One of the weirder phobias I have–aside of my fear of tomatoes touching my food–is that I’m terrified of fish. I don’t mean that if I see an aquarium, I’m going to break out into a cold sweat and start crying, no, even I’m not THAT insane.

But since I can remember, my parents have been taking us to tropical places–I know, poor baby, right?–and along with tropical places = snorkeling.

When I was 4 or 5, my parents bravely took us to Mexico and in a stunning fit of idiocy on their part, they left my brother and I to swim alone while they leisurely relaxed in a cliff-type thing above us. Out of sight, out of mind, I think, was the idea. Having three kids of my own, I understand the urge. But I’m still unsure what the fuck they were thinking to leave a 14 year old in charge of a 4 year old in the ocean.

Because my brother promptly ditched me to go and strut his lack of muscles in front of a couple of bikini clad babes.

I could swim, though, so I just waded into the water.

What happened next has been replayed over and over in my mind for the next 24 years.

The fish, accustomed to friendly humans who might feed them delicious treaties, swarmed me. Since I wasn’t underwater myself, I couldn’t see their beautiful swirling colorful fins. Instead, I saw a bunch of black THINGS just swarm me.

I screamed so loudly that pretty much everyone at the beach–including my lazy parents– came running. Maybe they thought I’d been half eaten by a Jaws-like shark, or perhaps I caught sight of a fat hairy dude in a Speedo. Who knows.

All that I do know is that for years after this, I had to force myself to go into the ocean, shaking and terrified, every time we went on vacation. The fear would subside the moment I was under the crystal blue water, but up until that point, I’d be silently shaking in my swimsuit.

Our last family vacation happened in 2000. My brother–recovering from a nasty divorce and full-on taking every bad feeling out on me–was 30, I was 20. My parents made the grave error of leaving us alone to share a room where we fought like it was 1999.

This is likely WHY this was our last vacation as a family.

One of the days that we were there in Cozumel, we went to some renowned beach to get some snorkeling done and generally laze about the beach. By this age, I can assure you, I wasn’t upset that my parents didn’t watch me swim. In fact, I welcomed the opportunity to get the fcuk away from everyone else and have some relative solitude in the waves.

I’m a decent swimmer, so once I got past the rocks and coral at the mouth of the beach–where, of course, in my normal good gracefulness, I fell and cut the shit out of my foot–I got pretty far away from the lip of the beach where I could get in and out of the water. This beach wasn’t really full of sand, you see. It was more the coral and other stuff that will cut a bitch (like me) up.

But I relished the soft whooshing of the ocean in my ears as I snorkeled about, following a family of yellow and blue fish around and trying to forget the hysterics of the morning. My brother had called me a worthless piece of shit for the 437th time that hour and I crumpled into a pile of tears outside of our villa. The 5,000 feral cats who’d been following me about swarmed me as I cried. It was strangely comforting.

It was wonderful to feel so free. There’s something so comforting about the soft lull of the waves, the ability to be a voyeur into another world, and after my initial fear, I am always reluctant to get out of the water.

Out of nowhere, as I was admiring a particularly delightful looking puffer fish, my body caught fire. I was electrified, my body searing in pain and I began to hyperventilate.

I popped my head above water to see if I’d run into some electrified fence (I was in pain and terrified. I know how dumb that sounds now), nothing. I forced my face down under the water to see what I’d obviously run into. If it were a school of jelly fish, then I’d do well to make sure to swim AWAY from it rather than into the swarm. Still, I could see nothing.

I swam choppily back toward shore, hyperventilating and panicking, now noticing just how fucking far away I was from the beach. I looked down at my arms and legs and saw with horror that I was now a mess of criss-crossed red welts, from my legs to my arms and my chest.

Finally, after what had to be at least two hours (read: 3 minutes), I grabbed hold of a ladder and hoisted myself shakily up to the beach. I sat at the edge of the cliff-type, surveying the damage and trying to catch my breath, crying heavily. I was breathing so shallowly that I was starting to white out, and using the last bit of my common senseI crawled back away from the edge, lest I fall to my watery death below. This time, I really could have used a chaperone.

I passed out for I don’t know how long, and when I woke up, the welts had turned to bleeding blisters and I had uncontrollable goose bumps without being cold and a good case of the shakes. I was now officially fucked up.

Eventually, my mother found me and helped me back to a towel and gave me a medicinal pina-colada. The rest of the vacation–including the following day which was a snorkeling boat cruise sort of thing–was uneventful by comparison. If that horse bucks you and all that good boo-yang, right?

—————

What’s attacked YOU, Internet whom I love beyond compare?

A couple of months ago, Dave informed me somewhat delicately that he would likely be sent to London to do something-or-other-complicated-stuff-that-I’m-too-stupid-to-get, and after my initial temper tantrum, he asked me for some advice on what to do while there.

You see, Internet, you didn’t know your Aunt Becky was a Continental World Traveller, did you (unless you read my 100 things about me page, which might have boasted my worldliness)? That’s right, *I* have been to Europe. Twice!

I was only 13 or 14 when I went, so the advice I could give Dave was probably not as current as anything I might want to do, oh I don’t know, say NOW. I wasn’t old enough to do anything hipster or funky-fresh. I ate where my orchestra told me to eat. I got stuck wearing neon-yellow sweatshirts with my name on the arm.

See, Aunt Becky circa 1995, age 14. Wanna make out?

(I should note that this picture was in an album, and the picture DIRECTLY above it is a picture of the large asses of two of the chaperones. It’s labeled: “Bitches and their fat asses.” Some things, I see, just don’t change)

I wracked my swiss cheesy memory to tell Dave something, anything about London. I remember all the other parts of England we visited with much more clarity. Like Bath. And the Lake District. All that I could remember about London proper was getting stalked by a group of men as we walked through a park. This was not the first time in Europe that I was followed around by creepy molesty-type Uncle Pervy’s.

Perhaps they liked my rockin’ sweatshirt.

All I could say to Dave who was going on and on and on about the Sushi restaurant in his hotel was that I wouldn’t eat sushi there. When hard pressed to explain myself, I couldn’t really save for that I remember the food over there being…different. Dave, the ever-quantifier, wanted to know what “different” meant as apparently I was not the only person who warned him about the food.

It took me until last night, as I was spraying my roses with pesticide (the rose-pesticide part is completely unrelated) to pin it down. Dave sat there outside with me, Amelia on his lap and it dawned on me how to put it in his terms.

“Okay, I got it,” I boasted. “The English? EAT MARMITE. Voluntarily.”

We shuddered in unison.

(Ben is half-Australian and was born loving the horror that is Vegemite. All I can say is that HE’S WELCOME TO ALL OF OUR PORTIONS because obviously. I don’t trust the judgement of anyone who eschews ice cream but loves something that tastes like vitamins. Also: BLECH)

Dave left this morning, promising to bring me back something “cool” from London. The last thing, I told him, that I’d bought from London was Use Your Illusion II (dude. Rad), so I was sure he could come up with something as cool. Like the entire Burberry store.

I have a feeling that I’ll end up with a tin of Altoids, purchased at O’Hare under the guise of being for me, but already half-eaten. Because, he’ll explain, he knows I don’t like them anyway. But I won’t care. I’ll be too happy that he’s home again.

Look! Kids!

Further proof that my eldest is the.best.kid.ever. He BEGS to change diapers. No, seriously you canNOT borrow him.

Amelia is now big enough to go into the Exersaucer. Say it with me now: What.The.Fuck?

Alex being, well, Alex. Aside from a nasty case of antibiotic-induced diarrhea, he’s feeling tip-top.

I’m lonely already, Internet. Will you be my husband?

Per my insurance company, I had to remain a full-time student while I was pregnant with Ben. Taking the opportunity to enroll in some fluffy classes like “Intro to Shakespeare” and “Intro to World Lit” and my biggest mistake in judgement “Jewelry,” I shlepped my ever-widening ass back and forth to school. The death of my grandmother weeks before this took place meant that I had a car that I didn’t have to borrow to drive, because I was full of The Trash.

As I turned the corner on my way to school one evening, I heard a loud bang and suddenly the car was harder to steer. The car in question was a Escort or something and not an old school Corvette without power steering or something, so this was highly peculiar.

At the soonest place I could turn off, I did so, into a subdivision of new construction houses, each looking exactly like the other. It reminded me of a science-fiction novel or something, like a Group Intelligence or something. Stranger in a fucking strange land.

I pulled my car over to the side of the road, still unsure of what had happened.

I pried myself out of the car with my arms and shuffled pregnantly over to the other side of the car. What greeted me was a completely flat back tire.

Fuck, I swore to myself. I didn’t have a cellphone because I had a pager instead (hey, don’t judge. My pager was all kinds of gold and sexy. And no, I was not a drug dealer) and the nearest gas station was several miles out.

Plus, thanks to Nat’s refusal to give me so much as a dime–he was still convinced I’d gotten pregnant to trap him. For his money or good looks, I asked him when he accused me. He didn’t like that answer–meant that I had no money whatsoever on me.

Stupidly, I’d not paid attention when my father tried to teach me how to change a tire, preferring, I suppose to groan and examine my nails while huffing about how I NEVER needed to know such a STUPID thing, DAD. Now, I was regretting it. Sorely.

I opened the trunk, an exercise in futility, I knew, because even if it had the proper things that one needs to change a tire, I was too large and in charge to sit on a curb and get a busted tire out. If I’d managed to get into the proper position, I knew I’d never get back up again. I’d be stuck in that creepy subdivision with the houses all the same until I birthed my baby, some months later.

I tried to reason that maybe this was for the best as it would prevent me from shoveling more bagels into my mouth, but even then, I knew I was full of shit. I needed help.

I began walking down the sidewalk, breathing a bit heavily from the panic that had now set in, and looking desperately for a house that had Real! Live! People! in it. As a child I’d noted that when people were home, they usually had their garage doors open, so I peered at each closed garage door as I passed it, my impending doom growing.

Finally, about a half a block down from my crippled car, I spied some wee pink bikes in the front yard of a house. Certainly whomever lived there had children and people who had children certainly wouldn’t slice and dice a pregnant woman to chunky pieces in their bathtub!

Still, though, I was nervous. I wasn’t used to relying on strangers for help, but I saw no other option. Waiting there for someone who knew me to stop and help was as futile as trying to win a limbo contest in my largened state, so I steeled myself and went to the front door.

I rang the doorbell and when a man answered it, I breathily spewed out the whole story. When I’m panicked, I tend to rush my words, speaking in one long word in a much higher than normal voice.

“Hi, um, my car broke down, and um, the tire blew out and um, I don’t, um, know how to fix it. And um, I need, um, help.” I squeaked out.

He looked at me, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. Could he be angry at me? Did I know him or something? Had I spit in his cheeseburger at some point?

I stood there dumbly, mouth agape and catching flies not knowing what else to do. If he said no, which was fine with me, I’d just go onto the next potential serial killers’ house. He was under no obligation to help me and we both knew it.

Finally, after summing me up, he rolled his eyes at me. He rolled his eyes, sighed deeply as though I was probably the most worthless piece of shit on the planet, and stepped outside, mute. He muttered something to his daughters to stay inside as he gestured that he was going up the street, and walked down the driveway toward my car.

When I sense that someone is upset with me, the stream of words that come out of my mouth goes to 11, and I began to babble earnestly.

“My car, you see, sir, is just down there and I just need someone to help me put the tire on it, and that’s all. Hahaha. I was on my way to school and I just blew a tire and hahaha, now I don’t know what to do because I don’t know how to change a tire.”

He walked a steady clip ahead of me, and I trailed behind like a chubby puppy, still spewing words like diarrhea. Finally, we reached my car and I showed him the spare donut tire in the trunk. He looked at me again, rolled his eyes so far back in his head, I swear they made a chink noise, and eyed me like the moron I was. Disdainful of my very existence.

Thankfully for us both, he took only a couple of minutes to pop the old tire off and put the new one one. I spent most of those minutes thanking him profusely. He didn’t have to help me, he owed me nothing, and yet he helped, I babbled on and on and on. Every now and again, he’d stop, seething, and give me another awful, withering look.

The man who hated me for I’m-still-not-sure-what finished putting the tire on and stood up. I thanked him with such honest sincerity that I nearly cried. I might have cried a little. Shut up.

He glared back at me, clearly angry at me. He grunted an assent, rolled his eyes at me once more, and walked away, hands balled into fists at his side.

I stood there, confused. What.the.fuck just happened?

Tuesday night found me gnashing my teeth, feeling overwhelmingly sorry for myself while sitting on the couch crying, “Oh noes!” Nothing was technically WRONG, but for some reason the first Early Intervention interview (for those who have been there: it’s the paperwork one) threw me through a loop.

That and the idiotic thing I did where I went back and gathered up all of the insurance/doctor notes/crap I’ve been sent since Amelia was born and threw it into a folder. Glancing down at it while I was doing it was as advisable as looking at an MRI of your child’s grey matter.

So there I was, prostrate with self-pity and overall stupidity, crying my ever-loving head off.

I went to bed a couple of hours later with my head pounding (I’ve been having a string of headaches. Which led, in part, to my Pity Party) only to be woken up at odd intervals by my son, who was flipping around in his crib in the next room.

I woke up The Daver to have him go in there and move Alex’s crib away from the wall and to check on the ickle dude. Why I sent Dave in there and not me, I don’t know.

He’d gotten a bug bite overnight on Sunday and woke up Monday with a small lump on his face. By Tuesday afternoon, it had begun to swell slightly. I’d pumped him full of Benedryl, Ibuprofen and Tylenol to pull down some of the swelling, and he’d gone into a deep sleep.

(aside: Thank you Benedryl for awesomely putting my kid to sleep)

We’re not alarmist sort of parents, we don’t take our kids to the ER for fevers of unknown origin unless they’re incredibly high (the fevers, not my kid. Because if my kid is high, he should be sharing), and I rarely call the doctor to schedule anything besides the well-child visits.

Dave shuffled in to Alex’s room where he found our son flopping about in his bed. After his record 3 hour nap that afternoon, it wasn’t terribly shocking that he was up at 1 AM. In a stroke of divine luck (not Divine Brown), Dave picked Alex up. The kid was burning up.

Well, fuck. The insect bite that we’d ignored was now making him sick as fcuk.

I heard Alex calling “Let’s go see Mommy. Let’s go see Mommy” so I knew he was up. As Dave changed his diaper, I went to give him a kiss. The sight before my eyes made me tear up with non-self-pitying tears. Alex now looked as though he’d been thoroughly beaten. His left eye was nearly swollen shut, bruised and pink and his cheek looked like he’d been smuggling marbles.

I sighed, went back upstairs to put pants on, wiping tears from my eyes (he looked THAT bad) and got dressed. Dave woke Amelia up. It was Hospital Time.

Choosing to go to the ER at the hospital that Mimi had her surgery because they boasted a pediatric ER, we headed off.

We got there, parked, and trundled in, looking as bedraggled as we’d ever been. We joked that they were going to call CPS on us after seeing Alex’s face. Alex was cheerful, though, more so than Dave or I, and Amelia just looked dazed. Pleased by my choice, we walked down a deserted hallway to get to the ER.

Score, I said to myself. It looks DEAD here. Perfect.

As we rounded the corner, we came to a line. Of people. Fuck. At the head of the line was a lumpy Jabba-The-Hut-I-Have-No-Angles type woman who was robotically taking names and entering them into a computer. Everywhere I looked, every chair, every available surface was covered by sick people.

We checked in eventually, where I confused the receptionist by asking if there was somewhere that I could sit that wasn’t full of contagious sick people. Alex had something, but it wasn’t spreading. She was unable to knock her remaining 2 synapses together and just stared vacantly at me.

Okay, then.

An hour went by, Amelia got reswaddled and fell back asleep while Alex continually grabbed my hand and yelled “let’s GO Mommy” every time we went back near the entrance. I tried to avoid touching any surfaces and breathing deeply. After that hour we still hadn’t been seen by triage, so I went back to the dazed receptionist to see what the wait was like.

When she said 3 hours, I nearly decked her. Information that might have been useful when I checked in.

At 2:30 in the morning, we were back on the road, headed to another hospital. The beauty of living where I do is that it’s not insanely populated. While there are people who assumably need ER’s, a wait like 3 hours is nearly unheard of.

We checked in to hospital #2 and were barely done putting the bracelet on Alex’s arm before we were whisked back to a room by a nurse. 10 minutes later, we saw the doctor. 5 minutes after that, we had a diagnosis and some antibiotics ordered from the pharmacy.

The longest part of the second hospital visit was waiting to make sure that Alex didn’t go into anaphylaxis from the antibiotic shot (he’s never been on antibiotics. Which, now that I think about it, explains the massive diarrhea today. Anyhow, moving on). For 20 minutes, we crawled the halls, looking into each room for Happy’s (the pain chart faces).

It was great until I realized how fucking heavy 30 pounds is and that one of the rooms we were peering into had a corpse in it. Then I felt kinda voyeuristic.

We left, sans anaphylaxis, with strict orders that should this not improve, Alex will be admitted for IV antibiotics. Which sounds like hell. Unless they sedate us both. Then I could totally get behind it.

He’s better today than yesterday. He’s a little less puffy and looks even more like he’s been in a wicked bar-fight (you should SEE the other guy! Yuk-yuk-yuk).

—————

How are YOU today? Any good hospital (boner) stories for Aunt Becky today?

We spent the night in the ER only to learn that Alex has cellulitis. Poor guy.

I’ve mentioned before that after Ben was born, I was struggling mightily with what to Do (with a capitol D) for the rest of my life. Whomever thought that the 18-20 year old bracket was the appropriate age for people to decide what to Do should be strung out and shot somewhere, because, hi, at 20? I was still a blithering idiot.

Difference was, now I was pregnant. And looking to make paychecks larger than so-and-so-measly dollars every week so that Ben and I could (gasp!) move out of my parents’ house. My standards weren’t particularly high, but my options were limited.

Before I decided on nursing, my mom shelled out 20 clams for me to take some sort of career figurer-outer class at the community college. Perfect, I thought as I left my screaming child behind. I just KNOW that the people running this class will see my inherent star quality! Perhaps they will just HAND me a diploma and maybe even put me on Star Search! I just KNOW I’m miles ahead of the rest of the knuckle-draggers in this class!

I showed up to a motley band of scraggly people all sitting rather reluctantly in a small classroom. I was instantly confused. I mean, why would someone PAY to voluntarily subject themselves to this and be unhappy about it later?

I took a seat at a table by a large no-nonsense looking woman with extremely long fuchsia fingernails. Each had a nice sunset scene carefully painted upon it and I was semi-jealous. I’d never considered my fingernails as a medium for such wonderousness. I thought about telling her how much I dug her nails, but one look at the beady mean eyes peering out of her doughy face told me that I should keep my goddamned mouth shut.

Undeterred, but still sort of unsure if I was in the right place, I carefully pulled out some scratch paper from my backpack and waited patiently for the instructor to come in and recognize my obvious superiority.

I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, about 20 minutes after the class was set to begin, our instructor breezed in. Rather than scan the room to find the superstar among the drones (that would be me. The superstar, not the drones), he simply began passing out a big fat folder crammed with papers.

Once the folders were all passed out, he simply told us to begin filling out the test within the folder. Use the pencil, he warned us, or the Scantron machine wouldn’t be able to score it.

Well, okay, I said to myself. I like tests. I’m really GOOD at tests. I bet this TEST will tell me that I rule and that I should just bypass school entirely and become an heiress. Fucking SWEET.

I happily opened the test up and prepared to meet my destiny (or density. Whatever).

I noticed unhappily that the test was one of those gradient ones where I had to say from 1-4 how interested (one being least and 4 being most) I was in the statement. Like this:

1 2 3 4 I am interested in becoming a ditch digger.

Okay, I thought, brow furrowed in concentration. Is this a trick question? It sounds like a trick question. I mean, who would want to become a ditch digger? And wait, aren’t they called something more PC now, like a Hole Management Expert?

I looked around the room, expecting to see a sea of confused faces and to my dismay, everyone else was studiously filling out the form.

I furiously scratched a line into 1, praying this wasn’t a trick question, and went on to the next question.

1 2 3 4 I am interested in tracking statistical marketing data.

Uh…uh…uh, I thought frantically. Are they talking about the people who stalk you at the mall, begging you to do taste tests and surveys? EW. No thanks. That’s one of those jobs you just sort of fall into, not something that you aspired to.

1 2 3 4 I am interested in hosting parties.

Finally, I cried to myself, FINALLY! Something I could totally do! I LOVE hosting parties! Hooray!

I furiously scribbled a 4 and went on to the next.

1 2 3 4 People would call me a methodical person.

Hmmm….I thought. Is this a trick question? I don’t know that anyone that would think of me in those terms. I scribbled a 3, just guessing what people might say about me and moved on.

I spent the rest of the test, all 232 questions, in much the same vein. Finally, it was over and we were instructed to go on break. I took that opportunity to visit the computer lab and check my email. I laughed my way through a couple of those forward How Well Do You Know Me emails (which turned, I must add, into meme’s years later) and when it was time, slunk back in to the room.

My star quality was no longer sparkling.

The instructor passed out sheets of paper with our results on it, a certain combination of letters. Those letters, he explained, would correspond to a set of jobs that I was uniquely qualified for.

I frantically searched through page after page of letter combinations until I got to mine. My eyes rested on the job I would be happiest with:

Veterinarian (poultry).

Yes. A chicken doctor. Wow. The possibilities. Wow.

That must be a glitch, I said to myself. On down the line I went.

Brick Layer.

My third?

Mosaic Tile Layer.

Uh. Jesus. Uh. Yeah.

*blink, blink, blink*

I was uniquely qualified to become Becky Sherrick, Doctor Of Chickens or Becky Sherrick, Layer of Bricks. Fucking awesome.

I was not even REMOTELY of Star Quality ™. No one was going to beat down my door to be on Wheel Of Fortune or American Idol. No one was going to have me bikini model cars or become a sexy astrophysicist. No one was going to beat down my door: period.

Unless they happened to wear feathers and cluck a lot.

It’s safe to say that I don’t know a whole lot about sacrifice.

Sure, I didn’t get to go out binge drinking and pub crawling a hell of a lot, instead pulling all-nighters with a drooling, balding man (Ben, I mean, not The Daver. Who would like me to inform you that he does NOT drool). Maybe I didn’t get to spend my early twenties being frivolous and stupid(er), maybe I changed the entire course of what I had planned to do with my life for the fruit of my loins.

So fucking what?

The sacrifices I made are nothing, and I mean by nothing “whatever is possibly less than nothing, maybe like chicken poo or something” and while I occasionally I do bemoan them, even I know I don’t really mean it or deserve sympathy.

On a day like today, all that I can think about is sacrifice. REAL sacrifice. Throwing your own life on the line to protect something you believe in. That, THAT, is bravery.

I don’t know a lot of soldiers, but I do know that one of these days I’m going to get off my fat ass and start sending care packages to them, because they do something so beyond brave that I cannot comprehend it. As someone who occasionally expects sympathy cards for bug-bites and ingrown toenails, it’s safe to say that I am whatever the opposite of brave is.

My grandfather is the only one close to me who has served overseas. He died when I was eleven and the older I get, the more I realize how much I missed by not getting to know him. My middle son is named after him–the Joseph, not the Alexander part of his name–and I sometimes regret that I didn’t name him Joseph Alexander instead of the other way around.

What I know about him I’ve Frankenstein-ed from family members and I’m certain I have some of the facts wrong.

He graduated high school at 15, Harvard at 17 going on to graduate from Johns Hopkins Medical school at 21. At some point in his career, he contracted TB and had to spend my father’s childhood holed up in a sanitarium in the mountains somewhere.

My grandfather left his family to go serve in World War II as a doctor on the front lines, pulling out bullets and putting rogue guts back into their body cavity.

When the Allies invaded and Germany surrendered, my grandfather, whom my son is named for, helped liberate the concentration camps. My grandfather cared for those who were left as the walking dead, and he saw that the piles of dead were treated with more dignity in death than they had been in life. He saw horrors unimaginable and refused to speak beyond what I have shared with you.

But I loved him as a child not for his bravery but because he called me the apple of his eye. I loved him because he bought me the fancy train set that I’d coveted one Christmas. I loved him because I knew he worked as head of the pathology department at a major hospital and I thought that was wicked cool.

The older I get, though, the more I love him for all the things I hadn’t known of him in life. That my parents still have a pair of forceps somewhere that they use to get stuff off of shelves–they’re quite handy! Somewhere, I have his old dissection kit. That he tried out the new-fangled X-ray technology on my grandmother while she was pregnant with my father and as a result, we have a picture of my father in-utero. That he loved going to the symphony and loved fried chicken.

(who doesn’t love fried chicken?)

That he was the bravest person I know, and that I slouch here today at my computer, pecking out words about “bravery” and “sacrifice” onto my stupid little blog, no matter how brave and tough I am not, I still have his blood coursing through my veins.

Today, that makes me sit up a little straighter.

Today I remember.

—————

Who are you remembering today?

The product of 3 sets of grandparents without any other grandchildren is that my house is overflowing with toys. I have so many toys that I frequently round some up and take them down to the Salvation Army and donate them rather than have a Garage Sale, something I’d rather never experience ever. I just can’t haggle with someone over a 50 cent coffee mug and still maintain my already-tenuous grasp on sanity.

But Alex has chosen, out of the piles of colorful plastic toys, this small wooden car.

That he would find this car and choose it above all other toys touches me.

This car is a time-capsule.

I’ve made mention before that Ben had chosen my mother as His Person, which (thank you Internet) you all told me is a pretty common thing for autistic kids to do. You have no idea how much that relieved me to know that it wasn’t just my son picking up on my inherent Asshole-ness.

But I probably didn’t tell you that Ben chose another person as His Person. That person, of course, was The Daver.

We met Dave in the winter of 2003-2004 and Ben, my normally silent, distant child was immediately captivated by him. They hadn’t met until I took Ben to the airport to pick Dave up from wherever he was returning from, but once I had, it was like the heavens had opened up for that child. And The Daver too.

The entire ride back home to St. Charles (sans The Daver), Ben strung together one of only a few sentences he had in the most forlorn voice I’d heard, “Oh, bye Dave.” He didn’t say “Mommy” but he immediately learned “Dave.”

Several months after that, Dave and I packed Ben up in the car and we took a road trip up nort’ dere hey to northern Wisconsin to visit a friend of his. Ben fell in love with a marble contraption thingy made by the Amish who live up there and on the way home, Dave insisted that we stop and get Ben one.

Ben was asleep in the car, so he and I stayed outside while Dave went into the Amish store and awhile later he emerged triumphant, the marble contraption thingy in his hand. After he packed it into the trunk to be given to Ben after he awoke, he got into the driver’s seat of my car and opened up his hand to me.

There, in the palm of his hand was this wooden car.

Even knowing that the child he’s always thought of as his son wouldn’t play crash-bang-boom Drive The Car Off The Couch pow-zap with it like a normal child, instead using it to make intricate lines of toys snaking around the house, he bought Ben a car. Like a normal child would like.

That car was used in elaborate designs, sometimes as a stand-in for Io, sometimes as one of many cars in a long line of toys, sometimes perched on the stairs, where Ben would carefully line toys up, row after ever-loving row.

That car moved with us, carelessly thrown into a random box of toys, to three or four places. The puppy teethed on it, Alex gnawed on it, I imagine that Amelia will also probably chomp on it too. It’s been here for our best moments and our worst.

I find it fitting that our second son, Ben’s brute of a baby brother, would take the car and use it in the way that his father once thought his brother might. That the child we hadn’t even talked about conceiving would fall in love with this toy.

It feels like some circle is now complete.

There are days like today, when my eldest gets in trouble for the third time this week for disobeying rules, where my middle child’s diaper busts a seem and leaks silica all over the carpet, where I learn that the help I’d arranged for Daver’s trip to London is going to flake on me, where the dog pees on the carpet and all of the Miracle Blankets are covered in goo. Days like this that I need a reminder of where I’ve been.

And where I’m going.

————–

What about you?

When my eldest child was 2, he was referred by an Asshole Pediatrician (do I sense a common theme among my doctors or what?) to Early Interventions for speech therapy.

He wasn’t talking, you see, and that coupled with his incredible love for the planets–which, I should add, the MD didn’t know about–made for a strange child. It took a couple months for a case worker to be assigned and ages after that to get the initial evaluations done, because like any state program, the need is greater than the ability to provide services.

When he was finally tentatively diagnosed with autism, I will be completely honest, I was relieved. It sounds weird, to be thankful my child has a disability, but it was the first thing about him that made sense to me.

My son had been rejecting me since he was born and my heart was not only broken, it was smashed to bits by his second birthday. He loved my mother, yes, but not me. If I never came back home, I promise you, he’d not have cared.

Ben and Mommy (colon) It’s Complicated.

He didn’t care for me, and while I’d like to say that it was because he sensed that I was an asshole, his brother certainly (still) cannot get enough of me. At some point I finally realized that it’s him, not me, that has the problem. But parents, of course, always blame themselves and it took years for me to be able to see that.

Ben was in therapy for years, many times a week, both speech and occupational, and it helped. My life isn’t a Lifetime Movie, where I’m played by Tori Spelling and Ben is played by that cute kid that I kinda wanted to strangle from Jerry Maguire, so you know that things still aren’t exactly normal, but they’re more…manageable.

Ben and Mom (Colon) It’s Still Complicated.

—————

Today I owned up to my old demons and pushed the fucking denial aside and called to set up a caseworker for Amelia for Early Interventions.

I did it because it’s the right thing to do. Like it or not.

Maybe, like some of you suggested, her extra brain matter was just her Awesomeness being uncontainable in her skull. A sign of high intelligence. I like that explanation best, I think.

It’s the right thing to do. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Dear Aunt Becky,

Is Dr. William Sears evil?

Signed,
“The Baby Book” Makes Me Cry

Dear He Who Makes Me Giggle,

Now, dear reader, “evil” is a word that Aunt Becky uses sparingly and in reference to things like “butter,” and “dressing room lighting,” and even occasionally “Cosmo Magazine.” So I’m not certain if “evil” belongs in the same sentence as “Dr. Sears.”

That is, of course, unless you don’t co-sleep, don’t breastfeed your child until they’re 15, and consider using a pacifier on your beloved child. After all, YOUR nipple should be the pacifier. Then you might call him evil.

Because he is hyper-critical of mothers who don’t sleep in a family bed. Those who might use formula (his own wife breastfed their adopted kids! Get off YOUR ass and nurse yours!). Those who do not wear their babies. The un-crunchy (plastic?) set.

New parents, Fair Reader, need to be judged like they need another sleepless night.

Yours,

Aunt Becky

——————-

Dear Aunt Becky,

I am considering constructing a room to hang sausage. As the Patron Saint of Sausages, what advice to you have for me?

xoxo,

Sausage-a-holic

Dear Encased Meat Lover,

First off, let me tell you how amazing it is to hear from a fellow lover of tube-shaped meat. There is nothing on the planet that makes me happier than a plate of grilled up hot-dogs or sausages, except, perhaps, a new Chanel Bag. But that’s neither here nor there.

I’m afraid, however, that I don’t have a whole lot of advice to give you.

You see, while I am an avid Queen of The Sausages, and my home may be known as The Sausage Factory, I don’t actually hang my encased meats in a room. I prefer, in fact, to allow the men-folk of my house use their beds rather than the rafters. I know, I know, Fellow Meat Lover, I am too kind.

My suggestion to you, my new friend, is that you go to Wisconsin. They’re known for their cheese and their weenies up yonder dere, and I’m imagining that they might actually know what a room full of sausages might look like. And not in the It’s Dinner Time At Aunt Becky’s House kind of way.

Smootches,

Aunt Becky

—————————

Auntie Becky,

Why does my cat (sic: put her) butt (sic: in) face?

Love,

Felis catus
Dear Cat Fancy,

I can only presume that your cat, like my own, has a camera implanted firmly up his (or her, let’s not be sexist here) butt-hole. Maybe it’s connected to the CIA database, maybe it’s your in-laws spying on you, or maybe it’s for a sexy adult video site, I just don’t know.

But when your cat sticks his (or her) puckered poo-hole into your face, what he (or she) is doing is saying to you, “SPEAK INTO MY MICROPHONE.” Alternately, “SMILE FOR THE CAMERA.”

Please, avid reader, PLEASE be careful what you tell your cat’s ass. You never know who is watching.

Signed,

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out To Get You