Not Quite Extinct Jungle Cats
One post a month. That feels about right.
You should just write, I keep getting told. Write. Just write.
Writing, of course, is a lot like 'just giving birth'- both are delightfully agonizing with one obvious exception- you don't have any choice not to give birth once there is a person in there who would care to come out. It's just going to happen, and it's coming at you like a freight train. Given my life experiences I'd like to say I'm particularly well qualified to have a freight train barreling towards me.
Writing, though, is much more of an almost-empty-tube-of-toothpaste kind of agonizing. To begin with I've either repeatedly forgotten to purchase more in spite of being at the grocery multiple times per week needing items whose absences are unsurvivable- like breakfast cereal- or I lack the time to focus on the problem of extracting it. Now that I'm writing this down I'm feeling more and more like both are actually the exact same problem. Time and focus, you see, seem to have skipped hand-in-hand into the sunset- but the toothpaste metaphor still holds. Crush the tube and nothing comes out. Instead it has to be smoothed and cajoled up the length of it. Terribly satisfying when I take the time to do it if it weren't for that bit where I can't flatten the tube's sholders at the end, which is so aggravating that I've actually chopped it open and angrily jammed my toothbrush inside, roughly and a bit maniacally scrubbing it around in search of residue. I'm still talking about writing, not toothpaste. Please do follow.
That tube is my brain- globs of glittering, refreshing mush just waiting to be squeezed out.
Further illustration is necessary. Let me tell you a story.
I am a woman of unconquerable optimism, stubbornly resistant to learning from even my own most colorful life experiences. It's not that I don't remember them- just that I keep surviving, which is clearly a success, and therefore something in my brain tells me it was actually quite good.
This characteristic has led me to do all sorts of inadvisable things, but on this particular morning it led me to bring four boys ages 7, 5, 3 and 2 months to a zoo in Baltimore- alone. The more children I have the more I feel like I know what I'm doing and the bigger the bites-which-I-cannot-chew seem to become, so the problem is self-perpetuating. Don't try to stop me. It won't help.
Anyway, four boys in a zoo, I'll continue. Four boys should really never be taken into any public space where civilized behavior is expected. Fields are good, hiking trails are good, the fire swamp is just fine- malls and grocery stores and museums and zoos are poor choices. On this particular trip the five year old had developed a fascination with gorillas, so after nursing the infant to reset the ever ticking 'baby-needs-to-eat' clock and wrestling strollers and straps and carriers and toddlers and a bag stuffed with diapers and blankets and clothes that I would most certainly either need all or none of with a newborn, we were on our way directly to the monkey picture on the map. The monkey picture was, of course, at the very back of the zoo.
Do you know what you have to pass in order to get to the back of a zoo? Animals, sure, but to get to the back of the zoo a three year old boy must first pass cotton candy, warm pretzels, churros, popcorn, dip n' dots, hot dogs, chicken fingers, soft serve ice cream, pizza and a myriad of gift shops all a-dangle with those animals with the hyperextended limbs. If this was a normal three year old he might struggle and scream and writhe in his stroller, pleading with his mother to just buy it all and end his agony. If this was my particular three year old he would ask not at all. Tom is not and has never been a boy of asking. Tom is a boy of doing and is unhindered by those basic fears which stop most of us from attaining greatness. With a newborn fussing in the top deck of my double-decker stroller as I checked the map I did not notice him swiftly slip his five-point harness and, head lowered, charge the concession stand.
I began to move again and immediately realized the stroller was forty pounds lighter. Do you remember how unkind the world was to the parents whose boy fell into that gorilla cage?
News headlines flashed before my eyes, "Negligent Mother's Son Smashed to Death by Playful Pachyderm" or "Woman with Too Many Children Loses Three Year Old to Not-Quite-Extinct Jungle Cat". A quick scan through the crowd put all of my initial fears to rest. Instead of being viciously mauled Tom had skillfully scaled the nearest concession stand and was now perched on the counter scooping SOMEONE ELSE'S recently ordered ice cream sundae into his chubby little mouth. Passers-by, onlookers, the owner of the sundae and the underpaid employee manning the booth all motioned towards him, craning their necks for the child's inept parent. Someone asked him where his mother was. The warmest ice-cream-covered grin spread across his face as pointed his sticky finger at me and affectionatly shouted "Mama!!"Naturally, the crowd all turned around at once to see me clumsily maneuvering a screaming infant in a heavily laden double stroller with one hand, dragging two, more complicit, children behind me with the other.
I said nothing. I relieved him of the ice cream and about-faced back onto the crowd, baby still screaming, daisy chain of children still stumbling along behind me.
At the next empty bench I collected myself and once again discussed outing protocol. The message, naturally, was absorbed entirely by the children who did not need it and off we went again in search of gorillas.
My second son is a wealth of information. Encyclopedic knowledge flows from his little mouth so quickly that the words sound like they're bubbling out, tripping and stumbling over each other in an effort to make it to your ears first. This month he had become fascinated with gorillas and had been talking about them for weeks. He drew gorillas, painted gorillas, built lego gorillas, bemoaned the fact that he had no stuffed gorillas of his very own. The reaction I knew he would have to actually seeing gorillas was why I had begun this foolhardy expedition in the first place and much of what stopped me from slinking out of the zoo after the sundae-poaching episode. When we had seen the zoo sign, or entered through the zoo gates, or made a turn down the path towards the gorillas his whole little body seized up with glee. Now, finally, we were almost to the exhibit. That was when I realized there weren't actually any gorillas at this zoo.
There were chimpanzees: Bubbles, Coco, Clyde, Lola, Bunny, Joe. A litany of playfully named primates, none of whom were going to prevent the dramatic and painful deflation of my five year old's expectations. I braced for impact.
Kneeling down I delicately explained my error. His eyes bulged, his arms jerked into the air as if yanked by marionette strings and dramatically flopped back town to his sides as he collapsed into a wailing ball of liquid agony at my feet. My oldest son can be relied upon implicitly, particularly in a crisis which this now very clearly was. I pulled the snack-thief from the stroller and assigned him to James so that I could scoop my gelatinous gorilla fanatic into his place. James rolled his eyes and ushered Tom to the glass to distract him. I apologized and hugged, kissed and cajoled, then I glanced up and froze.
James was dutifully reading a sign about the monkeys aloud. Tom had dropped his pants to his ankles and was now bent over slapping his butt, waving it at the chimps. "Na-na-na-na-boo-boo!!!!" James spotted him just as I did and bellowed "TOM! PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON!" before tackling him to the ground. Tom screamed and flailed under James as he sat on his chest jerking the pants back up. Other parents who had apparently never seen a toddler's backside before backed up and, once again, visually scanned to identify the negligent parent- who was once again, naturally, me. In later discussions it would be revealed that the chimps were, in fact, waving their butts at Tom first, making the entire episode a moot point.
You'd probably be surprised to hear that we recovered from this episode as well and carried on. Optimism, remember? Andrew regained his skeletal structure, Tom maintained both a safe radius and his pants thanks to James giving his arm a good fraternal jerking every so often and the baby slept on.
It felt like wrapping-up time when the boys spotted the carousel. Past transgressions forgotten, the zoo now nearly empty and the baby waking up in need of food, I bought them tickets, and escorted my now seemingly-docile boys to their animals, then sat on a viewing bench to feed Ian. The music began, my body settled into the bench, the carousel turned one revolution. As my offspring came back into view my stomach jerked- all three of them were on different creatures. I gestured dramatically with my free hand. Very effective. The carousel turned a second revolution and when they came around again James was performing a split across and ostrich and an emu and somehow managing to stay balanced. His brothers applauded wildly. My eyes bulged. I flailed my arm some more and escalated to emphatically scream-mouthing 'SIT DOWN!' Around they came for a third pass. Thomas, not to be outdone and oblivious to my ever-steadying authority, was now standing on top of his giraffe. I was becoming lightheaded from all of the jerky gesticulation and, aside from that, the my body's entire blood volume was now concentrated in one vein in my forehead. The carousel operator, flirting with the dip n' dots vendor, took no notice. When nursing a newborn one's absolute last resort is actually getting up off of one's rear end, but they had driven me to it. I struggled awkwardly off of the bench, clutching my nursing baby while they came by for a fourth pass. Now they were ALL standing on their mounts and there was the expected verbal back-patting and mutual fraternal congratulations on upgrading the usual carousel experience.
I briefly struggled with what to do next until I saw my oldest child, coming around for a fifth pass, now shimmying up the pole of his zebra. The parents surrounding the carrousel had universally noticed my children's acrobatics and I had been reluctant to identify myself as their guardian, preferring a more aloof attitude, 'Those children, you say? Oh yes, how terribly shocking. Their parents must be quite drunk and incompetent.'
I ponied up and drew a deep breath, you might remember me from the concession stand or the not-gorilla cage, fellow zoo-goers, lowered my voice two octaves and barked, "SIT DOWN!" The baby, startled, clamped his jaws down on my nipple and began wailing. The carousel operator awoke from his trance and rushed to re-seat my children. The onlookers visibly counted my children on both their fingers and toes.
That's pretty much the end as we were now absolutely going home. We were positively going home. We were absolutely, positively going home- except the baby needed a diaper change, and when I went to change it realized he had blown out not only his diaper, but his outfit and his car seat. New though he was his bowel knew instinctively that it had to do what it could to contribute to the brotherly revelry and really I felt vindicated to get to use some of the thirty pounds of organic cotton I'd been shlepping around this whole time. While I cleaned that up Tom naturally decided that he had to go to the bathroom as well and did so on a topiary of a panda bear, but at this point who really had the energy left to redirect anyone's urination.
I got a coffee on the way home as a reward for intrepid parenting on my first solo-trip with my four sons and everyone fell asleep in their carseats.
You should write, I of the mushy toothpaste brain, keep getting told. So tonight I did. I brought them back to the zoo, too, because who is a little mooning really going to hurt and, after all, I will be needing more things to write about next time I get around to squeezing the old tube.
You should just write, I keep getting told. Write. Just write.
Writing, of course, is a lot like 'just giving birth'- both are delightfully agonizing with one obvious exception- you don't have any choice not to give birth once there is a person in there who would care to come out. It's just going to happen, and it's coming at you like a freight train. Given my life experiences I'd like to say I'm particularly well qualified to have a freight train barreling towards me.
Writing, though, is much more of an almost-empty-tube-of-toothpaste kind of agonizing. To begin with I've either repeatedly forgotten to purchase more in spite of being at the grocery multiple times per week needing items whose absences are unsurvivable- like breakfast cereal- or I lack the time to focus on the problem of extracting it. Now that I'm writing this down I'm feeling more and more like both are actually the exact same problem. Time and focus, you see, seem to have skipped hand-in-hand into the sunset- but the toothpaste metaphor still holds. Crush the tube and nothing comes out. Instead it has to be smoothed and cajoled up the length of it. Terribly satisfying when I take the time to do it if it weren't for that bit where I can't flatten the tube's sholders at the end, which is so aggravating that I've actually chopped it open and angrily jammed my toothbrush inside, roughly and a bit maniacally scrubbing it around in search of residue. I'm still talking about writing, not toothpaste. Please do follow.
That tube is my brain- globs of glittering, refreshing mush just waiting to be squeezed out.
Further illustration is necessary. Let me tell you a story.
I am a woman of unconquerable optimism, stubbornly resistant to learning from even my own most colorful life experiences. It's not that I don't remember them- just that I keep surviving, which is clearly a success, and therefore something in my brain tells me it was actually quite good.
This characteristic has led me to do all sorts of inadvisable things, but on this particular morning it led me to bring four boys ages 7, 5, 3 and 2 months to a zoo in Baltimore- alone. The more children I have the more I feel like I know what I'm doing and the bigger the bites-which-I-cannot-chew seem to become, so the problem is self-perpetuating. Don't try to stop me. It won't help.
Anyway, four boys in a zoo, I'll continue. Four boys should really never be taken into any public space where civilized behavior is expected. Fields are good, hiking trails are good, the fire swamp is just fine- malls and grocery stores and museums and zoos are poor choices. On this particular trip the five year old had developed a fascination with gorillas, so after nursing the infant to reset the ever ticking 'baby-needs-to-eat' clock and wrestling strollers and straps and carriers and toddlers and a bag stuffed with diapers and blankets and clothes that I would most certainly either need all or none of with a newborn, we were on our way directly to the monkey picture on the map. The monkey picture was, of course, at the very back of the zoo.
Do you know what you have to pass in order to get to the back of a zoo? Animals, sure, but to get to the back of the zoo a three year old boy must first pass cotton candy, warm pretzels, churros, popcorn, dip n' dots, hot dogs, chicken fingers, soft serve ice cream, pizza and a myriad of gift shops all a-dangle with those animals with the hyperextended limbs. If this was a normal three year old he might struggle and scream and writhe in his stroller, pleading with his mother to just buy it all and end his agony. If this was my particular three year old he would ask not at all. Tom is not and has never been a boy of asking. Tom is a boy of doing and is unhindered by those basic fears which stop most of us from attaining greatness. With a newborn fussing in the top deck of my double-decker stroller as I checked the map I did not notice him swiftly slip his five-point harness and, head lowered, charge the concession stand.
I began to move again and immediately realized the stroller was forty pounds lighter. Do you remember how unkind the world was to the parents whose boy fell into that gorilla cage?
News headlines flashed before my eyes, "Negligent Mother's Son Smashed to Death by Playful Pachyderm" or "Woman with Too Many Children Loses Three Year Old to Not-Quite-Extinct Jungle Cat". A quick scan through the crowd put all of my initial fears to rest. Instead of being viciously mauled Tom had skillfully scaled the nearest concession stand and was now perched on the counter scooping SOMEONE ELSE'S recently ordered ice cream sundae into his chubby little mouth. Passers-by, onlookers, the owner of the sundae and the underpaid employee manning the booth all motioned towards him, craning their necks for the child's inept parent. Someone asked him where his mother was. The warmest ice-cream-covered grin spread across his face as pointed his sticky finger at me and affectionatly shouted "Mama!!"Naturally, the crowd all turned around at once to see me clumsily maneuvering a screaming infant in a heavily laden double stroller with one hand, dragging two, more complicit, children behind me with the other.
I said nothing. I relieved him of the ice cream and about-faced back onto the crowd, baby still screaming, daisy chain of children still stumbling along behind me.
At the next empty bench I collected myself and once again discussed outing protocol. The message, naturally, was absorbed entirely by the children who did not need it and off we went again in search of gorillas.
My second son is a wealth of information. Encyclopedic knowledge flows from his little mouth so quickly that the words sound like they're bubbling out, tripping and stumbling over each other in an effort to make it to your ears first. This month he had become fascinated with gorillas and had been talking about them for weeks. He drew gorillas, painted gorillas, built lego gorillas, bemoaned the fact that he had no stuffed gorillas of his very own. The reaction I knew he would have to actually seeing gorillas was why I had begun this foolhardy expedition in the first place and much of what stopped me from slinking out of the zoo after the sundae-poaching episode. When we had seen the zoo sign, or entered through the zoo gates, or made a turn down the path towards the gorillas his whole little body seized up with glee. Now, finally, we were almost to the exhibit. That was when I realized there weren't actually any gorillas at this zoo.
There were chimpanzees: Bubbles, Coco, Clyde, Lola, Bunny, Joe. A litany of playfully named primates, none of whom were going to prevent the dramatic and painful deflation of my five year old's expectations. I braced for impact.
Kneeling down I delicately explained my error. His eyes bulged, his arms jerked into the air as if yanked by marionette strings and dramatically flopped back town to his sides as he collapsed into a wailing ball of liquid agony at my feet. My oldest son can be relied upon implicitly, particularly in a crisis which this now very clearly was. I pulled the snack-thief from the stroller and assigned him to James so that I could scoop my gelatinous gorilla fanatic into his place. James rolled his eyes and ushered Tom to the glass to distract him. I apologized and hugged, kissed and cajoled, then I glanced up and froze.
James was dutifully reading a sign about the monkeys aloud. Tom had dropped his pants to his ankles and was now bent over slapping his butt, waving it at the chimps. "Na-na-na-na-boo-boo!!!!" James spotted him just as I did and bellowed "TOM! PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON!" before tackling him to the ground. Tom screamed and flailed under James as he sat on his chest jerking the pants back up. Other parents who had apparently never seen a toddler's backside before backed up and, once again, visually scanned to identify the negligent parent- who was once again, naturally, me. In later discussions it would be revealed that the chimps were, in fact, waving their butts at Tom first, making the entire episode a moot point.
You'd probably be surprised to hear that we recovered from this episode as well and carried on. Optimism, remember? Andrew regained his skeletal structure, Tom maintained both a safe radius and his pants thanks to James giving his arm a good fraternal jerking every so often and the baby slept on.
It felt like wrapping-up time when the boys spotted the carousel. Past transgressions forgotten, the zoo now nearly empty and the baby waking up in need of food, I bought them tickets, and escorted my now seemingly-docile boys to their animals, then sat on a viewing bench to feed Ian. The music began, my body settled into the bench, the carousel turned one revolution. As my offspring came back into view my stomach jerked- all three of them were on different creatures. I gestured dramatically with my free hand. Very effective. The carousel turned a second revolution and when they came around again James was performing a split across and ostrich and an emu and somehow managing to stay balanced. His brothers applauded wildly. My eyes bulged. I flailed my arm some more and escalated to emphatically scream-mouthing 'SIT DOWN!' Around they came for a third pass. Thomas, not to be outdone and oblivious to my ever-steadying authority, was now standing on top of his giraffe. I was becoming lightheaded from all of the jerky gesticulation and, aside from that, the my body's entire blood volume was now concentrated in one vein in my forehead. The carousel operator, flirting with the dip n' dots vendor, took no notice. When nursing a newborn one's absolute last resort is actually getting up off of one's rear end, but they had driven me to it. I struggled awkwardly off of the bench, clutching my nursing baby while they came by for a fourth pass. Now they were ALL standing on their mounts and there was the expected verbal back-patting and mutual fraternal congratulations on upgrading the usual carousel experience.
I briefly struggled with what to do next until I saw my oldest child, coming around for a fifth pass, now shimmying up the pole of his zebra. The parents surrounding the carrousel had universally noticed my children's acrobatics and I had been reluctant to identify myself as their guardian, preferring a more aloof attitude, 'Those children, you say? Oh yes, how terribly shocking. Their parents must be quite drunk and incompetent.'
I ponied up and drew a deep breath, you might remember me from the concession stand or the not-gorilla cage, fellow zoo-goers, lowered my voice two octaves and barked, "SIT DOWN!" The baby, startled, clamped his jaws down on my nipple and began wailing. The carousel operator awoke from his trance and rushed to re-seat my children. The onlookers visibly counted my children on both their fingers and toes.
That's pretty much the end as we were now absolutely going home. We were positively going home. We were absolutely, positively going home- except the baby needed a diaper change, and when I went to change it realized he had blown out not only his diaper, but his outfit and his car seat. New though he was his bowel knew instinctively that it had to do what it could to contribute to the brotherly revelry and really I felt vindicated to get to use some of the thirty pounds of organic cotton I'd been shlepping around this whole time. While I cleaned that up Tom naturally decided that he had to go to the bathroom as well and did so on a topiary of a panda bear, but at this point who really had the energy left to redirect anyone's urination.
I got a coffee on the way home as a reward for intrepid parenting on my first solo-trip with my four sons and everyone fell asleep in their carseats.
You should write, I of the mushy toothpaste brain, keep getting told. So tonight I did. I brought them back to the zoo, too, because who is a little mooning really going to hurt and, after all, I will be needing more things to write about next time I get around to squeezing the old tube.
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