Hike!

It is like waiting on the other side of a busy street for the boys to cross, to come to me. Looking left and right, frantically waiting for them to negotiate the speed and distance of oncoming traffic, to run, walk or wait. I am straining to see them through the crowd, never really watching the game itself only searching for their jersey numbers. I often yell out and wring my hands. I jump up and shout before I know I have left my chair.

"Hit someone!" the mother next to me shouts. These are words I will not utter at these grueling tackle football games.

"C'mon boys get them! Knock someone down!" another direction from parents near me.

I would shout, "Wait, wait, wait! Do you know long I labored with him? Do you know how big he was?" Or more importantly, "Time out! Spare his brain. He is so smart and sweet and kind."

But I don't. I yell, "Ooh! Uh! Ok, ok, ok," more for me than them.

I watch the bottom of each pile to see if it is one of my sons. If a coach runs down field to help an injured player I pray until I see them both stand.

I don't love this game. I love that they feel a part of a team: an important piece to something bigger than them. There is an appreciation for the mentoring there for one who is a "young heavy" and otherwise quiet and shy. The teenager who was once the young heavy is now the leader and rolemodel for those on his team. He carries himself differently when wearing his jersey. There is an acceptance that this is just another testerone laden activity I will never completely understand.

When this time of practice, games, laundry and worry over every ache and bruise is over, I know there will be an emptiness each fall. A place that is not filled by this football family of players and parents who have embraced my children in a way I was not prepared for. The name on the back of their jerseys represent what they do on the field and off. They have an audience of adults and peers that expect a lot and that has made me proud.

But cannot keep me in my seat. Or my hands still.

Just Buzz

Jack. Russell. Terrier. Notorious. Known for their tenacity and intelligence. A breed chosen by my husband for their size, looks and charm. I researched this pup as I do most things that require a decision. I read many things that just did not fit our lifestyle. I also wanted a dog big and intimidating. A boxer. A great dane. We lived in a condo. We both worked full time but opposite shifts.

Our Buzz was on a farm in Dixon literally standing on his litter mates. The mostly white alpha male. He had a broken coat like PBSs Wishbone and Frasier's Eddy. My husband chose his brother, much smaller, smooth coated brown and white. They were all equally adorable and spunky but this brother was aloof, as interested in the paper plate blowing in the wind as these new legs walking toward him. I wanted Buzz. I wanted the naughty puff of fur with the brown and black eye that ran around the others yipping and nipping them into puppy tag. He followed us on his little puppy legs and cocked his head to yip at us daring us to play too.

My husband lifted him over his head and asked if he wanted to go home with us. Buzz tried to bite his nose!

We returned two weeks later to bring him home.

At our condo he ran, yipped and nipped at us. He treated us like litter mates and lived up to all the warnings I'd read. We took him to puppy school, a special trainer and had him fixed. We crate trained him, walked him and rewarded him with biscuits. We had two boys to play with him and they all grew up together. Our house gave him a yard and a neighborhood to explore.

Buzz stayed spunky and naughty really until he turned fourteen last year. Then he became slower, more quiet and sleepy.

Although he could not see or hear he still followed me. Looked for me to get a biscuit. Slept on my legs, nosed my hands insisting I pet him. Waited for me to lift him onto his chair.

He watched me with those brown eyes even while we gave the go ahead to put him to sleep. No longer able to stand and walk on his own. His little body suddenly deceived him and was shutting down. The things he could not do were longer than those he could and he had lost his Buzzyness.

And we lost Buzz.

Now I am the one still looking for him. In the dark, in my bed, in the house suddenly too quiet and large.

Strike!

“You need a cold pack on your lips. You hurt yourself. It will make it feel better, I promise.”

“That won’t feel me better!"

“You can put this cold pack on your face or you can eat a Popsicle.”

“That is not the only choices!” Jeremy screams dropping to the floor in his customary tantrum.

“Ooh, we have a lot of Popsicles,” I purr. “Look, Mommy and Johnny are eating some,” I say shoving a red Popsicle into my older son’s mouth. John eyes me wearily, as if being forced to eat a Popsicle is a chore.

Jeremy waddles over disoriented from the tremendous whack to the head with a huge purple and bloodied upper lip. John and I chomp on our Popsicles trying not to look alarmed.

“I wanna ye-yo un,” he says reaching dangerously overhead into the freezer.

“Ok, ok back off there head injury. I’ll see if we have any yellow.”

His speech is slurred by his growing upper lip. There are no yellow, only red and purple.

“Jeremy, look here is a purple or a red one. Johnny has red, right John. Mmmm…” John peers from the kitchen chair with his eight year old enough look.

Well, at least it will help camouflage the bruise.

I sit him down on the chair to look at his lip and see if it
is bleeding where his teeth must have penetrated. There is a vertical bruise where the bat connected perfectly on his upper lip and tip of his nose. I wonder how many more near hits I’ll be granted before we end up in the emergency room for stitches.

At birth Jeremy had arrived loud and fearless. On an almost daily basis he has continued to be lucky. At only three he has done some crazy things that I can only hope are meant to toughen my resolve and strengthen me so that I am prepared for his teenage years.

He has run into closed glass doors, hit his head on the corners of everything from car doors to tables, run face first into walls rushing to get somewhere because he so rarely walks. He has jumped or fallen from most area playground equipment and chairs of restaurants. He has matching scars at the corner of each eye that everyone insists gives his face character, but I only see as permanent damage, notes taken on my inability to control this little man.

This latest addition to the head injury Hall of Fame was by far the most unexpected. Taking practice swings in our backyard behind me with his plastic Little Slugger he wound up repeatedly and pretended to hit homeruns. I reminded him again not to stand so close to me or he would get hit with my bat. With each reminder he would step back next to the plastic Fisher Price playhouse and wind up again. Impatiently waiting his turn.

A loud bang and howling scream made me drop my bat and sent John running. Jeremy had his mouth covered with his hands, blood seeping through his parted fingers. He was screaming with a pitch I’d never heard.

“It’s OK, OK, OK, OK,” I held him and patted his back trying to figure out how he had hurt himself so badly right behind us. But that was how it went. He was right behind me, next to me, within reach and I could never catch, stop, block or hold him enough to prevent injury.

John was Jeremy’s older brother and often narrator to his deeds. John had seen Jeremy raise the bat over his head and bring it down on the roof of the playhouse. It had hit so hard that it bounced straight back into his face. John suggested he will one day be an MIP, Most Injured Player.

With blood, snot, and red Popsicle now dripping onto his once white tee shirt and his upper lip so swollen it looked like a balloon sitting on a Popsicle stick, Jeremy asked, “Ca I vat now?”

John and I made eye contact and slowly shook our heads,“No.”

Buzzy-ness

So I called the vet. Admitted something is wrong or worse or over.

He fell down the stairs; barked into the air to come back into the house that was yards away and behind him; ran into the wall so hard he sneezed for several minutes. At night he panted and paced in circles through the bedroom, the master bathroom and back through the bedroom for hours. He has accidents constantly instead of sometimes.

But...

He woo hoos when I take out his leash. His whole body can still welcome me even if I have been in the same room and he just noticed me. I can still recognize pieces of him but not very often and he can rarely enjoy those moments.

When I bring him to the vet I wonder what he will think? I wonder what I will be able to admit? I wonder if he will come home?

Blankie

I wish blankie was here.

We had two.
Each boy loved one, held it until it was lint then dust, then sweet memories.
Cherished it like another life.
Blankie held secrets, magical in its ability to solve all woes, quiet and still sobs. Blankie with its sweet musty smell like summer and the pure bliss of satisfied toddler sighs.
The easy dreaming and jubilant grins it brought so easily to my boys makes me ache for that time again when tragedy was salved with fabric.
What is a teen blankie? What is it that can be held and cherished?
A note from a girl?
Another's hand?
What can heal the fissure of failure when strike outs become common place?
What can return the joy when friends disappoint and girlfriends evaporate?

Blankie I miss your magic.

Einstein

"Do you know what Einstein's most famous quote is?"

I was not aware he had a famous quote other than that crazy E=MC business and if my little Einstein explains that to me I will have to hire a tutor and pull him out of public school. "Nope," I so intelligently reply watching him in the rearview mirror with his face hidden by the cover of his 50 American Heroes book that the Easter bunny so cleverly found for him, unable to purchase any toys that would interest him anymore.

"The fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones."

"Huh." I digest this. Interesting. So Albert was an Einstein afterall. His mathematics did help to develop the very weapons that could wipe out humankind and this is his famous quote. So on the way to a haircut we discuss this. Nuclear warfare, intelligence, reducing the world to cavemen fighting with sticks and stones. It was an interesting ride. Just another fascinating conversation with my eight year old.

I do not have the courage to tell him that he has not qualified again for the gifted program at his school although he is repeatedly invited to be tested for it. He does amazingly well on state standardized tests yet cannot do well on the nonverbal portion of the Cogat test. So year after year his teachers are impressed with his vocabulary, wisdom and scores but that is not enough. They have never seen his journals of notes and projects. They have never watched him on the floor of his room reading his biographies or researching his latest interest. To them he is one student in a group of students who is quiet, shy and curious but will do his best no matter what is presented. He will conform.

I am going to ask them to stop testing him, to stop searching for the giftedness that is only revealed on their tests. Their constant wondering is taking away what is already there and making him doubt it himself.

"Did I make gifted?" he will ask me again in the fall. "No. They don't know it yet," I will answer holding his self-esteem gently in my hand.

Not their giftedness anyway.

Buzzy-ness

Buzz is a Jack Russel Terrier. Crazy, smart, loyal, yes but also nearly 15. He is losing his Buzzy-ness. The crazy is getting more pervasive than the smart. The loyal is there. He loves us just as much although he can hardly see or hear us.

He also loves the biscuits he seems to now live for. He knows they are in the pantry and he still runs to it after being outside, even if he has just had an "accident" on the floor. The pantry door is hit with his nose and he will sit or stand there until someone opens it and tosses him one. His catch has changed quite a bit. Once upon a time he jumped for it quite gracefully and ran around, woo wooing at us and shaking with joy. Now he frantically scours the floor, sometimes even diving into the tile trying to eat a shadow instead of a biscuit. I try to hand him the biscuit to avoid any damage to his snout but he cannot see well enough and often ends up snapping my fingers instead.

There are instances of the return of naughty Buzz and I laugh and clean up after the spunky old dog. Recently he took his Kong and dropped it into his water. It was full of peanut butter and biscuits which explains why it is stil his favorite. Dropping it into his water was a new trick. He usually ran up the stairs and dropped it down onto the tile floor to loosen the peanut butter. Clever, I know. Whining and looking into his bowl he looked guilty but also desperate, (see photo) as though asking me to please get it out. His attempts to get it out without the benefit of thumbs had created a small peanutty pond on the tile. I took it out and handed it to him and he promptly walked slowly up the stairs and dropped it down onto the tiled floor.

More and more there are hours he sleeps so soundly and still that we tap him just to be sure he is still with us. Buzz has rarely until this last year been still. It is true that a Jack Russel would rather run than walk and would rather howl and talk than sit obediently on your lap. He is a big dog in a a 23 pound package and he is slowly losing his Buzzy-ness, slowly leaving us. I try to wrap my head around this. Try to understand he will soon not be here but he takes up so much room for his size and personality that our house will be too large without him.