Laughing in Her Sleep

(Started at least three months ago)

Zinnie is starting pre-school next week, two mornings--Mondays and Wednesdays at La Puerta de Los Ninos. Jenn is partially in mourning, and, I suppose, so am I. I've been feeling my limitations as a father--really as a person, lately, and with each failure, I mentally add another month of therapy for the kid once know as Baby Z.

Our daughter's latest obsession is this song from this surprisingly hopping video clip (cut-and-paste into search box): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RxTSoiqXg0    If it doesn't open, Google "Joyous Noise" and look for the clip, "Man in the Mirror." Zinnia insists on correcting me when I sing "mirror."

"No, that's not how it goes. It's 'mirrah.' "

Lately I've been struggling with Graduated Paternal Failure. Z. soaks me unexpectedly with a squirt bottle--cold water, computer in general vicinity--and I make a deal of it; I put some chopped olives in a bowl for her, and instead of eating the proffered condiment, she starts grabbing them by the fistful off the cutting board and stuffing them in her mouth. I make a deal of it; Zinnie hilariously yells a line from one of our favorite Mo Willems kids books--"Get those maps!" in a crowded restaurant--and I make a deal of it. The morbid reality check is that, if I'm lucky, I mean really lucky--and the planet continues to spin on it's axis and, if not exactly thrive, then at least survive the current global environmental crisis and wave-upon-wave of Republican naughtiness--then, best case scenario, I'll be alive another 35-40 years. That I am aware of, none of my relatives (to date) have lived long enough to breathe a single nonagenarian breath, although I have an aunt that is about to turn the corner on her ninth decade.* (And yes, I had to look up the word for it so I could go Latin on your respective asses.) My point is that, in the grand scheme of things, my absolute sweetheart of a daughter cramming her cheek pouches with salty, medium-sized black olives is not worth even a scintilla of distress. Decidedly not. Will I upset myself over similar mundane goings-on in the future? You betcha.

Jenn has been a good teacher for me around this ... this parenting stuff, but in my middle age, and with the passing away of both my parents, I seemed to have developed a bit of an edge to my personality, one that I struggle to mute. In the counseling room, my straightforward, un-sugarcoated delivery seems to be (for the most part) appreciated. However, to the mind and heart of an-almost-four-year-old,** there is a certain sharpness her papa has that could perhaps benefit from a little rounding off.

The man I'm training with in couples counseling, Terrence Real, talks about "Losing Strategies." He enumerates six of them, I've added three, which makes at least nine ways we start acting like kids when feeling stressed out. A huge one for me growing-up was walling off, which means that when I got angry or hurt as a kid--and I remember being mainly angry--I would go off to my room and bury myself behind the pages of one super hero comic after another, and then, as I got older, perhaps age 9 or 10, I lost myself in actual novels, as well as late-into-the-night-with-the-volume-turned-down-low comedy albums played on a mini-turntable/radio that i kept under my bed for comic relief during those sleepless hours.***

Walling off is still one of my strategies when I get triggered, and it requires an act of will and, I hesitate to say, courage, to lower my angry inner child's "Your-Dead-to-Me-Now" wall and re-engage. I don't give Zinnie the cold shoulder exactly, I just kinda go cold inside, generally for not more than a few minutes, and often less.  I have a friend who pointed out what I already knew, but it felt good to hear it externalized: That I get to heal the wounds of my childhood through my own parenting, and in the process, I get to face every boondoggle, every shadow, every unhealed owie I have ever tried to avoid.

My mother was the stuff of my nightmares. Literally. Reoccuringly. Inescapably.  They started around age four or five and continued until age eight or nine. Maybe a little older. In these dreams, I would be alone in our dark house, running from some approaching evil. I could sense her approach, hear her footsteps, feel the venom in her voice. I would quickly push out the screen to one of the second story windows and climb into the frame, pausing, afraid of the fall. I leapt just as I felt her hands clutching at me from the dark. As I plummeted to the ground, my vision would suddenly go black, but even though I couldn't see, I could still hear the ugly screech from above, feel her frustration that I had escaped, but also knew she was still determined, still unrelenting. And rather than wake-up when I hit the ground (as, even in my dream state, I half expected to do), I would land with a thud!, still blind, rolling and thrashing around on the grass, wanting to get away, unable to get up, terrified that a set of hands were about to grab me in frantic cruelty. Small wonder I gravitated towards walling off. It felt, at the time, a matter of life or death.

Often, now, at least weekly, sometime more, I wake up to the sound of Zinnia laughing in her sleep. I think we are doing something very right.



*She didn't make it. My beloved Aunt Natalie died about 12 weeks ago. Very sad.
** As of August 4th, now four years-old. It has become a mainstay of her introducing herself to people: "My name is Zinnia Rain Bender and I just turned four and we have five chickens and two cats." 
***Wow! Asterisk Central here. This one involves both a bit of sadness and more than a bit of disgust. One of my main go-to's during that time, the man who helped me get through many a frustrated and sleepless late night, was none other than Bill Cosby--now alleged drugger and rapist of many, many women. It has been years since I held him up as my comedic hero, and, in fact, I hadn't really thought of Cosby in any meaningful way since I saw a few reruns of "The Cosby Show" sometime in the nineties. Now--Holy Christ!--what a way to round the home stretch of one's life: Outed as a total sleazeball and sexual predator, his comic legacy tarnished forever.  Triple blech!  

Babies Talk Alot

(Started in February, 2015)

Hello my friends. After many, many requests via email, phone, and text to resurrect my blog (thanks, Jenn), I have decided to once again take computer in hand and see what sparks may fly.

Zinnia is now 3 1/2 years old. She was six months old just a butterfly wing ago, but I blinked, and here we are, living with a delightful, funny, head-strong, kind, creative being who melts my heart on a daily basis. Yesterday, we had the most blusteriest snow storm I've seen since my days in Wisconsin. To Z, a snowball fight means not only hitting me with a snowball, but having me make it for her as well. (She doesn't quite get the whole competition thing.) At least once every snowball war, she takes aim, smiles, and lets loose, only to have the snowball roll off her fingertips mid-throw, go straight into the air, and land on her own head.

Recent lifetime highlights: Jenn and the artist Formerly Know as Baby Z. had just returned form spending X-Mas in Portland with Jenn's dad. I was waiting for them behind the "Do Not Enter" cordon where excited greeters are forced to wait in this post-9/11 era as we crane our necks in an effort to catch a glimpse down the wide hallway on the opposite side of a trio of revolving doors. At last, Jenn and Zinnia rotated through. Z. was clearly looking around for me.

"Zinnie!" I said.

She saw me and ran the 20 yards between us straight into my arms. I scooped her up and we melted into each other in tearful embrace. Z. kept leaning her head against my chest, stroking my cheek and saying "Papa, papa." I've never been greeted with such love and open enthusiasm before and don't expect it again ... at least until the next time Jenn and Z. take a trip. Fingers crossed.

Last weekend it was my turn. Jenn was out of town, and in the deluded belief that Zinnia had to be occupied the entire time her mama was gone, we went out to breakfast, perused the bookstore across from the breakfast place where we read not one, not two, but three Dr. Seuss novels while sitting on a beanbag chair. (And man, are those things fucking long. As a kid I loved them, and they were the perfect length. As a parent, some of the Seuss books feel like the kid equivalent of "War and Peace.")

When it was time to go, Zinnie didn't want to leave (since goodbye's can be so tough), and she melted down right there on the bookstore floor. After the tears stopped flowing, we went the library to get some new kid books. Z. decided she wanted "in" with a group of older boys who were running amuck through the stacks of the library. They didn't notice her until, in a desperate attempt to get their attention, she said: "I have to poo." (It worked.) Then it was time to leave again, after, of course, the requisite melt down. Next we went bowling, where Z. bowled three games and averaged 72 per (with the help of gutter bumpers and a steep ramp that kids use to send the ball flying down the alley). After Zinnia's "I-Want-To-Play- Three-More-Games" EPIC melt down, we went home for lunch, watched two episodes of "Super Why," and then lied down for a nap. It didn't take, so I turned toward nap time's evil cousin---"Quiet Time."

Quiet time, of course, consists of Zinnie lying or sitting in bed or crib and seeing how far she can push the boundaries while trying to distract and charm her parents until she can "legally" get up to play some more. She might, for example, realize at these times that she really, REALLY needs to give her mama kisses or  that her happiness, nay, her entire world, depends on having a certain stuffed animal that she hadn't thought of or seen for weeks, but now she suddenly cannot live without it.

Because Jen was in Portland, we had pre-arranged for her mother and mother's husband to come to town to help out with Zinnia on Saturday evening and Sunday, while I went to work. They arrived as quiet time was ending and regaled Zinnia with the usual heaping scoops of love and admiration before leaving for Costco and to a movie. Z. and I went for a bike ride, with the plan for me to pedal us to the food co-op for some coconut water and a lollipop (respectively), but a wind started to blow, and we ended up cutting the trip short when we rode past a playground and decided to stop.

All in all, a good and exhausting day. Not sure what i was thinking with all this beyond, Don't want to be sitting at home and I want my kid to have a good time. Maybe just a tad of the Disneyland dad syndrome, which is ironic because you'd think i would have gotten the message following her 25th melt down. When she started to wail when it was time to leave the park, I had had enough:

"Really, Zinnie?" I said a tad sarcastically. "We have to do this again? Is this really how you want to end our time here?"

I don't approximate this tone very often, so when it pops out, I kinda trust it. Zinnia looked at me, sniffled one last time, and decided no, she didn't want to end our time at the playground with another meltdown. Instead, on our way home and as her papa heroically battled the sudden brisk drop in temperature and semi-howling wind that had just kicked up, Z. decided she had an uncommon number of questions. To flesh out the image a little: we have a Chariot bike trailer--top of the line--with a plastic window one can pull over the mesh window in front so the kid can still see out but not get wind-blown. Now Zinnie almost never talks to me on our rides. If anything, she puts up with them until she finally says through her boredom, "I want to go to park." However, on this day, with her papa wearing a tee shirt and shorts as he pedaled through the cold and bluster, Zinnie decided she needed to point out various things she was noticing along the way.

"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa?"

I turned my head but kept ridiing. "What's that, Zinnie?"

"Papa, "Mumphll ubba ghuggds?"

I tried to ignore her and kept pedaling.

"Papa!"

No Answer.

"Papa!!"

No Answer.

"Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa!"

Her tone was picking up an urgency. I pulled over, dismounted, and detached the plastic cover from the trailers front to un-muffle her vooice. "What is it sweety?"

"Did you see that bird?"

I looked at her slightly amused, but also a bit narrowly. "No, baby."

"It was a pigeon."

"Thanks, sweetheart. Okay, now we're going to keep going. Do you need some water?"

"No."

"Okay, here we go."

I pedaled about half a block.

"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa?"

"What's that Zinnie?"

"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa. Papa! Papa! Papa!"

I braked, and it would not be an overstatement to say "yanked" the plastic cover up from its Velcro hnge and unzipped the mesh door. "What?!"

"What are those things you put your feet into?

"These?" I said pointing.

"Yes."

I started laughing. "They're called toe clips, honey."

I leaned over, my eyes welling from my daughter's utter innocence and complete dearness and loveability.

"Oh. They're very shiny," she said, smiling.

"Yes they are sweety. Yes they are."

. 

Mom Blog

Last June, shortly after my mother's stone dedication, I wrote and published a blog entry which I have come to view as a kind of dark eulogy for one Barbra May Bender, my mother, who died on June 15th, 2012. It created a minor shit storm with certain members of my family due to the perceived negative tone of the piece (not an unfair interpretation) as well as some of the presumptuous leaps I made concerning certain players in Barb's life (i.e. her grandchildren). It was an unpolished piece, written late at night, often at the end of hellishly long and busy days. As is my wont, I posted the blog entry before it was completely ready for public consumption. I often do this in an attempt to avoid the samsaric trap of never-ending polishing in dogged pursuit of my white whale--the allusive perfect phrase. If taken to its extreme, my perfectionistic tendencies could (and have) lead me to taking forever to post whatever sumbitch I happen to be working on. Thus, I use a pre-emptive blog strike to hold my own feet to the fire, posting entries when they have reached the "good enough" stage of publishability. I then go back several times over a period of a week or so to massage the kinks out of it.

The original post, entitled, "Babies Mourn Alot," had been open for business for two days before I went back for a round of editing.  Upon second glance, the tone of the piece seemed a little harsh, a little glaring. Also of note, often within the first 48 hours of posting a new entry I would generally receive a couple of comments from readers including (almost without fail) an email from one woman on the west coast who discovered my blog shortly after I began writing it, and became one of my biggest cheerleaders as I learned how to be a father.

After I published the post about my mother's stone dedication and my perceptions of her as a human being--silence, no feedback, no comments, nadda, not even from my wife who often gave me immediate feedback. Five days of silence later, I approached her.

"So," I said, affecting an air of nonchalance, "did you read my last blog entry?"

Jenn looked at me for one beat, two beats. "Yeeess," she said, drawing out the "e." There was a hiccough of upturn to her intonation, as one does when one is about to comment on something that one wasn't crazy about and perhaps, ever so slightly, was even dreading being asked this very question.

"Well, what did you think?" I said, already knowing, or at least suspecting.

She took a moment to gather her words: "The fact that you would write that entry, especially so soon after the stone dedication, made we want to hold you tighter and love you even more."

Pin drop.

Jenn was the picture of compassion as she said this, but was quite clearly not celebrating any literary victories on my part. My take was with the above comment, she was alluding to what she perceived to be the true source of the piece--the writer's own woundedness.

"Well," I said feeling a little hurt, a little defensive, "I tried to be balanced. I brought in some of her positives."

"Yeah, but that wasn't until the end. It came in too late. One of the best things about your writing is that you weave heart into everything you write. It balances everything out."

She was right. I pulled the piece to complete the editing process. However, before I could repost it, I received two emails from family members quite disturbed by the blog. As a writer, one has to take the criticism along with the kudos, but after receiving their emails, I felt misunderstood, accused, hurt, and, oddly, abandoned. I lost interest in editing the piece due, in part, to my not wanting to change my writing from a place of fear or a need for approval.  I also didn't want to simply "stand tall" and publish what I considered to be a flawed piece as a sort of "fuck you" over a blog entry I knew I could have written more skillfully.

Grapple, grapple.

Since the inception of my blog, "Babies Mourn A lot" is the only piece I have ever written that I pulled from publication ... until tonight. I have decided to re-publish it as-is, not from  a place of reaction or as a stubborn, heels-dug-in, middle finger to other people's pain, but more because tonight, as I searched the archives of "Babies Crawl Alot," I was surprised to discover that I couldn't find an entry I thought I had posted long-ago.

When my mother was in the hospital during her final days, I spent each night with her in her room, sleeping fitfully on a godawful hospital recliner, waking-up periodically to sit by her bedside, go for middle of the night walks, pray, and weep--the insomniac's two step. During those late night hours, I started to write something I dubbed, simply, "Mom Blog." My plan was to keep a journal through the entire excruciating experience of my mother's death, much as I had written my way through my grief after my father passed. I saved this painful diary to a folder on my computer desktop with the one-time aspiration to turn it into a book about the life and death of Barbara May Bender. And there it languished, alone and forlorn.

Long story short, I lost steam for the project, and then, after having (mistakenly) thought that I posted what little I had written about the experience, I forgot about it altogether. When I stumbled across it last night, it was like reconnecting with a long lost friend or a part of my heart. I re-read it and found it to be the yin to my dark eulogy's yang,"the heart" that Jenn had alluded to several months ago. What follows, then, is what I wrote as my mother lay dying, the light and the shadow.  It will live into perpetuity under the original, inglorious title, "Mom Blog." Immediately following this piece, for any interested parties (but mainly for my own peace of mind), I have re-published the eulogy in all its unadorned, unedited glory. It remains entitled "Babies Mourn A Lot." The reader, of course, may chose to skip dessert after taking in the main course--and who could blame you--but consider reading it anyway.

---

Mom Blog

On the old Monty Python TV show, an announcer would pipe in something like:

"For the sake of accuracy the heretofore mentioned boa constrictor was played by Fifi, the incontinent poodle, and while the one legged man involved in the bank heist sketch was described as being 'of the very worst ilk,' he really could be quite nice at times, and once even volunteered at the  local orphanage, Our Lady of the Succulent Swagger. Furthermore ... " 

I always write from my own perceptions and make no claim that my ramblings are ultimate truth or reality, though I aspire toward accuracy in spirit if not in letter. However, now may be a good time to add a brief correction to my last entry about my family's trip to Milwaukee. While my perception was that Jenn took my mother's, lack of displaying a photograph containing her visage on her coffee table personally, Jenn would disagree and claim only that my mother's omission of her in the family gallery helped her, Jenn, to gain clarity as to the nature of their relationship. However, we were both a little off the mark, since in my mother's bedroom, proudly displayed on her faux Victorian-style desk, and well within view of a person who might be reclining on, say, a queen-sized bed against the wall, was a framed photograph of the author and one Jennifer M. Lukesh looking handsome and beautiful, respective, while dancing at their/our wedding.

I also alluded to my mother repeatedly saying "Boo!" to Zinnia at their first (and last, it would appear) meeting, and expressed my thoughts at the time, in italics, mind you, questioning that that was all she (Barb) had to offer? The answer to this question, with no judgment or anger toward my mother (but with some regret for not picking up how sick she was) is yes, sadly, poignantly, that was indeed all she had to offer.  Physically and mentally, it's hard to tell just how present Barb was during our visit, and I am working hard to hold my feelings of assholishness at bay for how I treated this woman--both recently and in the past. I was (and am) unspeakably glad Zinnia and Grandma Barb got to meet.*

My mother, Barbara M. Bender, was sick then, and even sicker now, and she is, even as I write these words, quite possibly heading toward her own demise. Things are hanging in balance, and we have no idea how it's going to play out. Barb might, we still hope, have one more rally in her, but for now she is laying in an ICU bed gorked up on drugs so she doesn't yank the bi-pap mask off her face.

Two nights ago, I spoke to my mother's long-time friend (and erstwhile employer), C, who let me know in no uncertain terms that my mother was "as bad as I've ever seen her" and really needed to see me.  C told me that the youngest child holds a special place in every mother's heart, and that over the years it had bothered my mother no end (as it bothered the author) that her youngest child (i.e. me) had never met anyone or had any kids.

I felt oddly touched by this, that my mother talked about me to people important in her life, telling them how she was concerned about me. It also confirmed for me that it was time to fly to Milwaukee. Linda, my sister, had already flown in, and was--and even now, is--by our mother's bedside. Timing is everything with this sort of thing. I had to balance my desire to work until the last possible moment with my longing be their for my mother if/when she needed me. To twist an analogy gifted to us from the NRA: Better to be at a (potentially) terminally ill mother's side and not need to be, than to not be by her side and wish I had. So here I am, in my mother's hospital room, and she is almost certainly dying. Linda is sitting across from me, her head resting on her hand. She is either resting or deep in thought, and our mother is lying on the bed to my right, O2 mask on, cathaterized, and able to speak only in halting, two word phrases.

I feel a bit mercenary writing this is while it is happening, but it is is all I can think of to do. I have wept several times today, including by my mother's bedside when I begged for her forgiveness for all the ways I have treated her disrespectfully over the years; I told her how hard it was for me to let her into my life, and I thanked her for everything she had done for me. I don't know if she heard a word of it, but I have gone from feeling layer upon layer of guilt to something resembling a modicum of peace... that is, until the pain medications wears off and she starts pulling at her O2 mask--her lifeline to her body--and she begins to flail around in a wave of break-through panic, shaking her head, and the only words thatt come to her in those times are "No" and "I don't want to do this," and the only thing I can think of to say to her is "Mom, breathe ... relax. It's okay."

The most profund thing that has happened all day was when Linda said Barb as she lay (what I thought was) asleep: "Everything's going to be alright," Linda said, to which my mother responded as lucid as she's been all day: "I sure hope so."

And boy, did she mean it.

It is no longer a matter of if, but when. Barb's kidney's are shutting down, and her lungs and heart are shot following a recent heart attack combined with pulmonary fibrosis. Even her heart doctor was puzzled at how quickly she has gone from relatively minor heart attack to death's door in a matter of days.** The way the nurses and doctors explained it was like this: If my mother's lungs had been strong, they would support her heart while it repairs itself; if her heart was strong, it would keep her going while her lungs healed; but with neither in good shape, combined with an alleged possible overuse of prescription pain meds, these all may have contributed to where we are tonight--with my mother in a blessed morphine cloud so the knowlege of her impending doom doesn't drive her insane with anxiety and fear.

When I asked her cardiac doctor over the phone why my 79 year old mother was given the stress test, the doctor took on a decided defensive edge. Over the next day, I approached a nurse and a cardiac resident to explain to me why a woman with already compromised health would be given a chemical stress test. The explanations made some sense even while being completely unsatisfactory. Frankly, it all smelled (and smells) of poorly practiced medicine topped with a heaping scoop of Cover Your Ass-ness.** 

(Next morning) Family is flying in from all over the country and world (i.e. aunt from Florida, oldest sister from Oregon, brother and his family from Holland). Our mother is still alive, still hanging on, but she is now on a constant morphine drip. She had been on half-hour or PRN (as needed), but woke-up in a panic late last night, ripped the oxygen tube from her face and nearly crawled off the bed. I had just returned from a middle-of-the-night walk only to find my mother thrashing around, a wave of anxiety pouring off her. Any conscious thought at this time had to have to included the subtle (or not-so-subtle) undercurrent that she's dying and knew it. I was nearly bowled over by her panic and gently held her down as I reached to press whatever button I could reach to get the nurse's attention.

When the nurse finally arrived (she had been with another patient) she--very business like--inspected the various I.V. tubes, held one up to inspect it and tapped it with her index finger. I looked down at my still agitated mother, back up at the nurse, down at my mother. At last, the nurse pointed to the panel of buttons on the wall, one of which was still lit from my effort to get someone to the room without leaving my mother by herself.

"If you want to call me," she said indicating the nurse call button on the TV control, "you need to press this button here," she said indicating the little red silloutette of the nurse on the TV remote, "and not that one," she said pointing to the button on the wall I had pressed.

"Okay, fine." I said. "Now will you please give my mother more medication?"

"Also," she said, pausing to make eye contact over the body of my mother. "you may want to contact your sister. It looks like she's had a status change and may not--"

"I will talk you about this out there," I hissed, indicating the hallway. "Now please just focus on my mother."

I went out to the hallway and paced, fuming, until the nurse had finished. She finally came out.

"Two things," I said blocking her way to her computer stand. "First, my mother is suppose to get morphine every half hour. It's now been over an hour since her last dose."

"Well," she said, "I looked in on her and saw you with a blanket over your head," half to prove that yes, she had peeked in and half, I believe, to try to humiliate me. I had indeed wrapped myself in a bedspread I brought from my mother's apartment and had pulled it over the top of my head to ward off the coolness of the room.

"I believe you," I said, "but she's still suppose to get the shot every thirty minutes. She was in such a panic by the time you got here that she was trying to crawl off the bed."

"Well," she said, clearly of the school that they key to an efficient defense was a good offense, "when I looked in you had a blanket on your head and she was doing fine."

"The other thing," I said cutting her off, "if you have any sort of status report or notice any sort of status change that you want to share, pull me out in the hallway to tell me. And yes, I understand my mother is highly medicated, but every once in a while she pops out, and even heavily medicated, on some level, she can still hear. She's already struggling with panic enough. Do not do this in front of her."

The nurse held her tongue on this one, but I could tell she wanted to say something.

 It's 9:00 A.M. on June 11th, and I just spent about a page of dialogue relaying what is already a meaningless exchange (although I did ask that this nurse not be assigned to us again).***

My mother is still on the planet. She breathes, she occasionally moans, and she sleeps, her mouth agape beneath her oxygen mask. The pretense is over. Barbara no longer dons a blood pressure cuff, and they have removed the circulation stockings from her calves. Her breathing is quite labored, her kidneys are shutting down, and her belly convulses every few seconds with a spasm of breath. Every doctor we have spoken to suggest they will make her as comfortable as possible, medical-ese for "Your mother's dying."

In general, I didn't really like my mother very much, but I did love her. She was a pain in the ass (on a good day), needy, paranoid, and incredibly stubborn; but she loved her four kids and five grandkids with a fierce love. I am having regular spells of silent weeping as I sit vigil by her bedside. I will miss her.

(Later)

Aunt Nancy, Barb's younger sister, arrived from Florida. One could say that Barb's slow but steady decline happened during her last visit to see her sister and brother-in-law, Bob. For my mother, never the picture of flexibility, preparing for a trip--any trip--was a nerve-racking affair that was barely outweighed by her desire to see her family. She would begin to pack a full week ahead of time, by rather than alleviate her stress level, this flow of trip preparation would serve to only give her more time to get worked up. The amount of medications that she had to bring with her alone could dictated their own designated satchel. Then there was packing for every time of situation and weather even though she was going to southern Florida in the winter, and the clime was fairly dependable.  Additionally, as she had aged, the logistics of actually getting her suitcase down to the lobby and arranging transport to and through the airport had become more challenging as her gait had become less sure.  Between her arthritic hands, now twisted into claws, arthritic back, and dogged determination to never exercise or watch her diet, my mother's body had broken down to an extent that she now walked with her back arched forward and her arms pulled back as a counter-weight in upside-down "L's."

I remember Barb being exceptionally worked-up about this trip in particular. How was she going to get her suitcase down to the lobby for a 5:00 a.m. airport limo pick-up. For someone who now needed a walker to get from A to B and had no family in town, this was a real concern. And once she got to the airport, she was facing the change-of-life-reflecting wheelchair ride to her terminal. By the time she left, Barb was a total stressed-out mess, and she had had a "minor" heart attack by the time her plane landed, but didn't even know it. When her sister met her, Barb was tired,  disorientated, and weak. Nancy new something was wrong, and the next day took her to the hospital where they discovered she'd had a coronary.

The real trouble began when she went to rehab. She picked-up a C-Diff infection--a G.I. infection that resulted in explosive diarrhea (a phrase that always cracks me up even while describing a dire circumstance), dehydration, and disorientation. C-Diff kills a lot of old people. A lot of old people.

At this point, my mother and our family began what was to become a pattern of dyke-plugging that continued for the next 1 1/2 years. Linda flew down to be with our mother. A week later, I flew down when Barb was deemed fit to fly back to Milwaukee. Prior to the trip to the airport, I went to a CVS pharmacy to pick up what looked like the most comfortable (and snug) adult diapers on the shelf while praying to dear God that my mother wouldn't have one of her "explosive episodes" while on the plane.  (Later on, Barb gave the diapers a verbal thumbs up: "Ooo, these are pretty comfortable," which of course bordered on TMI, but was kinda funny too.) I assisted the fragile Barbara May into the car, checked her bag curbside, and ushered her through the airport in a wheelchair, until, at last, we boarded the plane.

We made it back to Milwaukee without incident, but little did we know this was just the beginning. The tenacious C-Diff infection recurred no less than five times over the next year. In homoepathic medicine, the cure is in the ailment. With C-Diff, the ailment is in the cure. The treatment for the bacterial infection is high doses of antibiotics, but in order to cure the C-Diff, doctors recommend that people discontinue any antibiotics to allow for the blooming of healthy intestinal flora. Each recurrence of the disease, brought with it its own share of chaos. One of the kids would get a call that my mother was back in the hospital with dehydration and disorientation, and then one of the us would scramble to fly in to be with her during her recovery and to accompany her home until she stabilized.

(Back in the hospital) Nancy had been deciding whether to fly to see her sister or go be with her daughter in California who was facing surgery herself. Like everyone, Nancy didn't want to believe how serious the situation was and at first said no, she wouldn't be coming to Milwaukee until after California, but she called back later that day to say she was on her way. When she arrived at the hospital, the visitors in the room--myself, Jimmy, Jose, the boys, parted out of deferential respect. Nancy approached my mother's hospital bed and looked down at her sister in silence for a solid minute. There was no mistaking--Barb would not be leaving the hospital alive. At last, Nancy sat down on a chair by her sister's bedside, looked at her in silence, closed her eyes, and lowered her head to the guardrail of the bed.We cleared the room to allow the two sisters a moment alone.

(Later)  My brother, Jimmy, his wife, Jose, and two sons, Dani and David arrived from Holland this afternoon. Jimmy called from the rental car telling me he had arrived and wondered where to enter the hospital and park.

"Go ahead and park," I said. "I'll meet you on the corner of North and Prospect."

I caught the elevator down and was crossing the expansive hospital lawn toward North Avenue when I heard a whistle. There they were--the entire Dutch clan looking as if they had just driven from the south side of Milwaukee and instead of having just flown in from Holland where it was one in the morning and then driven a rental car through the daunting Chicago rush hour for two straight hours.

We hugged each other hello, and Jose' and I exchanged the Dutch mwah-mwah-mwah, left-right-left cheek kisses. I asked how their flight was, but the question was strangely out of place and fell flat.

"Fine," Jimmy said.

We looked at each other in silence.

"How's gramms doing?" David said, getting down to it.

"Look," I said. "It's bad. She's going down hill fast. It ... it ..."

My face contorted with grief, and I was trying not to weep.  They looked down briefly and then back up.

"If she looks like she's on death's door, it's because she is," I said at last.

We took a few steps.

"I'm glad you all are here," I said.

There really is no preparing for the sight of a dying--a near death relative. The consensus reaction until the very day she died was shock.

Wait, we were just talking a few days ago. How did things get so ..."

(Next day) My mother is propped up on her side and occasionally sucking in a breath. I had a horrible dream last night where she was lying on a mattress in the corner of a bare room in full fledged panic, saying over and over "I don't want to go."

"Mom, it's okay. It'll be okay. It'll be okay..." I said ain the dream as I held her arms both to soothe and to prevent her from running away in full-fledged terror.

(6/15/12) Barbara M. Bender died at 12:35 a.m. on Wednesday, June 13th. My brother was asleep next to my mother's hospital bed, and I was down the hall in the family room, having fallen asleep watching some sitcom or other, needing a little sleep and a breather from the intensity. My intention had been to only be there for an hour or so before going back to her room, but instead, I was woken up by my brother's voice saying, "Tommy wake-up. Come on!"

I staggered to my mother's room, not quite comprehending what was going on until I saw the nurse quietly gazing up at the monitor. The cardiac line was nearly flat, aside from a soft, green sporadic blip, and her respiratory line had flattened out entirely. Barbs brain was still offering a few blips, but they became fainter and fainter. Barbara's face had already begun to draw in on itself, and she looked as peaceful as she had appeared in years.

Somehow, after everything she had been through--the repeated hospital visits, the 1 1/2 year battle with a C-Diff infection, and now this, wrapping up her life confined to a walker or wheelchair and tethered to an oxygen tank--she hadn't looked this peaceful and (she would be happy to hear) young in years. Beneath the pale fluroscent hospital light, Jimmy, myself, and the nurse  watched in silence as the last few waves of her brain faded to flat.

Nothing.

* As an aside, at one point during that same visit, I slipped and mistakenly referred to my mother as Zinnia's Great Grandmother, a title that Barb took great exception to and was quick to correct me on.

** After my mother's funeral, an old family friend was at the post-service gathering. He raise his eyebrows when informed they had given her this test. He was shocked, as he had had one the year before and had to tell them to stop because his heart was trying to jump through his chest. He said it was the most uncomfortable thing he ever experienced, and this from an avid bike rider and hiker.

*** As a follow-up, two days ago I contacted the head of nursing for the ICU my mother had been on. I praised the care she received on the floor, but filed a complaint against this nurse if for no other reason than to help any future patients she may have.

Babies Mourn A lot

Posted: 26 Jun 2013 08:07 AM PDT

It is Father's Day Eve, a day that, if I weren't actually writing this entry, I wouldn't have been able to remotely tell the reader what date Papa's Day fell on or even which month. Jenn, out of generosity, created the space for me today to do whatever I choose, and what I want most, fair reader, is to add a little something entry-wise to Babies Crawl A lot.

Since last we spoke (Fair reader? Since last we spoke? Clearly I am still shaking the rust off my three hunt-and-peck writing fingers) much has happened, not the least of which -- okay, maybe exactly the least of which -- is I finished reading, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction." The book is a double novelette penned by my writing hero, the late, great, (and in the spirit of full disclosure, alleged lover of underaged girls and/or women very much his junior) J.D. Salinger. (See:http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/24/j-d-salinger-a-selfish-old-goat-but-not-a-perv/)

Salinger as much as anyone I have read, could convey a character's personality, intelligence, flaws and strengths in a single sentence, and often in the very first sentence of descriptive narrative even before the character sctually speaks.  Below is an excerpt from a letter written by the fictitious, but likely at least semi-autobiographical Seymour Glass to his narrator brother and writer, Buddy. He was commenting on Buddy's newest story, as he always did after his brother read to to him aloud. In the letter, Seymour wanted to explain to Buddy why he had reacted with mysterious mirth when he saw that his brother had put "Writer" as his profession on his enlistment paperwork during World War II:

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished--I think only poor Soren K. will get asked that. I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined. Oh, dare to do it, Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over excited right now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a story, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after you're own heart. The Bank Dick is playing at the Thalia. Lets take the whole bunch tomorrow night. Love, S. (From “Seymour: An Introduction”)

I find Seymour's/J.D's advice to be inspiring, and, in fact, used it to write a book about
the life and death of my father.  Too, it makes me wonder if the secret to following our Joseph Cambell-ian bliss is as easy as that--asking one's self how we/I best wish to serve the world and then shamelessly making it happen. I have great respect and awe for the earth shakers of the world, and J.D., the reclusive bastard, wrote at least one masterpiece (and no, it wasn't "Catcher"*), and three other pieces of work that had a definite (if a somewhat obscure) register on the collective, literary Richter scale.

*      *      *

Last weekend was my mother's stone dedication. Benders converged on that center of mourning and rending of garments--Milwaukee, I'm afraid--from all over the world. Okay, from New Mexico, New Jersey, and Holland. We were there to honor the memory of our dearly departed mother.  Sister, Lindala, organized the service, an informal affair attended by Barbara's three families--one biological, and two adopted--both Milwaukee-based. Jill had been a close friend of my sister Linda growing up and had known my mother for 40 plus years. Barbara's other family was headed by Cathy L., a sharp minded, big hearted, divorcee for whom my mother had provided childcare for 10 years give or take. C. told me a few years back that she had kept my mother on as long as she did--until her kids had reached their middle teens--out of loyalty, until her kids, now fairly grown, had informed her that they were now taking care of their caregiver more than she them.  Cathy said she, of course, had known this, but couldn't get herself to lay my mother off.  (How kind.)

Barb spent virtually every holiday with Jill and her family, and apparently was known far and wide (okay, at least far) for her jello mold. It's one of those inside jokes I had no idea even existed until, at her memorial service, I heard several people allude to the dessert with knowing smiles. The other thing that my mother was known far (and this time wide) for, was--no surprise--her orneriness. Barbara Bender, my mother, lacked a certain ... how shall I put this--she lacked a filter that, for many, serves as a guide to a certain sense of tact.  Additionally, she was renowned, I repeat, RENOWNED for her bluntness in the way that often garnered the adjective "Sassy" (a word I hate). But sassiness gets old very quickly unless you are the rare person for whom it is an integral part of your personality. In those cases, the sassiness is so embedded in ones fiber, so uncontrived,  so ... understated, that there isn't anything about it that whiffs of phoniness or ego.  Ironically, this pretty much describes Barb's younger sister, my aunt, who I will be seeing at a wedding next week. Where Barb aspired to toughness (which mostly came across as bluster), my aunt was/is the real, big hearted deal. And underneath the bluster, as most of my mother's family and erstwhile adopted families were well aware, was fear and hunger.

Ostensibly, to those who were one or two tiers down from family, Barb was feisty and outspoken. To the inner circle--in fact, let me speak for myself (an inner circle of one), my mother could be, and not infrequently was, just plain mean. She had been a bully when we were kids, and to my chagrin and surprise, appeared to have remained so into her dotage. This took the form of bossing her grandsons around when they were in town (or at least trying to) and, to the extent that they let her get close, her granddaughters. This is no axe grinding here. What it is, pure and simple, is a goddamn shame. Barb could reign herself in for short periods of time, but manners and delicacy, subtlety and respect were, for her, foreign languages. She could speak them haltingly and with great effort, before--water being water--Barb would find her own level and fall back into her most fluent language.

It is hard to relay the exact effect my mother had on family members, particularly her progeny, and I am debating whether or not to even give it a try. I know it is considered poor form and/or plain insensitivity to talk ... not exactly "poorly"of one's recently deceased mother, but to talk critically of the dearly departed. It's risky stuff. On the other hand, to paint Barb as a minor saint or even an emotionally healthy person, would be disingenuous. She was depressed and fragile much of her life and likely personality disordered to boot. Early on, as a young mother and deeply impacted by her father's premature death at the age of 51, my mother's suffering took the form of rage and immaturity. Later on, her anger had more the look of manipulation, only the kind that was nearly invisible to the untrained eye while still being potent and capable of inducing unreasonable (or seemingly unreasonable) anger in its recipient.

Two years ago, my 29 year old niece, T., who was in the country visiting from Israel, decided--brave soul that she is--to visit, on her own, her grandmother, one Barbara May Bender. By herself. Alone. Without a net. My niece knew that her grandmother was doing poorly, and she wanted to see her before anything happened, i.e. before she died. From this place of altruism my niece sallied forth.

From what I understand, by the end of the second day, this lovely, compassionate, kind-hearted, dynamic young woman was ready to help her grandmother crossover to the other side herself, bodily if necessary. As a long-time bachelor, virtually all of my visits with my mother were hombre-a-mama'. And while I am not looking for a badge of honor (no matter how deserving I may be), I felt oddly validated by my niece's response.  Barb was a bottomless pit, longing to be filled with love and acceptance, but making loving her in person a risky affair. One generally had to be willing to sustain ten emotional kidney punches before even a single act of love was proffered. Thus, when it came to showing one where one balked at love, my mother was a great teacher.

(I will now utilize the subtle literary technique of the segue to shift gears and focus on some of my mother's positive traits)

And speaking of of greatness, here is where my mother, Barbra May Bender let all her stars out. She could be genuinely tough, but her toughness came across best, at it's most shining, when she wasn't trying to be, but more, when she was in her "When I Am Old, I Shall Wear Purple" mood. She had a sharp wit and tongue that, had she talked to the general public that way when she was but a young lass, she would have raised any number of  eyebrows if not actually had people muttering under their breath.  As a crone, Barb's rudeness sassiness was coming from a hunchbacked septuagenarian, and people readily dismissed it with indulgent smiles  and hop-to-it service.

My mother was a voracious reader. She loved movies and bridge, and from what two people said at the stone dedication, she loved her children (one fourth of whom is writing to you from an extra deep, Houston Rocket couch) with an abiding love. Once the obligatory day two argument was out of the way, Barb could be quite generous. One of her greatest super powers was her dogged, consistent distaste for anything new or risky. If the reader thinks I am being sarcastic in referring to my mother's fear of the unknown as a strength, rest assured I am not. Barb was quite pure in who she was, so much so that one could set one's watch by her reactions to any given situation.  For example, if one was ever in need of unsolicited advice about, well,  almost any topic, she was your woman. She treated every trip out of state as if she were packing for India, (i.e. she'd get just the teensiest bit nervous), and she could blurt out social faux pax at any moment and/or any event. I know all of this risks smelling of a backhanded compliment, but the author is sincere: Without the all of the above qualities and many, many more, there would have been no Barbara May Bender.

When we got to the cemetery, Jenn was in the back of the rental car with Zinnia, and my mother's friend and ex-employer, Cathy, arrived shortly thereafter. We chatted about this and that as Zinnia, hung out between my legs. Linda arrived shortly thereafter and joined the fray just as Zinnia had started to explore. I will say, to paint an even handed picture, that Cathy and I had been standing in front of my mother's gravestone, perhaps six feet away. However, with all of the interesting plots she could have explored, Zinnia went right to her grandmother's site and climbed onto the marble ridge at the base of the gravestone. Z. did not go to the right side of the stone, towards her great grandfather's half; she didn't go looking for her mama (as she often does in new situations), nor did she--with so many interesting things to explore--try to simply wander off on her own.  She went towards her grandma.

Linda, appreciating a good minor miracle (aka a coincidence to the general public) when she sees one, took note of the event and brought it to the writer's attention. I had already noticed it, but had long ago trained myself to--and please, steel yourself for a verbal loopty-loop here--not to not expect miracles. In other words, according to the Course of Miracles, miracles do not only exist, they are our birthright. It was a miracle that all of Barb's kids and most of her grand kids made it to Milwaukee before she died; it was a miracle that she lived through the C-Diff infection which kills so many elderly folks; it was a miracle that her oldest living grandchild decided discretion was the better part of valor when she chose not to smother her beloved grandmother with a pillow; it was a miracle that--by most accounts from family members--this extremely challenging person, as it turned out, was the main glue point in the Bender family matrix; and it was a miracle that I didn't start weeping during a session last week when a client said something that triggered a memory of my mother, lying there, unconscious and in her hospital bed, so close to death, and then after, the inanimate object that was once her body, now a breathless corpse, beautiful and still.  

*"Franny and Zooey"

---

Babies Climb A lot

Babies Climb Alot

Not an Unusual Occurrence

Hello, my friends. It's been a long time since we last spoke. How's the family? Have you taken care of that annoying fungus problem since last we spoke? Wonderful!

This blog is the continuation of "Babies Crawl Alot", but newly dubbed, "Babies Climb Alot" for reasons that, well, remain a bit of a mystery... Ha, Ha! Okay, just kidding!

As Zinnia rounds the home stretch towards the Terrific Twos, she has discovered that she likes to scale things in our house--chairs, couches, the cat tree, the cats, stairs, her papa and mama, patio furniture, and more.  She often walks around the house with her little green stool (it used to be her plastic Adirondack chair until we moved it to the garage), looking for things to climb or get into.

Zinnia is cat-like. She has a strong sense of exactly where we don't want her to go in any given moment, and then makes a beeline for it as if we had planted a sign that said, "Please, We Beg of You--Don't Climb This." And ever the adventuress, the more dangerous the better. I suspect if we kept a container of used sharps on the top tier of our eight foot high plastic shelving out in the garage (an unlikely scenario, I know, but indulge me), I would not at all be surprised to turn my back one day for, oh, say, 10 seconds, only to turn again to find our precious child balancing precariously atop a listing stack of encyclopedias, trying to reach her adorable little toddler hand into the starred, plastic opening of the hepatitis-laden needle container.

Sometimes I forget to close one of the covers on one of our gas stove controls and often turn to see Zinnia turning the gas knob back-and-forth, looking at me with a mischievous "Gotcha, Papa" grin on her face. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes I hold steady and don't react. Zinnia will mentally snap her fingers in a "Curses!" sort of way before moving on to whatever's next. At other times, I try to enlist her generous nature and simply ask her to please, pretty please close the knob cover. To my surprise and delight, most (but not all) of the time, Zinnia, ever helpful, is happy to cooperate.

Two days ago:  "Zinnie, will you please go give your mama her Danskos (shoes)?"
Z. cradled the oversized shoes against her chest and waddled across the house to wherever Jenn was preparing to seize the day. Yes, it was (and is) totally cute, and yes, it was (and will be) completely manipulative of me to do this. Without qualms or guilt, I transparently pawn Zinnia off on her mother so I can climb into the shower unmolested by her repeated pullings aside of the curtain. I have taken to locking the door once Z's attention is diverted by whatever task is at hand--oh my f*cking G-d, she can open doorknobs now!--but even so, it is generally not long before I hear frustrated cries from the hallway as the bathroom door rattles from the weight of a frustrated little fist pounding on the other side.

"Who is it?" I say, my own private joke.

Pound, pound. "Eh-ehhhh! Ehhh-ehhh!"

"Jenn, is that you?"

Babies Poo Alot

The first anniversary of the death of Barbara May Bender is fast approaching. Next month, the Bender-Lukesh household will fly to what some refer to as the Monte Carlo of the Midwest—Milwaukee—to move my mother’s things from the basement of my aunt, Barb’s sister-in-law, who needs the space, and more importantly, for the stone dedication. My mother is buried next to her father, Louis Putterman, and the stone reads thus:

There it is. The gravestone has already been inscripted with the above and set in place at my mother's grave sight. I was thinking about Barb yesterday, and how much she struggled in life and how much we--I should say "I"--one of her progeny, struggled to be in relationship to her. In an earlier blog entry written shortly after her death, I referred to my mother as "a pain in the ass, but she was our pain in the ass." Anymore, however, I miss her more on than off, and the idea of going to that bustling cosmopolitan of the all that is right and good in the world—again, Milwaukee—without Barb being present and in body is a bit surreal.

(Brief aside: As I write, Zinnia is having a mini-bout of coughing in the bedroom while her mother attempts to soothe her. She has had a persistent cough for the past week, the kind of cough where Z. chokes on her own phlegm, sometimes to the point of vomiting. Jenn took one for the team late last week while I was working in my office in the rear of the house. It took a while for me to hear her desperate calls for help. When I finally did, I ran to the bedroom only to see her holding Zinnia close to her chest while instructing me with some urgency to get her towel. Our sweet, innocent, cherub had projectile vomited all over Jenn, but, she noted with no small amount of pride the next morning, she had saved the comforter.They don’t tell you about this stuff in the manual.)

So, the stone dedication. It feels important, even while I hold no belief that Barb herself will be in attendance, either as disembodied spirit, a zombie-fied member of the living-dead, or anything in between. Regardless of the form, should my mother decide to make an appearance of the supernatural variety, she would certainly be a welcome guest.

To wit: Blessings to date that have manifested through the generosity of my mother since her passing:

1) I was able to quite my job with the university sooner than planned to go into private practice

2) Our home loan just came through yesterday. We needed 20% of the amount of the loan, which we couldn’t have approached without Barb’s help.

3) We were able to buy a 2010 used Prius with only 16,000+ miles on it, as opposed to the author’s 1995 Nissan pick-up (otherwise known as, You Still Got That Thing?) which is rounding the corner towards the 290,000 mile mark). Thanks to my mother, Jenn and baby Z. zre not only getting around town in the lap of luxury, but doing so at a planet-saving 50 miles to the gallon, and that, as my dear grandma Cele used to say, is nothing to sneeze at.

And since we are on the topic of sneezes (how's that for a segue?), most mornings these days, after Zinnia awakens following yet another restless night of being unable to clear the snot from her throat, Zinnia explodes with a sneeze that sends a stream of snot bursting from one of her nostrils like lava. The slime immediately starts to ooze down ... down whatever that ridge is called underneath the nose, and towards her mouth. If Jenn and I are not on the ball with a wipe, Z. happily sticks her tongue out to lap up the snot, proving yet again that babies can be really disgusting. 

Speaking of disgusting: 





(Keep Going ... )






(Warning: What you are about to see is extremely graphic and contains scatological content. Not for the faint of heart ...)









(Almost there ...)

Yes, that’s right--a picture of a poo, but not just any poo. This is the remains of Zinnia’s first successful attempt of pooing in her potty chair! In fact, so miraculous is this event that it is worthy of a bouquet of exclamation marks. “Zinnia pooed in her potty chair!!!!!!” She had been peeing in it off-and-on for about 6 weeks, but a poo? Whoa! She has upped her game and awed the experts in the process, once again proving her brilliance.

It happened with an assist from Jenn. Every morning, Zinnia walks over to the cat tree, leans over the first tier and starts to grunt as her eyes water. She huffs and puffs until she has (in the words of our ecstatic birthing teacher) "left us a little present."

This morning, however, was different. We threw caution to the wind and let Z. run around the house bare naked. Perhaps three time over a ten minute period she scampered over to the potty to pee. 

 “Hey," Jenn said. "Lets try putting the potty by the cat tree. Maybe she’ll use it this time when it's time for her to poo.”

I brought it over, and minutes later Zinnia sat on it, but her butt was hanging over the edge, which meant any feces would land smack dab on our lovely terrazzo tile floor. 

“No, sweetie," I coached, "scoot up a bit. Yeah, that’s it. There you go. Now do this.” I started to make ungodly grunting sounds to simulate for Z. what we were aiming for.  A moment later, Zinnia rose unceremoniously and toddled toward the bedroom to do ... whatever was next. I walked over, and peered down. Hallelujah!!! 

Ladies and gentleman, please, lets give it up for the brilliantest baby in the west.

A Little of This, A Little of That, and a Fond Semi-Farewell

An unknowable fear, a destructive pestilence has overcome the Bender-Luki household. I refer not to the croup that Zinnia has recently recovered from after two visits to the After Hours ped. clinic; nor am I alluding to Jenn's ongoing sore throat and and aching body due to going on 6 nights of constantly interrupted sleep with Zin-Zin, who rarely slept for more than 30 minute straight; I am not even talking about our kitty Honey's constant mewing for wet cat food every time I enter the kitchen, a sound that has become so grating to me that it caused me to (attention PETA) allegedly pour a third of a cup of water on her just to get her to go away.

No, what I refer to is much more insidious. Jenn and I have given into the seductive muse of plopping our daughter in front of a movie for a few minutes each day ... alright, up to an hour ... okay, sometimes the entire film--for a modicum of uninterrupted peace.  Z. stares at the computer screen from the comfort of her counter top chair with the concentrated focus of a baby zombie. If I come home from a long day at work and a film is on, she barely looks up, maybe a quick glance (Oh, hi) before returning to the movie. Sometimes I lean my head over so my face is directly in front of hers.

"No, really Zinnia," I say. "No need to get up. It is merely I--the person who is half responsible for bringing you into the world, freshly returned from seeing 12 clients today so you can enjoy--"

 At such times, she simply cranes her head a little farther over so her zombie eyes miss none of the action. I find this quite disturbing even while I gratefully welcome the respite.

But what is Z watching that has her so in its thrall? Zinnie loves, absolutely LOVES to zone out to the film about a master swordsman--er, swordskitty--who made a brief appearance in Shrek II.  I am talking, of course (and please read in your sexiest Antonio Banderas voice) about the kitty known by many names: Chupacabra, The Furry Lover, Frisky Two Times, The Ginger Hit Man, but he is best known as Puss ... (dramatic pause) ... In Boots!!! (Spanish: "Gato con Botas"). Z. loves almost every thing about this film, save for the part where Puss is thrown into prison. Before he is tossed in the clink, the prison guard arches an eyebrow and confiscates Puss's cat nip.

"Hee, hee," he says coughing uncomfortably into his paw. "It is for my glacoma."

The Furry Lover ends up sharing a cell with Jack (as in "the Beanstalk"), now an old, bearded letch who hoots and catcalls as he watches Puss lick one of his paws.

Z's favorite part (and ours) is Frisky Two Times' Tuesday Night Dance fight with a mysterious masked kitty whom Puss first believes to be his arch rival, but finds out later she really his (spoiler alert) female love interest!!!

Jenn and/or I have seen this movie no less than 20-30 times, and can recite most of the lines by heart.

I smell something ... familiar, something ... dangerous, something ... breakfasty.
But I don't have any baby muffins!
Show him the golden eggs.
When we go our separate ways, maybe we can go our separate ways ... together.

I am not proud that we plop our daughter down in front of a screen, but not terribly embarrassed or concerned either. It is a nice respite from the reality of a being who needs one's attention during nearly every waking moment. We will cut her off and regulate as we go along. Or she will do it herself, as she did tonight by giving me the "All done" American Sign Language sign to indicate she was ready to get down and play. Good girl.

*     *     *

Below, I have taken the liberty of posting a few more photos, as well a brief excerpt from an unfinished novel (two and a half years and counting), and what I consider to be a promising start, or at least a promising idea, for another novel. I hope, of course, that by shining the glaring light of public attention onto my unfinished masterpieces, I will be sparked into, at long last, working past my writer's block and finally complete the suckers.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the reader(s) for the time and energy you put into reading any and/or all of this blog. I think fondly of these 6o+ plus entries as my Blue Period, (blue, of course, connoting the color of the line that appears on Z's diaper when they are soaked). I feel a need to expand my repertoire to include other topics ... or perhaps no topics at all. For the time being, i have run out of things to say. Famous last words, I know, but true for now.

In any event, here ya go:

Zinnia in Puss in Boots buckler hat getting braced for battle.

Zinnie laughing, not, as it would appear, from being tickled by her papa's chest hair.

A father's love.

Jenny-Wenny focusing on writing a card.  

(Note to reader: She loves being called Jenny-Wenny.)

Exhausted, heartfelt, loving mother.
This followed caring for a sick baby and then dealing with her own bout of the crud.

Papa watching Puss-in-Boots with Zin-Zin (left) on her little pink bench.

Bye for now.

Intro to (working title) "Saints and Psychopaths."

Baruch Hashem, I have been instructed by the Heavenly Father to write down my story
for the benefit of all beings. He has informed me through my meditations that my time
left on earth will be limited in nature, but that there will be many, many beings that will
gain from my experiences. When the Father says frog, the question isn't whether to jump,
but only how high. He wants me to write, so I write. I write to you, dear reader, with
instructions for your awakening and aggrandizement. Read 'em, my friends, but do not
weep. Your day will come…if it hasn't already.
I was born with pure awareness, Baruch Hashem, an already conscious intellect in the
tender body of a baby, third eye wide open and winking at the Universe even while the
drool from my tiny lips coated the nipple of my mother's bosom. My senses were
limited by my earthly age, but my heart and mind were already singing the praises of
human kind, blessing the nurses in the maternity ward with each glance, every coo, my
very farts a sacred breeze for humanity to drink deep. Think about it, dear reader—to
have the consciousness of a fully developed, highly spiritual avatar contained in the
limited mobility of a baby's body. Ba-lech, I say. Ba-lech Hashem.
My father—Morty Rosenblatt (May his soul be perpetually fed on the freshest of lox
and the smoothest cream cheese)—owned and ran a Laundromat/dry cleaners called
"Morty's Kosher Cleaning." He was short, balding, and pudgy, and with a constant smile
always dancing across the canvass of his overly round face. He had a penchant for
leisurewear and a keen interest in mystical texts, baseball, and dancing. To look at him,
one wouldn't be able to tell that this short, stocky, balding Jew could cut a mean rug, but
3 nights a week Morty could be found at one of several of the local dance studios dancing
ballroom, swing, and salsa, and even became respectable at Hip-Hop. The kids did not
know what to make of this pudgy middle-aged man who came to their class full on in
baggy pants, an Iverson jersey, and a huge Jewish Chai necklace flipping and flapping
around as he angrily gesticulated around the floor. He told the kids to call him, "Ram
Shackle," but he sensed he made them uncomfortable and dropped out so they could
enjoy themselves.
Baruch Hashem, Morty met my mother, Davidka (may her hips be graced with perpetual
slimness) at one of the larger swing dance clubs in the city. At the time her name was
Parker Wainright Tisdale. She was wearing a floral pattern, mid-length blond hair that
curled upwards at her shoulder, and stood half-a-head above the circle of friends in whose
center she was standing. From what Morty could see, she had a striking figure, an easy
laugh, and an a lively glimmer in her eye. Elegance! Elegance is what she had. A natural,
effortless grace and a surety to her eye that belied quiet amusement and an excited interest
in life. She had that…that something.
Morty looked on as she turned down a number of requests to dance with a mirthful smile,
and she continued to watch the other dancers while her girlfriends tittered away. She was
all of 20 years-old and in the school of education at CMU. Morty knew there was no
earthly reason why she should say yes to his invitation and therefore, he had nothing to
lose. He approached the flock and cleared his throat. All conversation stopped, and the
girls turned to him in amused judgment. He tilted his head back slightly to look into my
mother's face and smiled a warm and completely unguarded smile. He reached out a
pudgy hand towards her without saying a word, and under the shocked, frozen smirks of
the gaggle of girls, and without so much as speaking a word, she took it. The two were
inseparable for the rest of the night, my father smoothly, strongly leading this goddess
around the floor while he, with great skill, avoided poking her impressive bosom with his
chin. They danced as if they had been together for life times, which Baruch Hashem, the
Father (May His Glory be a constant pebble in the shoes of the wicked) has informed me
is actually the case.
Ah, Hashem Baruch, it is impossible to say how these things happen except but for
God's grace. One can go back a number of generations and track how this person met that
person, how a friend of a friend introduced a certain boy to a certain girl which in turn led
to a blossoming of love, a burst of sex, sperm crashing against ovum--an in utero microdrama--
wiggling, waggling, until one out of millions finally penetrates forming … the next
generation. It seems so unlikely that any of us exist, there can be only one explanation:
The Father wills it, The Mother wills it, He/She/They will it, and the already stunning
and luminescent soul within the baby wills it too.
My mother and father, much against the desire of both families, were married within 6
months, which is how long it took for mother to finish her conversion classes, change her
name, and immerse herself into the cold, sacred waters of the mikvah. For love, for love,
aaahhhh, Baruch Hashem, we do it all for love.

Hell On Earth

Prologue

Two hundred fifty billion eons ago, God created boredom. He was bored, in other words, as He had been His own best company since time immemorial. Until recently this had been enough, but since time was an illusion and a man-made construct, it meant that God had always been alone.

Universes rose and fell. Galactic civilizations blipped into existence and just as quickly perished and were forgotten. Yet even the greatest of these empires realized they were not separate from God's eminence and thus existed only to reflect His glory. In that respect, God wasn't the only one who knew boredom.

It wasn't that He didn't enjoy being the Creator of All—He loved it. But, then again, He had no choice. He loved all things equally and filled every crevice, every corner, every aspect of the universe with His loving presence. Even God’s own boredom He loved with ecstatic, exquisite unconditionality. To have even a single drop of God in one’s being was to overflow with His presence, and everything in existence had at least one drop. Sometimes two.

Of late, however, the Creator was feeling a little unchallenged, so He came up with a game. He withdrew a part of Himself from existence, in essence pulling back the un-pull-backable, in order to create a spiritual vacuum to allow for the illusion of separateness to blossom. And into one tiny, insignificant corner of this vacuum, He inserted a planet—Earth—and populated it with human beings and an assortment of other living things.

And God saw it was good, or at least pretty damned amusing.

Yet before long, humanity, apparently intent on creating vast hellish realms both inside and outside their own minds, had turned everything it came into contact with quite to crap. In a mere twenty millennium, human beings went from being hairy, long-armed, hunch-backed apes to jealous, warmongering, greedy, upright apes.

It became clear to God that moral turpitude was part-and-parcel of the human condition, and though it was literally impossible to shock or surprise the Omniscient Creator of All, if such a thing were possible, He might have cocked His eyebrow an atom or two to learn of the seemingly bottomless human capacity for flagellating behavior.

For His part, God found His children infinitely adorable, and since He so loved them, the Creator felt obliged to accommodate their wishes. Thus, He created Lucifer to send down to Earth specifically to gum up the works. He did this because it had become apparent that His most beloved creations had a deep-seated need to punish both themselves and each other. And if God’s children wanted a place where sinners would suffer eternal torment, then so be it. He loved them that much.

The first Lucifer started his career as an angel named Murray. He had been an archangel and humble servant of God since the beginning of time. When Murray descended to take his seat on the dark throne, he was, contrary to an abundance of topside mythology, merely following orders.

At the time, angels had no free will or sense of separation from the Father and were completely entwined with His will. So when God asked Murray to go down to open up Hell (". . .and spare no expense!"), the angel threw himself at the foot of God's seat and wailed in protest,  and threw himself at the foot of God's seat, pounding his head on the cool white marble floor.

The Creator, wondering if he noticeding several molecules of hesitation in the archangel demeanor, decided to investigate.

"Murray," God thundered compassionately, "I sense something is wrong. What is it, my son?"

"I don't want to go,” he cried Murray. “What about Michael? He's not busy. Why not send him down? And what about—"

"The choice is not yours," God chided lovingly, “but I tell you what . . ."

And with those words, the first Lucifer found himself basking in the sun of free will.

“Well," said the angel, rising from the ground and removing a bit of lint from his lapel. “Guess I'll be off."

"I want you to be very tempting, Murray."

"Oh, don't you worry," the angel said with a mischievous glimmer.

"And don't forget to make those punishments hurt. This seems very important to them. Especially the Catholics."

"Consider it done," the angel said.

“From now on you shall be known as Lucifer.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Murray said, inspecting his nails.

"Write me me," God said in a worried, parental tone.

The angel rolled his eyes.

"Just kidding. Let me know if there's anything you need."

"Well,” said the newly crowned Lucifer looking at God from the corners of his eyes, “there is one little thing,"

"Name it, my son."

"I want godlike powers to create the kind of hell you would be proud of. Give me the ability to conjure up demons, minotaurs, medusas, and anything else I damn well please so I can torment and tempt your creations into committing the most malevolent, perverted, heinous acts imaginable. "

"Yours. Anything else?"

"Well, since you askSay," said Lucifer, raking a long fingernail across one of the claw feet of God's diamond throne. "This sure is a nice chair you've got here. Would you mind terribly

if I—"

And in a flash, down he went.