Hives! Or a Bad Case of the Allah Forbids...

(In case anyone is unhappy with my title this time around, it is a reference to the old Arabian fantasies, like THIEF OF BAGDAD, as in the infamous, "Allah Forbid, you have a daughter!" Or son, or goldfish, or small piece of Tupperware, etc!!! I mean no disrespect to anyone, I've just always found this phrase pretty darned funny, and I have tossed it at my siblings and my friends, just because I could...and they happily tossed it back to me...of course, now that I actually have HAD the progeny, they are even happier, and tend to laugh at me even more than usual. Of course, it is our actual contention that on slow days, God's Tivo-ing some of our more inept attempts at this parenthood thing and showing them around to the angellic hosts at the heavenly sock hops. "Those silly kids. I'm going to have to double the normal allottment of guardian angels on that little boy just to get him to puberty. No, really...can we get someone on that right away? Oh, yeah, watch this...this is my favorite part, where she's feeding him cereal, and gets it into his ear...See? The look on his face right there cracks me up everytime.")


Ok, so I'm coming across like a total paranoid, but I can't help it. There is highway right in front of us filled with speeding semi-trucks, a riverbank just behind us with nasty, fast undercurrents, and -- since there wasn't a real cold snap -- nasty, horrible, awful ticks everywhere in between. Uhhhhh, I can't even look the word "tick" up in the dictionary. I went to get the mail today, felt something brushing my leg, and looked down, and Dear God!!! If I had had a chainsaw on me, I'd be down a leg, and would have been delighted to go through the rest of my life as "Stumpy Stickrath". I got it off before it decided to make our relationship a little more formal, but OhMaGawd!!! I am fifteen different types of cringe-y just thinking about it. Now, those of you that know me well are fully aware that I can go from calm and quiet to "Ye Gods!! Mode" in the space of a Hollywood marriage when it comes to ticks. I am paralyzed by the stupid things the way some people are paralyzed and altogether durfy around bees. I like bees. Bees are cute. Bees have a purpose. As far as I can tell, the only purpose a tick has is to give me the Flying HeebeeJeebees, and while that might be amusing from a distance, up close and personal, it lacks a heck of a lot of fun. I get nauseated, dizzy, and am unable to control my hands well. I sprayed the yard with bug-stuff (for some reason, our side of the road seems to have more bugs than Harry and Helen's side...but my theory on that is that a bug wouldn't dare walk on Helen's grass with dirty feet...and their lawn is amazing...I swear they come out in the morning with tweezers and a magnifying glass to make sure each blade of grass is straight -- yes, Dad, I stole that one from you...but it's still a cute line)



As for the highway thing, well, I was not helped the other day when Grandma Irene (in a bonding moment) mentioned that Tim (Jon's dad) had dashed directly into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler when he had learned to walk, and barely made it by the skin of his teeth, and shortly after, the "tan" of his hide. "Watch him." My mom says. "Watch him." Oh, I intend to...but he's already learning the inchworm move -- he knows to get those hips up and moving, but he hasn't quite figured out the front part yet -- and he is SO determined! Though, as that was the very first thing we learned about him, I shouldn't be surprised. I just pray that he will listen, and have Jon's common sense. I've already been talking to everybody about putting up a fence by our house, but with my luck, he will have inherited my love of climbing up and out. When I was twelve, I thought it would be fun to jump out of my second story bedroom window...well, actually, I dropped onto the roof of the basement stairs, and jumped off of that, so I only actually jumped one story down, I guess...but Mom wasn't overly amused with me, even though I had done a rather fabulous tuck and roll on landing, and only knocked the wind out of me. Years before this escapade, I personally led my brothers and sisters out onto the porch roof from the second story windows, where we would run and dance and jump and bounce along the edge of the roof. Our revels came to an abrupt end, however, when Mom and Dad, noticing a suspicious ATTACK OF SILENCE from the five heathens upstairs, came charging up to see WHAT EXACTLY WAS GOING ON!!! We were lectured. We felt shame. We came in, holding our heads down and waited for them to chill out and go downstairs again. We calmly waited for a few hours, knowing that the daylight and sunshine had led to our discovery, and realizing with equal clarity that if we went out onto the porch roof when it was DARK, then they just couldn't see us...and there would technically be no proof that we were out on the roof if we would just be quiet. Ah...well...silly us, we didn't realize the roof itself would turn snitch on us. We had not taken into account that a hot, sunshine-y day would melt the black tar that held the shingles in place. We had not taken into account that said tar would show incriminating foot prints that would be the exact size and shape of five pairs of little feet...or that said stupid tar would not only stick to our five pairs of little feet when we crept back into the windowsill, but to the carpet in the hallway, and our bedroom floors, and the lovely, clean sheets mom had just placed on our beds that very day...Ahem, well...um, yes, anyhow...


It doesn't help me to recall either that my earliest memory (roughly age four) was climbing pine trees in the forest behind Mom's old duplex. I'd come home sap-sticky, and pine-scented, with needles in my hair, and pieces of bark stuck to my cheerfully scraped skin. I had one particular branch in my tree that I would perch upon, roughly fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, where I would survey my scrap of forest with the pride of a Lord of the Realm. I could and did climb everything, but this tree, and this branch were MINE. I don't remember any time I wasn't climbing trees, and it just became accepted. Then, one day, I climbed exactly one branch higher in my tree than usual. One, lousy branch. And then I looked down. Suddenly, I was trapped. I couldn't find my way back down to my usual branch and it's normal, perfect safety. I couldn't go higher and try to work my way around to a different branch. I was trapped, and howling for somebody, anybody, to come save me. I was coated in sap and bark bits, and there were these massive soldier ants that were not helping the situation either. As it happened, our neighbor, a little girl about my age, had the sense to get her mother, who -- God love her, climbed the tree with her eight-months-of-hugely-pregnant belly, and managed to pry my death grip from the tree (it was quickly relocated to her neck), and somehow, she got us both out of the tree in one piece (of course, thanks to the sap, we were actually sticking together like "one piece", but that's a given). The very next day, I made my way up to that very same branch again, and gloried in the new vision of my realm. It was perfect.


Again, I keep hoping that Josh will inherit his father's calm...and most importantly, his common sense...Lord knows, common sense and I have only nodded at each other in passing...but after hearing some of the stories of Jon's childhood, I wonder... Apparently, at one point, he managed to get his baby walker ramped off of his parent's stoop, over three steps, and landed safely on all wheels, and was charging up the driveway and to the road before they could catch him. Now they did...but again, the first thing we learned about Josh was that he was determined...and he seems to have gotten it already in equal doses from both of us....


Apparently, one of the family stories involved my mother and my grandmother watching me from a window as the five of us kids charged around on the swingset in the backyard. Of course, I was the first to figure out a way to climb up onto the top support beam of the set...(hey, it was climbing...it was what I did) and my mother just looked at me and murmured, "She just has no fear." To which my grandmother replied, "Of course she doesn't. So, teach her well."


...Fear came with motherhood. My life has condensed into two people...without whom, I wouldn't dare to want to breathe. I feel focused, and oddly strong, but if anything happened to either of them...


I have drifted through my entire life, patterning my soul's passage more on the bit of milkweed in late summer fields than a true and set goal. I never feared death before. I never worried about the idea of leaving something behind...My one philosophy in life is that somewhere, somehow, someone's looking out for me, and that it would all work out in the end, but somehow, I always felt beyond it...immortal. It was enough.

With the first heartbeat of this little boy...and the worried, tired, loving looks of the man I am constantly falling in love with, I find that I fear the losing, the passing. I looked at my Dad the other day, and noticed for the first time the grey in his hair...that there are lines in my hands now, and that they look more and more like my mother's hands. That there seems to be a peculiar fragileness about the people I love the most. When did that happen?


It's a different kind of selfishness now. I want to keep it all safe. Mine. Forever.

Josh knows no fear...and I am, somehow, supposed to teach him well...(but I think I will super glue his baby shoes to the floor when he learns to walk...just in case...)