Thumbs Down

I'm obsessed with thumbs. 

I can't stop worrying about my son's thumbs.

Especially his right one. It refuses to listen to me. It's stubborn and willful, defiant in it's rigid deformity. Every day and every morning, I take those thumbs, especially that right one and I hold it up to my lips and I kiss it. 

I whisper to the air around it, trying to coax it out of it's tightly held position and beg it to just open up. 

"Come on little piggy, you know you want to come to this market," I'll say. Right before stretching it wide open and holding my breath.

Did I break it?

Oh my god, I just broke my kid's thumb.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

Oh wait. No. Nope. Not broken.

Damn it. It was almost there. 

STOP CLUTCHING THE THUMB.

And then the circle repeats itself. Everyday. 

I wrestle those thumbs into neoprene and metal splints. I have nightmares about those thumbs. 

Maybe it's not about my son's thumbs. Not really. Not any more than it is about his feet that are so rigid we can no longer get them in splints. Or hips so tight they dislocate themselves with a diaper change.

Those thumbs, those contorted disfigured little pieces of bone and tissue represent it all. More. Everything. 

My inability to control his health, his future. His siblings stubborn insistence on growing older and the fact that soon, too soon, my son will be raised in a household without any big brothers or sisters around to pester or annoy. Time slips by and I can't keep up or hold on. Everything is changing. Nothing ever changes.

Those thumbs are my dreams refusing to be crowbarred into reality and yet declining to evaporate into the ether of forgotten and lost hopes.

Two little difficult digits that refuse to bend the way I want them to, the way Knox needs them to. Instead they twist and grow, following their own inclinations and desires.

I'm powerless to reverse and prevent the damage, no matter how many times I try and force them into conformity.

Those thumbs, his sweet little thumbs are him. They are his siblings. They are me.

I'm weary from worrying about the thumbs.

I need a thumb-cation.

Swiping

It has been weeks since I did anything remotely resembling housework around our home. One plague-like infection after another rendered me useless for most of the past month. While the teens kept the house from falling into a state of slovenly disrepair, there were things they couldn't do.

Like grocery shop, file this year's taxes or sort through and file the mountain of paperwork I've ignored for the better part of the year all the while hoping it would just spontaneously catch fire so as I wouldn't have to deal with it. 

So I spent this past weekend doing all the things I've put off for far too long.

I went grocery shopping. In the city. On a Saturday afternoon. Because I am a masochist who enjoys fighting angry coupon clippers for the last pack of discounted toilet paper and spending hours standing in unmoving grocery lines.

My kids about wept with gratitude as they hauled in grocery bag after grocery bag of food supplies. 

"Ketchup! You bought us ketchup! I thought only rich people had over-processed tomato condiments! It's a miracle!"

"Bananas! We have BANANAS. I forgot bananas even existed!"

"THERE IS TOILET PAPER AND IT IS NOT THE SCRATCHY KIND!!"

Don't even ask me how they reacted when they realized I bought ice cream. Let's just say, my place as the world's greatest mother hall of fame is guaranteed for as long as the frozen treats and fresh produce last.

But I didn't just grocery shop this weekend. No. I cleaned a bathroom, attended a dance recital, folded laundry, helped Nash with his creative writing assignment, taught my daughter how to write her first cover letter so she could apply for a fancy internship thingamajig AND filed a year's worth of paperwork that had been sitting on my kitchen table, mocking me, for weeks now.

I know, I'm totally bragging. You are all awed and inspired by both my exciting life and unparalleled work ethic.

If only I had known just how truly fascinating my life would one day become. Sigh.

This weekend wasn't a complete wash, however.

While I was filing old tax returns and bank statements and medical reports, my kids wandered into my office (and by office I mean my itsy bitsy teeny tiny bedroom closet where I keep our filing cabinet, hidden beneath dusty dresses and a shiny burgundy suit my husband refuses to let me throw out) to ask me a question.

"Holy cow Mom. Enough papers!" Ken exclaimed as she saw the mess I had scattered about me as I ripped apart the filing cabinet.

"Thanks Tips. I hadn't noticed," I huffed as I tossed another stack of old receipts into the pile headed for the paper shredder.

"Wait, what is this?" Ken asked as she bent down to pick up a small rectangular piece of faded paper.

"What? Oh, that? That's an old credit card receipt."

"But why is it so odd looking?" She held it like it was contaminated and examined it as though it contained the answer to cold fusion.

"It's a swiper receipt. It's how they used to do credit cards."

"A SWIPER?" 

That's when I realized she had zero idea of what I was talking about.

"Ya, back in the day retailers had to make carbon copies of receipts, and there was no such thing as automatic approvals. If you were spending over a certain amount on your credit card the cashier had to pick up a phone, dial the bank and make sure you were authorized to spend that much. Lines were long and shoppers were grumpy. It was about as much fun as getting your teeth cleaned."

"Woah. How did everyone survive like that? It's so inconvenient," she asked EARNESTLY. Like the spoiled, technologically advanced 16-year old she is.

"It's a mystery, kid."

Ken dropped the old credit card receipt and it floated to the ground, another flake of history ready to be shredded with my past. 

I picked up the credit card receipt and looked at the date. 2002. 

I marveled at how much and how little the world has changed in eleven short years. Sure our technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. I can only marvel at what our world will look like in another eleven years.

But as much as that has changed, there will always be parent sitting in his or her closet, trying to organize a mountain of papers while their kid reminds them how obsolete and old they've become.

Thank God she never noticed my very first cell phone I had in the trash pile, buried underneath all the papers. If she saw that old brick, she'd never stop pestering me with questions about what life was like before the wheel was invented.

Bad Touch

I remember the afternoon I first told my parents I had a boyfriend. A real boyfriend, not just some celebrity boyfriend who lived in my imagination, inspired by the pictures I tore out of the latest copy of Teen Beat and tacked to my bedroom walls.

Here's looking at you River Phoenix, may you rest in peace.

I was fifteen years old and swoony over a big blue-eyed blonde boy named Bruce. (I always did have a weakness for alliteration.) I was spending the week with my best friend, who just so happened to be Bruce's cousin and I was excited to tell my folks all about my new beau.

In my teenaged exuberance, I hadn't stopped to take into account how my parents, most specifically my father, would feel about their daughter entering the dating world. I ignorantly thought they'd be as excited as I was. Because! Hearts! Flowers! True Love! Forever!

Since the boy who held my affection happened to be my father's best friend's youngest son, a boy my family had known his entire life, I naturally assumed there would be much praise and congratulations bestowed when I told my parents my wonderful news.

I stood, holding the telephone to my ear, grinning from ear to ear, staring out upon the same fields my father had stared at when he was my age, and waited for one of my parents to answer the ringing phone.

My dad picked up.

I launched into my excited tale, words shot like rapid-fire bullets into his ear, as tiny invisible hearts swirled above my head. 

My dad? He made about as much noise as a rock does as it sits in a driveway. I barely noticed as I chattered on. Innocent and so, so stupid. 

When I finally managed to stop long enough to inhale, my dad asked a question I had not expected:

"Why him? What's so special about him?"

You could say familiarity had bred contempt. You could say my father had maybe hoped I'd date a city slicker instead of the son of his oldest friend. You could even say I had probably shocked him into not really knowing what else to say. Any of this could be true. Perhaps all of it was. 

All I knew was it wasn't the reaction I was expecting. I didn't know how to answer; so shocked and stunned was I by his question.

I muttered something completely inelegant and trite, as were most of the things that came out of my mouth at that age tended to be and I staggered under the weight of my dad's obvious disapproval.

My love bubble had burst. Thanks Dad.

I had forgotten that conversation with my father, and the words he said. I had forgotten his reaction and how, for one second, it made me question everything I had been feeling towards the boy I later ended up marrying.

That conversation, that memory, had long been relegated to the dustiest corners of my brain, eroding a little further with each day that passed. 

And then my daughter started dating a boy she has known for most of her life, the son of a man my husband has known for much of his life. Suddenly, memories I didn't remember I had have all come flooding back to center stage. 

Nostalgia has washed over me, bathing me in the past, reminding me that the innocence I see upon my daughter's face was once mirrored on my own.

Is it wrong that I covet the boyfriend's truck? Complete with haybale for traction?

I never fully realized how soothing nostalgia is as a parental balm. It's probably the only thing that is keeping me from walking around screaming "Bad touch! Bad touch!" every time I see my daughter's boyfriend so much as look at my daughter.

(Okay, so I may have already yelled 'bad touch!' once or twice at them, but it was all in good fun. Maybe.)

But what I've come to realize as my daughter starts to explore her dating world, is that nostalgia isn't such a soothing balm for Bruce. It is more like Tiger's balm. The nostalgia and memories, they burn. Or maybe it is just that daddies are predisposed to growling about their daughter's boyfriends, regardless of how awesome those boyfriends may be.

I am fully enjoying watching my husband navigate this minefield my daughter has so thoughtfully lured him into. It's given me insight into my own father's reactions all those years ago. Because yes, I really did marry my father.

My husband hasn't stopped twitching in weeks. And these two kids haven't even been on a real, un-chaperoned date as of yet. 

If and when that finally happens? Well, I can't guarantee I won't be twitching right along with Bruce. Probably while reminding him that it was all our "bad touches" that lead us to this moment to begin with.

Heaven help us all.