those teeth

For five years we brushed those teeth, twice a day, often for whole seconds at a time. Five years – almost her whole life – we made her drink milk – made her, and when she asked why she had to drink milk, I would tap my front teeth and say the same thing – “gives you strong choppers.” And then one Friday in August, she misses a monkey bar at camp, and dives face-first to the ground below – teeth-first, really – and Sarah gets a phone call, and the dentist sends them to the surgeon, and the nitrous oxide is produced, and those teeth, the ones we scrubbed so faithfully, the ones she applied to corn and toast and broccoli and string cheese, to say nothing of the sugar donuts she’d had for breakfast that very day, those teeth are suddenly in a tiny plastic sleeve, handed off to Mom on her way back home to summon the tooth fairy. 

And for all the concern, for all the furrowed brows on all the foreheads of parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends and neighbors, for all the pitying clucks she gets from everyone who hears the story, she cannot thtop thmiling, thowing off what’th no longer there and crowing about the lucre under her pillow.

Two bucks a pop. Seemed like a good place to start.  

   

 

booger wonderland

Night before last. Max is in bed. I’m reading a story, and something green and fantastic emerges from his nose. I grab it – because parenting is super glamorous and I am its most glamorous practitioner – and walk to the bathroom to put it into a tissue and wash my hands. Max gets angry to the point of tears. He wanted me to put it on his hand so that he could put it on the tissue.

I bet you’ve never had that argument. I bet that’s a brand-new argument.

 

 

good for her

They only go half day in kindergarten, which means that they don’t have a proper lunch period, which means that they don’t have a proper lunch at all. At the wrap-around daycare, they do a hot lunch if you give them three dollars, which I hate doing, no matter how much Mia begs, because, well, it’s generally crap. Three dollars worth of crap. 

Instead, I pack a bag for Mia — peanut butter on wheat, carrots, some fruit, maybe some Wheat Thins or Fig Newtons or Ritz Bitz, and maybe a hard-boiled egg. She usually brings the carrots back intact, as if she’s not sure they’re food. Which maybe she’s not.

Today, though, is open house, so she went early and got home early. Short of time and ready for the long weekend, I slid three folded ones into Mia’s hoodie pocket and waited for the squeal and the jump, both of which came as expected. Mia ran to school, the extra exercise perhaps offsetting the lack of nutrition to come.

Today is also Christina’s birthday, which means that the kids got an extra treat. Chips, Mia told me. Christina’s mom had brought chips, and cupcakes, and strawberries for the class, which Mia referred to as “lunch.” Later, after class but before I picked her up, Mia ate three dollars worth of Pizza Bites, along with a chocolate bar and animal crackers.

Tonight’s menu: steamed broccoli with a side of multivitamins.

Update: Steamed broccoli, apple slices, brown rice, sweet potatoes (with cinnamon), and… fish sticks. Both kids joined the clean plate club. Sez Max: “Daddy, you made a dish delish.” I am redeemed.

 

Also: tattoos!

 

 

forgive me father, for i have slacked

There’s just so much I haven’t written. I want to, but I haven’t, and I probably won’t, so this will have to suffice.

I never wrote about Lausanne. I never wrote about the cross-country drive we took in our last week in Switzerland, a drive prompted by Mia’s need to see – and Sarah’s need to show Mia – one last real live castle. So we drove to Lausanne, and then down through Montreaux to Vevey and beyond, to Chateau de Chillon, the 800-year-old castle set hard on Lake Geneva. The castle is gorgeous, as were Sarah’s stories, complete and fabricated memories of where the princesses stood, where they danced, where they slept, where they greeted their people.

The kids loved it, especially Mia, but neither of them loved Chillion as much as they loved Broc, which is where the chocolate is made. That’s why we went there, to see the chocolate get made, and to smell the city, and we did both, and then they left us alone in a room with bad lighting and about 50 pounds of fresh chocolate, with and without cream, and with and without nougat, and with and without milk.

When we left, Mia jumped up and down in the parking lot and told us, “This is the best day of my whole life!” and at five, she may be right.

***

I never wrote about the trip to the wild animal park, a couple weeks earlier, with JY and the kids. It’s a zoo with no walls, and the deer and whatnot roam the same pathways you do without pause, as if they were expecting you. Which of course they were, because you’re the people with the food, and you’re there every day. Max fed a ram, and the ram looked Max in the eye, and I watched the ram. Very closely.

On the way to the park, JY noticed the kids’ shorts and sandals and stared at me, agog, wondering aloud at my foolhardiness. That’s when it occurred to me: we were on our way to a wild animal park. In the rolling, wooded hills. On a hot day. In the spring. Which is high tick season. In maybe the tickiest region on the planet.

I turned and looked at Auxane and Andrielle. Long pants. Closed shoes. And socks…socks pulled over the pant legs.

We didn’t bring home any ticks that day fortunately. But I did get a World’s Greatest Dad trophy.

***

I never wrote about the Monday before we left, after the packers came and took everything, when we walked down to the lake and rented a paddleboat. I’d been waiting all winter for that, and I’ll miss it all summer. Not the paddleboat, per se, but the lake – the chance to do something with it besides fattening its duck population. Sarah sat in the back to make sure Max didn’t take up swimming, and Mia and I sat in front and paddled, and from our lazy vantage point, we watched the paragliders spin in endless circles above our house.

***

Did I write…? No, I never did. I never wrote about Mia’s birthday party. We invited everyone in her class, about a dozen 5-year-olds, maybe more. We invited siblings, too. We even invited the parents to drop off their 5-year-olds and their 5-year-olds’ siblings and just go shopping. And then we gave the kids sweets. And we went to the schoolyard across the street for a treasure hunt, and to slide the slide and spin on the giant rope spinner. There’s a reason I didn’t write about that party. I’m still too tired to write about that party.

***

I didn’t write yet about the marathon we’re running. We’re doing it to honor Leanne, and we’re doing it to raise money for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society, and if you want to help us out, we’d be thrilled.

***

I never wrote about the morning of our flight home, when Max walked up the stairs with a huge smile, his eyes wide and his eyebrows high. “Daddy!” he shouted. “Daddy, Mommy said we can go on the airplane!”

“For real?” I asked. “Today?”

“Yeah!” he said, still shouting. “And it’s so big!”

***

I know I didn’t write about Noel. He’s our neighbor, and he may be the Greatest Neighbor Ever. I know he’s mine.

While we were gone, the couple next door cared for our plants, watched over the house, and took out our trash, and they were wonderful.

While we were gone, Noel came over every day and
• opened the sliders to get some air circulating
• flushed all the toilets
• opened all the faucets
• flipped lights on and off at different hours
• checked the sprinklers to make sure they weren’t geysers
• occasionally opened the doors to the cars to air them out
• opened and shut the refrigerator doors a couple times to air out the empty fridge.

Oh, and on Sundays? He raced the next-door neighbors over to our house for the privilege of taking out the trash.

I know you wish you had a Noel.

***

I never wrote about the 24-hour milk barn.

***

I never wrote about two days at Disneyland for Mia’s 5th birthday, about the singles line that lets me run through the roller coaster twice while Sarah takes the kids on a single spin around the Ferris Wheel. I never wrote about the lunch with the Disney Princesses at Ariel’s Grotto, about the fact that we were chosen from tens of families to be the royal family, and to announce the presence of the princesses to the whole restaurant. I think we were chosen because we were more sophisticated than all those other rubes, but it could also have been random.

I didn’t write about the button Mia got for being a birthday girl, or about the utter elation that followed throughout the day as stranger after stranger wished her a wonderful birthday and asked how old she was. Honest to a fault, she explained carefully that she was four, but that her birthday was on Monday, and that she would be five years old then. Stranger after stranger nodded, and moved on.

***

And I never wrote about Memorial Day weekend, when we walked to the Vons with the kids in a little red wagon. We removed the kids and filled the wagon with groceries – probably 40 pounds of groceries, maybe more – and started walking home in the heat, but Max insisted that the wagon was his to pull. Never mind that the whole contraption surely weighed more than him. He grabbed the handle behind him, put his head down, and leaned into the thing, starting slowly and getting a head of steam and pulling the wagon, all told, at least 70 percent of the way home. At least – I tried to help speed things along, but he threw a fit. The Max wants what the Max wants.

Stubborn kid, right?

That night, we cooked S’mores in the microwave and made brats on the barbecue and slept in the backyard. Sarah and I had a proper tent. Mia had her Barbie castle. And Max slept in the giant ladybug. The dew made us wet, and the air made us cold. And the ground made us sore.

Well, it made me sore, anyway.

***

Wow. That was a long time coming.

 

ahem

Max called out to me the other night in that way he sometimes does, that insistent, impatient, “DADA!” that sounds like a spoiled heiress barking at a hapless underling. “DADA,” he shouts, or sometimes “MAMA,” and then he sits up in bed, and he waits.

Most of the time he doesn’t actually need anything when he does this. Sometimes he asks me to adjust his blanket or refill his water or find his coyote, but mostly I think he wants to be sure of me, to know that out there in the dark, past the sound of his sister’s snoring, the sentry is still on duty.

That was the case the other night. “DADA!” he barked, and when I sat next to him on the bed, he took a drink of water, let out a small cough, flopped back onto his pillow, and fell back to sleep.

I lingered for a moment, waiting for another cough, but none came. It had been a nothing, a throat-clearing after the water, a completely benign thing. He’s not sick, and he’s not getting sick. But it got my head spinning.

For the last six months, a cough has meant one of two things: he’s getting sick, or he’s not getting sick. That’s it. And if he gets sick, big deal – it means some scrambled eggs for breakfast, a little more water to drink, maybe some television and couch-napping and early to bed. It means he stays with me, where he would have been anyway, and we ride it out. Same with Mia – in February, her temperature hit 104, and the only concern we had was that her temperature was at 104.

That sounds obvious. It’s not.

In a week we’ll be back home and things will change. When we’re at home, and I’m at school and Sarah’s at work, then a cough, even one cough, means so much more. If Max is sick, it means keeping him home, which means keeping Sarah home, or maybe getting Mom or Papi to drive out to Westlake by half-past seven to watch him, because I’ve got class and Sarah’s got an early morning meeting. It may mean an appointment with the doctor, and that means even more parent-juggling, and it may mean he needs antibiotics, and it definitely means we have to figure something out for tomorrow, because if he’s got a fever, they won’t let him back into class until he’s free of it for 24 hours. And oh yeah, whatever it is, whatever’s going on with him, we’re pretty sure Mia’s going to get it in three days, because that’s how it works, and this’ll all start over again. If we’re lucky, we’ll avoid it ourselves, but just to be safe I’m drinking a gallon of water a day.

You see? This is how a cough turns into an ulcer.

People keep asking if I’m going to miss Switzerland, and there’s no question I will. I’ll miss the afternoons on the playground chatting with JY and the other moms. I’ll miss the cows up the street and the sheep down the street and the 24-hour milk barn, which I’ll get to, I swear. I’ll miss the lake and the hills and certainly the friends we’ve made. I’ll miss the coffee, and the chocolate, and the cheese. Especially the cheese.

I’ll even miss days like yesterday, when JY and Max and I drove to Alsace Lorraine for lunch – a two-hour ride each way. The drive was beautiful and the weather was perfect and the villages, Eguisheim and Colmar, were stunning, straight out of National Geographic. In fact, everything was lovely until I realized that I’d left my backpack at the restaurant, the backpack that contained one apple, a travel-pack of wipes, some plastic baggies…and my and Max’s passports. Since we were almost back in Zug by the time I figured out what I’d done, we ended up having Sarah watch all four kids at our apartment (Auxane and Andrielle’s mom, Justine, is out of town on business) while JY and I drove back to Alsace to get the bag, two hours there, two hours back. The day started at 9 am and ended past midnight and it involved no small amount of worry and stress, but you know what? It also involved a lovely trip to an absolutely beautiful part of the world with a good friend and a handsome little boy. Two trips, in fact.

I’ll miss that. But I’ll miss stress-free coughs even more. I like what we’ve got here. Sentry duty is so much easier when the stakes are low.