The Bruno Triple Throat Clear and Other Unfortunate Legacies

I wandered into a used clothing store yesterday in that aimless way that mothers sometimes enter stores where they have no interest in the products but just want to gain a feeling of exasperation from wedging a bulky bright red off-road stroller through narrow clothing-lined passageways and tight corners populated with old women burrowing through rayon blouses.

Halfway through my why-the-hell-am-I-in-here-and-how-will-I-ever-get out realization, a woman in the store sneezed. Not just any sneeze, but a deafening sonic boom aaaaaah-choo! that caused everyone in the place to recoil in shock. It was so sudden, and so terribly loud, it created what I indelicately like to refer to as a “tampon-expelling moment.”

Anyway, the gal’s apparently sent shock and awe through other shopper-packed stores because as some of the older patrons were still blanched by the event and readjusting their wigs, she made a brief and unembarrassed announcement.

“Sorry!” she called out. “Yes, I’m a loud sneezer. I inherited it from my grandfather.”

Okay, so who really cares about Grandpa’s sneezes? If I were her life coach I’d help her work up a better post-sneeze remark.

But the little episode did get me thinking about The Bruno Triple Throat Clear. It’s one of those divorce-able habits that are the patented (and only) approach the women in my family unconsciously (and constantly) use to clear their throats. It’s a kinda “mmm-mm-mmmm.” A peppy throaty trifecta that actually makes me miss my mother to even think about because it’s one of those little things that was just so her.

And, as it turns out–unfortunately for our spouses–is so my sisters and I too.

Of course, my annoying habit is one thing, but Mark ran into the room where I was the other day wild-eyed, as if he was about to report a family of rabid badgers had set up house in his boxer short drawer.

“Kate!” He bellowed right up in my face. “She just did The Triple Throat Clear!”

Of course, I could just smile coyly, thinking about how she sucks all the water out of her toothbrush after using it, then gives it two quick taps on the edge of the sink before putting it away.

“Oh. Really?” I eventually said. “Huh.”

Maybe some of the stuff my family does is easier to pick up on since there are four of us, and we’re all girls. That has to make it easier to detect our shared annoying habits, right?

Case in point. We were all just back in Rhode Island for my Dad’s 80th birthday extravaganza. I think it was after the party, later at home, when we were beaten down from excessive socializing, daytime alcohol consumption, and the sweet relief of having the shindig successful and behind us. I walked into the living room to see my sister Judy sprawled asleep on the leather couch, her left arm slung up over her face and her mouth gaping open. It was the exact stance I’d seen Ellen in on the blow-up mattress earlier that morning. And that night, in front of one Law and Order show or another, my father nodded off, head turned to one side, mouth agape. (He didn’t do the arm sling thing. We got that part from Mom.)

At this point in my life, I can tolerate the humiliation of knowing that every time I fall asleep on an airplane the flight attendants could set a cocktail napkin and bag of nuts in my open mouth. (The Bruno Flung Arm Sleeping Maneuver is thankfully too difficult to enact in a seated position.) What concerns me at this juncture is which shameful traits my little innocents will pick up from me. Which crosses of mine, as it were, they’ll have to bear.

Miss Paige has always been a star sleeper. (My genes, thank you very much.) But in the past few weeks she’s somehow realized that she can sit up in her crib and look around her room. Something she finds so fascinating–reviewing an unchanged space she sees every day–she now does it at the beginning of every nap. The problem is, tired as she may be, she hasn’t managed to make the connection that she has to lie down again in order to sleep.

So I’ve been having to go into her room and readjust her, gently pushing her shoulders down onto the mattress. At which point she looks up at me grateful and groggy, and dozes off nearly instantly.

The other day, she started in on the why-am-I-still-sitting-up-when-I-want-to-sleep-now? whine. (It’s amazing how you can categorize their different laments.) I was hoping that something in her brain would finally fire and she’d realize she could solve the problem herself. And a few minutes later, as if I’d willed it to be so, she was totally quiet. So I waited a bit, then cracked open her door to take a peek.

And there she was. In a seated position but pitched forward, totally face-planted into her blanket, and sound asleep.

Of course, like any sensible mother I didn’t dare move her for fear she’d wake up and her nap–and my cherished child-free time–would suddenly evaporate. So an hour or so later when she eventually came to, I went in to get her. Her face was pink and indented in the pattern of the lovely afghan that Aunt Terry knitted for her. But she was well rested nonetheless.

Well, she’s found a solution. Since that first ergonomic nightmare of a nap, she’s fallen asleep a few other times the same way. One of these days I’ll put a silencer on my camera shutter and take a picture of it. It seems wretchedly uncomfortable, poor dear, but at least I can say for sure, she didn’t get that one from me.

Birth Announcement Breeds Confusion, Resentment

My friend Geri, who I see and talk too far less often than I should, called yesterday.

Geri: “Okay, so first off I have to say that when I got this red envelope in the mail from you I thought, ‘Oh God, she’s already sent out her Christmas cards. And it’s just days after Halloween.’ “

Me: “And you were disgusted by what a super organized stay-at-home mom I’d become? You were ready to totally write me off as a friend?”

Geri: “Well, not quite write you off… That’s a bit extreme.”

Me: “But then you opened it? And realized it was just a really really late birth announcement?”

Geri: “Exactly. And my faith in you was restored.”

Yes, last week, just days after our beloved newborn Paige turned, well, nine months old, we popped her birth announcement into the mail.

We figured that years from now, when she and Kate are in their thirties and looking through old shoeboxes of family photos and memorabilia, Paige will care more about ever having had a birth announcement than she will about the fact that we got around to sending it out so bloody late. In fact, if she doesn’t look too hard at how very large she was in the pictures, perhaps she’ll never even make the connection.

Speaking of lost connections, on an online video chat with my Dad and Joan last week, I mentioned that they’d be getting a birth announcement in the mail from us soon, “just in case you were wondering if I was still pregnant.” Which caused my dad to lean distortingly close to his computer video lens and say, “What’s that? You’re pregnant?!“

Ah dear. Perhaps sending this card out now did more harm than good.

Well, despite what anyone else says, we still want to shout it from the rooftops:
“Paige Victoria McClusky is here! She is a supreme addition to our family, and we love love love her more than you’d ever know!”

Take that! We’ve announced it. Even if she did make her entrance nearly a year ago.

About Me

I realized recently that my blog lacks an About Me section.

The problem is, my personal IT support technician/spouse is away on a business trip, so I’m unable to alter the site’s, uh, complex architecture singlehandedly. (Besides, it makes Mark feel so needed when I let him do these things for me.)

While I await his return, here’s my first take on how I might describe myself:

I’m a mother of two from Oakland, CA who hates mushrooms. My ears aren’t pierced. Well, they were once, but those holes closed up decades ago. My mother died of pancreatic cancer. Women who’ve had natural childbirth are my heroes. I’ve never seen Star Wars. I’ve been a VP, toy reviewer, CNN producer, and state park employee. My favorite holiday is July 4th. I love surprises, resist change, and can’t tolerate wimpyness. I adore old women. I’ve had migraines that have put my right eye out of commission for weeks at a time. I once ate a 24-course meal. I’ve never competed in the Olympics. I went to cooking school to become a pastry chef, then decided against it. I’ve chatted with Mick Jagger. I loved high school and was unimpressed with college. My father’s name is Ferdinand. Altogether I’ve taken 13 years of French. I’ve never had a perm. I’ve lived in Rhode Island, Ohio, Massachusetts, D.C., New York, Georgia, California, France, and England. In a life riddled with happiness, motherhood has brought me supreme contentment. Some people think I have nice hands. I once spent a raucous night out with the White House Secret Service. Sometimes I want to eat my children. I don’t know how to follow a football game. My husband spent the better part of his career at Sports Illustrated. If I were President, liking coconut-flavored rum wouldn’t be uncool. I pronounce ‘aunt’ AHHHnt and ‘apricot’ with a short ‘a.’ Cats scare me. I have a terrible memory. The greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten is that my daughter Kate looks like me. I can dish it out but I can’t take it. Math Game Day in fourth grade always gave me a stomachache. My father is afraid of heights and peach fuzz. A psychic once told me I was a famous ballerina in a past life. I skipped having a first marriage and got a brilliant trophy husband at age 37. I’ve never had braces. For a made-for-TV movie I once played a woman who choked while eating in a restaurant. Parades often make me cry with joy. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning. The love I have for my husband and daughters can best be described as rabid. I’m an obsessive yard saler and recovering packrat. My super powers are the ability to sleep anywhere and parallel parking. I’m the youngest of four girls. I disagree with the way the word ‘segue’ is spelled. I didn’t make a million dollars before turning 30. I look dead in both yellow and light gray. I once stuck a pussy willow up my nose. Seeing a person carrying a box of hot pizza always delights me. I think people who put lines through their sevens are pretentious. If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like a high school marching band to play at my funeral. I know how to say the following things in Polish: ‘underwear,’ ‘Grandma,’ ‘ass,’ and ‘I’m going to throw up.’ I’m a wannabe Jew. If it weren’t for house cleaners, I’d get around to changing my sheets about as often as frat boys do. My best piece of financial advice is to pay for babysitting now instead of marriage counseling later. I’m an avid recycler. My greatest life’s work has been ridding myself of any trace of a Rhode Island accent. It wasn’t until my mother was gone and I had children of my own that I realized I’d inherited her brilliance for tackling tough laundry challenges. I can’t be inside on sunny days. I felt betrayed my senior year of college when the hippies cut their hair short to get jobs at investment banks. I’m not even a little bit country. My last meal would include a Del’s Lemonade.

How much room do they give you in those blog templates for the About Me section anyway?

Well, this will have to do for starters.

Don’t Fail Me Now

Sure there’s your wedding day, and the days your babies are
born. Those are fun and memorable and all. I’m not saying July 4^th
has a leg up on those days. It’ s just that I’ve lived through so many of my
hometown’s famous Forta Julys–so many of those days with so many great happy
silly patriotic friend-drenched food-filled and sometimes boozy celebrations.
And this year I came frighteningly close to adding one really horrible memory
to all the others.

It was after the parade, which we watched this year by the
Demopulos casa, since the famous Connery party has sadly ceased with their family
home being rented out. Post-parade we ambled back to Dad’s where a good
selection of family and friends convene–some non-parade-watchers who hang at
the house all day, some who just come for the post-game barbeque, and those
like us who despite exhausted children (and their parents) do it all with
childhood glee.

Back at the house, after critical diaper changes, drinks of
water, and potty breaks, Mark rolled up his sleeves to do some grilling and
Joan and others got the spread all laid out buffet-style on the long table
under the tree. Jill and Kevin, formerly SF friends are now RI residents. They
and their three boys have become fantastic die-hard fans of the parade and the
Bristol celebration shenanigans in general. So, happily, they were there as well. The kids were running around on the lawn, playing some stompy-rocket kinda game.

So after greeting all the guests and introducing Miss Paige
to eager relatives, and doing the Mama thing tending to everyone else’s food,
fun, and fecal needs, I finally sat down to eat a lunch it felt like I might
never eat.

I joined Jill, Mark, and some of the kids on a blanket on
the grass, and in the midst of some little chat about something, or maybe
helping Kate cut her meat, or whatever–in the midst of that totally unmemorable
life going along moment–a couple people from the patio scream and I look up to
see my father lurching, stumbling, and nearly falling as some nearby people reached out to
hold him up.

I looked up and had the sickening thought that this was it.
This was the way my father was going to go. With me not even paying attention,
just biting into my chourico and pepper sandwich and otherwise having a lovely
day, and then totally out of the blue something could happen and he could be
gone.

Trust me, this is the most sickening scary feeling. I
sprinted into the house on pure adrenaline, quickly taking stock of the
situation as I ran past. It seemed like he was talking to people, like he hadn’t
lost consciousness. Was it too presumptuous to assume he was okay? If I paused
for even a moment to assure myself of what I wanted to feel—that it was
nothing and he was totally fine–would I be wasting precious help-getting time if suddenly in
the next minute he clearly wasn’t alright?

In the kitchen I squeezed behind the chair my Uncle Joe was
sitting in as he and Aunt Mary ate their lunches, and fumbled for the phone
dialing 911 as I craned to look through the window to see what was happening outside.

As I heard myself talking to the 911 person I was overcome
with how utterly plausible it could be that something like this could happen.
“My father. He’s 79 years old. He nearly collapsed, but I think he might be
okay now but I’m not sure. Please send someone quickly to take a look at him.”

Every year for as long as I can remember, since being a
little kid, seeing the rescue squad–the Rhode Islandism for ambulance–make its
way through crowded streets on July 4^th was part of the whole steamy hot, crowded throngs, hectic activity tableau. I’m sure at times I stopped what
I was doing for a second to take note of the siren blasting past. But only ever
for a brief moment before returning to whatever happy-go-lucky thing I was
doing. Never able to empathize that a family could be dealing with a crisis, a
stomach-wrenching tragedy, a loss.

But when it’s you in that mode, it’s too late to get the
karmic benefit of having concerned yourself with all those other people. The
best you can do is just hope hope hope that this isn’t happening, that it’s all
okay, that in the midst of a lovely easy afternoon of no particular importance you haven’t been shot through a cannon and to your utter shock and disbelief landed in a devastating and
unforgettable day.

And somehow, blessedly, my internal mantra of “no no no no no” together with a huge dose of luck worked. 

By the time I stuttered
my way through the 911 call and their follow-up call to me (since I’d hastily
hung up before giving them all the necessary information), Mark came in from the
patio holding a scared bewildered Kate to give me a hug and let me know my father seemed to be totally fine. He was
sitting in a chair in the shade, no doubt embarrassed by all the hoopla, and making jokes.

Sure enough by the time I went out and saw him with my own
eyes he was eating fruit salad from a plastic cup and stubbornly refusing the
bottle of water I was handing him. It felt good, normal even, to feel annoyed
with him that he wouldn’t take a drink. He was back. 

As the adrenaline drained from me I broke it to Dad that the
ambulance was coming, fearing his annoyance that I’d called them. It seemed that he’d gotten up too fast, felt a bit woozy from heat, a late lunch, a drink. He never actually passed out–just got wobbly and light-headed. But I was still too scared to trust the party attendees’ non-professional assessment. 

Surprisingly he said he wasn’t mad; that it was okay. They’d just check him out
and if everything was okay, no harm done.

Maybe Dad felt enough of a jolt of fear himself from the
whole thing. Maybe like me the years of hearing ambulances cruise through
town on Fourth of July headed to other unlucky families we barely stopped to
think about made him take stock. If this year they came our way but left
without any real work to do, in the grand scheme of things that’d be just fine.
 

The Rain Cometh, But Will It Goeth Too?

My God, I’ve got mushrooms growing on my mushrooms. It’s only been raining for less than a week, but you’d think I’d moved to Seattle. Somehow rainy season with a toddler is a whole new ball of wax.

Pre-Kate, Mark and I would loll around reading or watching movies. Or even–gasp!–going out to matinees. But since we are blessed with our little blonde peanut relaxing during her waking hours just ain’t an option. And vegging out in front of the tube with her is something I can’t even tolerate the thought of.

So there’s lots of cabin fever indoor play, along with some dripping wet jaunts to the grocery store or out to lunch just so we can see some people other than ourselves.

Mercifully there was a break in it all this morning and we were able to go and worship at the farmers’ market. Nothing like a Blue Bottle latte, a hand-out of free pumpkin bread and your pick of local organic matter to set one straight on a Sunday morning.

Later today we’ll venture to SF to see Dad one last time before he leaves Ellen’s for a Palm Dessert visit with Judy. He spent three nights with us in Oaktown, in which time we had some nice meals in, had some nice meals out, and spent lots of time marveling at Kate’s beauty, vocabulary, and charm.

And once she’d be asleep for the night, Dad would say, “I’m telling you guys she is something! What a communicator! And she is just beautiful–just beautiful!” And Mark and I would agree in a kind of tell-me-somethin’-I-don’t-know kinda way, but still love more than anything to hear it all coming from someone else’s mouth.

So after he leaves tomorrow morning, another session of the Mutual Adoration for Kate Society will come to a close. And Mark and I will need to continue to convene privately until another grandparent crosses our paths.

Meantime, I’m going to go online and look into some vacation options while Little Miss naps. The plan is to be somewhere fabulous when I greet my next decade of life. Somewhere where it will hopefully not be raining.