay. Now can we listen to ‘Kung Fu Fighting’?”

And for the million-and-eighth time, we did.

The Ten Commandments of parenting.

1.  Thou shalt not take a leisurely shit.

Yesterday, around 8:30 p.m., I told my husband it was time to start getting the Bug ready for bed.  Never a good sleeper, the Bug is even harder to wake in the morning now that it’s dark all the time.

“Okay,” he said casually.  Then he picked up the newspaper and uttered the eight words I dread more than anything.  “I just need to go to the bathroom.” 

Ten minutes later, I was gritting my teeth so hard, I had a cramp in my forehead. Just how long does one need to take a crap anyway?  I fully understand the joys of lingering on the throne, but as a parent, sometimes you just have to shit AND get off the pot.  And according to the results of my informal polling, it seems to be men who have a hard time getting the job done in a timely manner.   I’ve also noticed that men don’t seem to be able to hold it if necessary.  WHY?

2.  Thou shalt never finish a sentence, much less a conversation.

“Mama?”

“Honey, I’m talking to your father.  Please don’t interrupt.”

“Excuse me, Mama?”

“What did I just say?”

“But I said excuse me.”

“Yes, that was very polite of you, but you’re still interrupting.”

Which leads to a long discussion about when it’s appropriate to say excuse me, and when to just wait, and when you can hang on your mother’s sleeve in silent insistence that she pay attention right now.  By the time all that’s over, you’ve forgotten what you were talking about originally.

3.  Thou shalt utter phrases thou never expected to use.

Because I’m the grown-up.  It’s good for you, that’s why.  Go to your room.  Don’t give me that look.  You’re just hungry.  No, you can’t have donuts for dinner. Because I said so, that’s why.  We can’t always have everything we want.  I just want five minutes of peace.  

4.  Thou shalt not swear.

My son once asked me what the hell we were having for dinner.  And at the age of two, he burst out with “Jesus, I’m coughing hard!” 

Realize that, sadly, “Jesus Christ, where the fucking hell are the goddamn car keys?” is simply no longer an appropriate way to start the morning.  Palinize your vocabulary.  Darn, gosh, and heck are all acceptable substitutes: “Gosh darn it, where the heck did I put those silly car keys?”

5.  Thou shalt hide all thy gangsta rap CDs.

Unconscionably, instead of snuggling up with Tchaikovsky as all the pregnancy books recommended, I spent most of my nine months listening to Eminem and some truly foul-mouthed Dr. Dre songs. What can I say? The hook was really catchy. It’s really a wonder the Bug wasn’t born waving a gat and yelling “I’ma bust a cap in yo’ ass, mo-fo!” Bow-wow-wow yippy yo yippy yay.

6. Thou shalt not have hobbies. Or, if thou hast hobbies, thou shalt never complete a project.

My house is full of half-completed scrapbooks, jewelry, quilts and other orphaned craft projects. When I started making the Bug’s Halloween costume – a leopard – in July, my husband laughed at me. Actually, he laughed and said, “What the HELL is wrong with you?” Now it’s a week before Halloween, and based on the progress I’ve made, the Bug is going to have to be a drag queen instead.

7. Thou shalt give up thy slovenly eating habits.

Before we had the Bug, my husband and I used to consider crappy cereal a perfectly respectable dinner. Our friends’ kids loved to come over to our house just for the sugar fix. Now, I feel strangely compelled to try to feed the Bug a reasonable diet consisting of actual food groups. Meanwhile, my husband has a stash of Cocoa Puffs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch hidden in the back of the cupboard, which he gets up early to eat on the sly. Oh, what I would give to eat a bowl of Cap’n Crunch out in the open.

8. Thou shalt set a good example.

“Put your boots under the bench, and hang up your coat properly,” I order the Bug every afternoon, as I fling my coat on the floor and kick my shoes across the hall.

9. Thou shalt maintain a sense of humor in all situations.

The other day at a restaurant, the Bug asked me – LOUDLY – how girls pee.

“They sit on the toilet,” I stammered stupidly. “You know that.” His preschool has a coed bathroom, sort of like on Ally McBeal, with two tiny toilets, and the kids often carry on lengthy conversations while seated on the pot.

“But where does the pee come OUT?” he persisted.

“I don’t think we need to…”

“Like when I pee, it comes from the hole in my bing. Do girls pee from the hair between their legs? And why do girl kids not have hair there?”

I stuffed his mouth with pasta and smiled weakly at the family next to us. “That’s enough questions, sweetheart.” In my head I was thinking, at least this will make a really good blog post.

10. Thou shalt overcome thy ridiculous fears.

Like fear of spiders, and of late night phone calls, and of going downstairs by yourself to the laundry room in the dark, even if you think there might be a creepy skeletal axe murderer lurking in the garage. Or of having someone vomit dinosaur oatmeal all over your hair.

It is now YOUR job, as the adult, to dispose of spiders, and to answer the phone, and to face off with the axe murderer, and to be puked upon regularly. Do it with pride and dignity.

Requiem for a dog.

Last Wednesday morning, as we always do, the Bug and I tied the dog outside on the deck before leaving the house. That evening, my husband, who had gotten home before us, called to say she was acting strange. She wouldn’t walk, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t jump up and run in circles barking at the mention of a ride or a walk. She just lay on the floor, looking guilty.

Had she eaten a shrew or a squirrel, perhaps a dead bird? Had she jumped and pulled a muscle? Eaten gravel, which she had done a few weeks ago? The last time she acted odd, we took her to Pet Emergency, where they charged us a fortune to tell us she had indigestion. So we decided to wait till morning before acting.

In the morning she was no better, so we brought her to our vet. They ran tests, took x-rays, rehydrated her. She was “blocked up”, they said, but they didn’t know why. By evening, they suggested we take her to Pet Emergency for possible surgery, but the vet there hesitated to operate. We decided to give her another day to see what happened.

So there we were, basically waiting for the dog to take a shit. We joked about bringing her some prunes, or maybe Metamucil. At least the vet would have to do the clean-up, and we’d have her home by the weekend.

And then the vet called. She had a feeling something more was going on. She wanted to do an ultrasound. My husband and I consulted nervously. Our first dog, Kia, had an ultrasound and it turned out to be stomach cancer. Okay, we agreed, trying not to think how much it was all costing. What choice did we have?

That evening, the Bug and I stopped by the clinic to visit. Kiska lay in her kennel, an I.V. through her front leg. She gazed at us sorrowfully, not getting up. A bright orange sign hung on her door: MAY BITE.

Bite? Our sweet gentle girl who let the Bug do just about anything to her, bite? Then the vet called me in, and I could tell by her face she did not have good news. It was a mass, she said, in her small intestine. A mass? I asked. You mean a tumor? She nodded. They could try to remove it surgically, but if the cancer had spread, chances were it wouldn’t matter. Besides, she’s an old dog, and even if she survived the surgery, she might not make it through the recovery.

We wanted to know how much time she had, especially after we took her outside and she became lively and bouncy again. Could we take her home for the weekend? my husband asked. No, but we could probably bring her home for the night. The vet gave her a dose of pain medication to keep her comfortable while we called a close friend, also a vet, who said she could come to the house in the morning to put Kiska down. At least we’d have a little time to say goodbye.

But after a couple of hours at the house, it was obvious she wasn’t going to make it. She couldn’t settle down, wouldn’t touch food. Once she let out a whine that sent chills right down my back. The Bug worked on a puzzle next to her. The cat came over and rubbed against her, purring. We pet her and kissed her and told her how much we loved her. We cried until we couldn’t breathe. Then my husband took her back to the clinic. Later he told me she licked the vet’s face as the anesthetic was going in.

We’ve had at least one dog in our family for the last fifteen years. Now the house seems empty and quiet, with only a few visual reminders of her absence – tufts of the white fluff she was eternally shedding, her disgusting half-eaten rawhide. I listen for her irritating high-pitched bark at the back door, her cat-like lapping of water, or her tags jingling in the morning. Still, I reflexively put leftovers on the floor for her. As we enjoy the crisp cold sunny days that presage winter snow, I keep thinking we need to take her for a walk. Out of the corner of my eye I catch false glimpes of her, snoozing at the foot of the Bug’s bed, or more likely, with her head on his extra pillow.

She was such a part of our daily routine, one we didn’t realize was so important to the fabric of our days until now, when she’s no longer here. This was a dog who was young at heart until her very last day; we joked that if she had only one leg left, she’d run away on it. Of course we knew this day would come. We just didn’t know it would be so soon.

This morning, the Bug said it made him feel sad not to have her leaping at the door to come for a ride when we left. “Who will guard me at night?” he demanded.

Don’t worry, I told him. Kiska’s still guarding you, and she can see a whole lot better from where she is now.

Ska-toosh!

“Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend.”

I finally saw “Kung Fu Panda” this weekend, which leads me to ask the inevitable question: is it so wrong for a woman to love a red panda? Because I am STONE IN LOVE with Master Shifu. He’s so stern, so tragic – and yet so cute and cuddly. And that happened even before I found out that his character is voiced by Dustin Hoffman.

For many reasons, I was totally against the Bug seeing this movie when it was released. It’s not like he needs more inspiration to run face-first into a brick wall, swing from the ceiling fan, or roundhouse-kick the refrigerator door closed. He and his little posse at pre-school are regularly separated from each other at least once a day for various pre-school infractions, like pretending to be cheetahs and hunting down innocent toddlers, or scaling the chain-link fence in a miniature version of “Prison Break”. The last time it happened, the Bug informed me quite seriously that he and his best friend DinoBoy were forbidden from playing with each other “FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!”

Plus, it’s clear that the majority of kid’s movies and television shows are nothing but a marketing vehicle for cheap plastic stuff that reproduces exponentially as soon as it reaches our living room and makes me despair for the future of our planet. Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ve heard it all before. That’s just the kind of mean old hard-ass mom I am.

Still, no matter how much I try to stop him from seeing the relentless commercial drivel aimed at marketing garbage to kids, he somehow finds out about it. “Captain Jack Sparrow!” he crows in the cereal aisle. “Darth Vader! Power Rangers!” It drives me crazy, and I vow on a daily basis that I am not going to let my child be sucked into anything that is created entirely to perpetuate Happy Meals.

And then I made the mistake of going out with some friends for a single afternoon, and my husband took him to see “Kung Fu Panda” without a second thought. See what happens? You let down your guard for a split-second, and the terrorists have their way.

From that day forth, I’ve had to listen to endless discussions about Master Shifu and Tai Lung and the one-hundred-twenty-fifty-four rhinos he massacred, and above all, Master Tigress, because apparently Angelina Jolie’s voice alone is enough to seduce a four and three-quarters year old into worshipping her. I’ve witnessed countless demonstrations of kung fu poses and heard the word “Skatoosh!” more times than I’ve heard Sarah Palin say “Thanks but no thanks.”

So this weekend, our local theater-pub was showing a second run of “Kung Fu Panda” and the Bug, with his sixth sense for cartoon features, somehow found out, and suddenly I was engaged in a vicious conspiracy to see this movie with him and BFF DinoBoy and DinoBoy’s little sister and their mom. And off we went, but not before stopping in at Value Village to find a Master Tigress and Master Monkey for DinoBoy.

We got to the theater, where the Bug and DinoBoy greeted each other as if they hadn’t seen each other since the Pleistocene, rather than 18 hours earlier at pre-school; in other words, they started talking loudly and simultaneously about totally different things. Plastic Masters were distributed, kids were settled in their seats, and the movie began.

And I was hooked. It’s been a while since I’ve loved a kid’s movie the way I enjoy some of the old Disney movies. I liked “Ratatouille” and “WALL-E”, but seeing them with an actual child made me realize how much kid’s movies are directed toward adults these days. And if not, they seem dumbed-down or facile, underestimating what kids can and can’t handle. It really is hard to strike just the right note in an animated film, which would be somewhere between snarky and sappy. “Toy Story” did it, I think. So does “The Lion King”, “Ice Age”, and “Aladdin”. Another favorite of mine is the little-known “The Iron Giant”. I thought “The Wild” was terrible, like “Madagascar” on a bad acid trip. And some movies, like “Cars” – possibly the most boring movie ever after “The English Patient” – aren’t interesting for kids OR adults.

But “Kung Fu Panda” met all of my inner child’s requirements in spades, and most of my adult ones too. It was like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Panda”, hitting all the right notes at the right moments, and some of the animation was downright stunning. It’s not brilliant or new, but kids don’t want innovation; it’s their bored parents that need it. All my son really wants to see is some animals doing crazy shit. And if a big fat panda can become a Dragon Warrior, surely I can drag my sorry ass to a Pilates class once a week.

I left the theater yelling “SKATOOSH!” with DinoBoy and the Bug and feeling like a kid again. “Isn’t that the bestest movie ever?” the Bug demanded on the way home, clearly thrilled that his mother had done the unthinkable: changed her mind.

I just shouldn’t have tried that split-kick in the parking lot.

Candy corny kung phooey pomogranate.

I returned from Vegas last week to discover that the Bug has been transformed into the Silliest Person Alive. Apparently he’s going though some kind of developmental stage that involves laughing at anything at all. “The word weird cracks me up!” he informed me, cracking up. And if he’s not cracking up, he’s kung-fu-ing everything in sight, thanks to his father allowing him to see “Kung Fu Panda”. If I hear the word “Skatoosh!” one more time, I’ll probably start channeling a little Tai Lung myself.

So yesterday we were looking through a catalog that came in the mail from the Oriental Trading Company, which sells the kind of theme-based plastic junk that washes up on beaches. The current theme is Halloween, and when we came across this picture of these ridiculous Smile Face Candy Corn Characters, the Bug laughed so hard he nearly fell off the kitchen counter and split his head open. Hours later, he was still snickering about it as I put him in the bath and got him ready for bed.

“Mama, what if a candy corn WALKED INTO MY BEDROOM?” he asked as we cuddled, sending himself into a fit of laughter. “Or what if a candy corn WENT SWIMMING IN THE DOG’S WATER BOWL?”

This game continued until he fell asleep and then again the next morning. Because what if a candy corn RAN ACROSS THE KITCHEN FLOOR? DROVE THE CAR? CAME TO SCHOOL? HID IN MY LUNCHBOX? FELL IN THE TOILET? POPPED OUT OF THE REFRIGERATOR? Each scenario he imagined brought on another gigglefest.

Later that night we were reading a book, and I somehow innocently mentioned the word “pomogranate”. He rolled around on the bed thrashing in hysterics over that one until I warned him he was going to pee his pants. Of course, the word “pee” caused another bout of laughter. Finally, I’d had it. “Shut the light off now, midget,” I said in my sternest voice.

“Nidget? NIDGIT?” He was practically choking at this point, reduced to an involuntary muscle contraction in Kung Fu panda pajamas.

“Not nidget, MIDGET!” I shouted. How on earth could anyone be this silly?

Then I thought about our weekend in Vegas. My sister, brother and I basically spent the entire time laughing until tears ran down our faces at the stupidest shit, like my brother proclaiming every day that this was going to be “Ashwin’s Big Day” and then lying around on his face fighting allergies. Or my sister insinuating that “Sigfried and Roy’s Secret Garden” was where they secretly molested the tigers. One night, my sister and I stumbled in at 4 a.m. and for no real reason at all, proceeded to giggle so hard in bed that my mother sat bolt upright, like a zombie risen from the grave, and threatened to overdose us both with Benadryl.

It’s always been that way with my siblings and me; one of us cracking a smile is all it takes to set the other ones off, and like a wildfire, there’s no stopping it until it burns itself out. In fact, I once laughed so hard on a bus in England that I actually did pee my pants.

We were on a summer bus tour through Great Britain with two other Indian families, my mother’s roommates from medical school and their husbands and kids. It was one of those miserable tours that’s more like a prison on wheels, where you get off the bus long enough to take a photo and buy a souvenir, then get herded back onto the bus with cattle prods if necessary. One of the other kids with us had chicken pox, but his parents convinced everyone it was just really bad acne. Also, he kept showing us how he could light his thumb on fire. We’d all grown up together, so none of us were that impresed.

Since none of the cranky little old ladies on the tour (“Stop yer whinging, Madge, you can smoke a fookin’ fag at the next stop”) wanted to rotate seats with us brown folk, we spent our time at the proverbial back of the bus, complaining loudly. Our tour guide, Frank, openly hated us, and we in turn mocked his attempts to recite pathetic limericks about haggis. Added to that, I had just backpacked extensively through Europe for eight weeks with friends and took every opportunity to remind Frank that there was, say, more to Ireland than kissing the Blarney Stone.

So on the last day of the tour as we headed back to London, with nature calling, Frank understandably refused to stop the bus for me. I held out at long as I could, but eventually my sister, sitting next to me, said something funny, probably involving haggis, and the floodgates burst. And damn, it felt really, really good.

“WHAT?” hissed my sister, seeing my suddenly ecstatic face. “OHMYGOD. Are you PEEING? RIGHT NOW?”

We watched as a tiny stream snaked its way from beneath my seat to the front of the bus, and we laughed so hard I would have wet my pants if I hadn’t already done it. My sister gave me her denim jacket to tie around my waist. “I’ll walk right behind you,” she whispered. We sauntered down that aisle like we hadn’t a care in the world, while all around us Frannie and Madge and the rest of the blue-haired chain-smoking gang picked up their bags, all going,”What in the name of God…” No doubt we confirmed every one of Frank’s hateful post-colonial thoughts about us that day.

Yep, I was 19 years old, and I wet my pants laughing. The Bug’s got a long way to go.