family

When Whit was a cheetah

Some pictures and a memory from the archives.

On December 22nd, 2005, we woke up thinking Whit had chicken pox. I was excited, and had big plans to put Grace and he in bed together so they both got it (I would love to have avoided that vaccination which seems unnecessary to me). I took him to the doctor that morning and was told it was, in fact, an allergic reaction to amoxicillin. Apparently Whit had a textbook presentation of this allergy: second course of amoxicillin, day 8 or 9. Precisely.He was covered in red spots which were rapidly swelling and growing. The doctor switched his antibiotic and sent us home. Friday morning Whit was worse, with well more than half of his body covered in hives. I went back to the doctor who diagnosed Whit with Stephens-Johnson syndrome. My wonderful, calm doctor (who once told me of a 105 degree fever at 11pm to give Tylenol and see how it was in the morning) told me that the syndrome was a spectrum. On one side, he said, is a “mild rash.” “And on the other?” I asked, obviously. “Um, well, death.” Great. Thanks. He sent us to the Children’s Hospital ER.

To make a long story short, Whit and I went to the Children’s ER on the mornings of both the 23rd and the 24th of December. In each case they observed him, took temperatures, and sent us home.When released from Children’s around noon on the 24th I thought Whit was improving. He had shown no appetite at all and had barely taken any formula. He seemed quiet and listless but not unhappy. As I got the children ready for Christmas Eve dinner at my parents, he threw up violently. I paged the pediatrician’s office, nervous about bothering them on December 24th. One of the other two pediatricians in the practice, not my own, called me back. She told me to watch him, to give him pedialyte in whatever way possible (turned out that the baby Motrin syringe was the only way) and to call back immediately if he threw up again. He was at this point running a fever of about 100 and was about 80% covered in raised red welts.

That evening we celebrated Christmas Eve at my parents’ house with my family’s oldest, dearest friends. I was preoccupied and nervous. I kept injecting his mouth with teaspoonsful of pedialyte, one at a time. He was quiet, almost unnervingly so. Around 7, as everyone prepared to sit down, I took him to my parents’ bedroom to change his diaper. He threw up all over me. I called the doctor as advised and she told me to go immediately to the Children’s ER.

Hilary came with me and Matt stayed with Grace. I drove like a bat out of hell. The Children’s Hospital ER on Christmas Eve? Pretty close to how I imagine Calcutta. Let’s just say we were not the only people there. I can say, though, that if you need attention in this kind of setting, just throw out Stephens-Johnson Syndrome. The seas parted and they took us immediately to a room. Whit was put back into his third hospital johnny in two days and they decided to start an IV. No easy feat with a very dehydrated baby.

I consider myself a fairly unsqueamish person, and have watched my children endure all kinds of injuries, have personally held Grace down while she got stitches in her face, etc. But this was too much for me. After they had tried unsuccessfully four times to insert his IV I had to leave the room. Hilary stayed with him. They finally got the IV into him and he spent most of his first Christmas Eve at Children’s Hospital.

Whit did not have to go back to Children’s after that. The rash receeded, though slowly. We stay away from all – cillins. Whit is officially my “allergic” child. While Whit has no memory of this, Grace does, referring to the incident as “when Whitty was a cheetah.” It’s become a humorous part of the family lore, but the memory always tugs at me beneath the laughter.
That Christmas Eve, Whit’s first, will be vivid in my memory forever. Sitting there on a gurney with my johnny-clad son lying listlessly on my chest, I felt aware, suddenly and heavily, of the responsibility of being a parent. I felt like the adult for the first time. This was the first time (and other than Whit’s second nut allergic episode, exactly one year ago, the only) I’ve ever truly feared for my child’s health or well-being. And yes, yes lo what a blessing that is. How lucky I am. I know. I promise, I know.
The fragility of all felt overwhelming, the gossamer sheerness of the normalcy we take for granted every day suddenly impossibly thin. I am ashamed that I cannot translate these experiences into more humility and gratitude every single day. But in remembering them I am spurred, anew, to this gratitude.

Skipping rocks with my Dad.

I remember being a child, maybe 7 or 8, standing on the rocky beach on Long Island where my father grew up. His parents still lived in his childhood home, a few blocks’ walk from this beach. Set back from the beach were rows of wooden changing rooms, whose gray paint was peeling slightly. We used to run down the aisles between the changing rooms, laughing and chasing each other. My grandparents’ room (they were all assigned, and locked) had life jackets in it, and a strong and persistent smell of Shower to Shower talcum powder. To this day that smell takes me right back there. There was a long, narrow pier that protruded into the ocean, with a dock at the end of it. The dock is where Hilary and I played the popsicle game with other children.

Today, though, we’re not swimming. Dad is skipping rocks. He’s always been good at this: he picks the right kind of rock, flat and round, and is able to make it skip four, five, six times before it sinks into the ocean. I try to skip rocks like Dad, but I’m not as skillful, and manage at my best two skips before the rock stops moving and drops to the bottom of the ocean. So, mostly I watch. I’ve stood next to him while he skipped rocks into countless bodies of water: the ocean here, on Long Island, as well as that in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Ahead of me, though I don’t know it, is rock-skipping all the way across this ocean, off the coast of England and into that country’s lakes.

I sit here on an airplane, watching my children across the aisle, hearing Whit wonder whether we are “on the earth,” “in outer space,” or “somewhere in the middle.” For the record, I’m going with (c). I am as far as possible from my 9 year old self on the shore of Long Island Sound. Yet I can’t stop thinking of my brown-haired father, meditatively flinging rock after rock into the ocean, making them skim across the water before falling in, creating the illusion of a solid where there is really only liquid.

My mind is like that, skipping from one place to another before surrendering and sinking deep into the dark unknown. It tries to stay afloat, tries to believe that the surface that it is skimming over is solid enough to support it, to keep it buoyant. And yet, eventually, my thoughts always wind up being pulled underneath the surface. I am forced to admit, over and over again, that this surface is not solid enough to keep me from sinking deep into the layers. But maybe that is okay, maybe the lesson is that, as my father kept skipping new rocks, new thoughts will come and take me skimming across the surface again. And the buoyancy of that skipping, of that being aloft, means so much more for the knowledge of what lies beneath.

Come Away to Sea

Grace was a colicky baby. I was a colicky new mother. Those first few weeks and months involved far more crying than they did sleep. First, I was lost in the 24 hour tilt-a-whirl cycle of newborn-ness where day and night blend into each other in an endless wash of tears, milk, and a general soggy grayness. As a routine slowly, awkward emerged from this murk I started trying to put Grace to bed around the same time every night. This was no small feat. And it was so scary to me that I remember feeling full-blown dread as night approached, feeling each afternoon as the sun went down as though my anxiety, which started in the pit of my stomach, would eat me alive.

I started playing a Martha Stewart lullabye CD at bedtime. I don’t remember where this came from, but I chose it basically at random and put it into the CD player in Grace’s room. The dulcet tones of “Baby Mine” and “Blackbird” accompanied those early evenings when I would rock her in the ivory rocker, nursing her to a calm but not asleep state. I was obsessed with her learning to put herself to sleep. I’d burp her, swaying with her over my shoulder in the darkened room, humming along to the familiar tunes that got even more well known because I was hearing them every single night. Then – oh, careful, oh careful – I would put her on her back in her crib, standing over her as though she was a grenade about to go off. Well, let’s face it, she sort of was. I’d gradually inch backwards out of the room, freezing in my tracks as though caught in a bad act when she turned to watch me. At the beginning of this enterprise my success rate was low but it climbed over time and she eventually became a great sleeper.

I remember so many nights my anxiousness to get on with my evening. Two feelings, truly, coursed through my veins in those evenings: I wanted to have some time by myself, and I wanted my baby to damn well do what I wanted her to do. I wanted her to just obey and go to sleep. I also wanted a couple of precious hours where I could be nobody’s mother. I hate now knowing that I had both of those feelings. Why was I rushing those minutes past? And why did I care so much about her doing what I wanted? I guess it’s normal that I wanted to get some rest – but, still. I wish I had not wished those evenings away. I wish, now, that I could have those baby-drenched evenings back. Every single one of them.

And that CD still sings her to sleep. To this day, she listens to it going to sleep. Her bedroom is next to mine, and every time she goes to the bathroom or anything in the night she turns it on again. In many ways this CD is the soundtrack of my life. I’ve had to replace it twice. I can sing every single song from that CD, though the ones that come to mind most viscerally are Come Away to Sea and Home. I imagine a day when I am walking down the street – or being wheeled – at 80 years old, and I hear an acoustic version of one of those songs. I will be, instantly and powerfully, back in a darkened nursery suffused with the powder smell of baby, a dark-haired infant scrunched up against my chest, rocking her back and forth.

When I think back to that 28 year old woman I feel flickers of empathy for her but mostly I feel frustrated at her, even angry. I wish I could shake her – myself! – by the shoulders and let her know that she would spend the rest of her life wishing she could reach back to live these minutes again. There’s things I’d like to tell her … but I can’t. Of course I could not know that then.  Isn’t this, in fact, the struggle of our lives?

Come Away to Sea (David Wilcox)

The wind is right for sailing
The tide is right to go
So come away to sea with me
There’s things that you should know

There’s things I’d like to tell you
That words can’t seem to say
Unless we’re on this simple craft
Sailing far away

Sail around this sound
Far away from shore
Come away to sea with me
Sail your heart once more

Join me in this simple craft
Welcome to my home
The things I’d like to say to you
Are better said alone

So let your heart sail with me
We’ll cast away from town
And we’ll sail away on music
Inside this simple sound

This simple craft I play upon
Is made from wooden parts
Its never sailed an ocean
But is sure can sail my heart

And if you feel the music
Then we’ve raised another sail
The ocean wraps this world around
The wind will never fail

Inspired by Jo’s Flashback Friday prompt at Mylestones. Thank you Jo!

A visit with great-Pops

Yesterday we visited my grandfather for lunch and a swim. Pops is about to turn 92. He is, truly, a force of nature. His apartment is full of models of both boats and rockets, books, family pictures, and two computers. He was – is! – an engineer and participated in some of the truly exciting projects of the 20th century, including Apollo XI. Pops is my last remaining grandparent and it is a great joy to me that my children know him and feel such affection towards him. He is “great-Pops” to them and is greeted with much enthusiasm and many full-body hugs.

Almost two years ago, on the eve of his 90th birthday celebration, I wrote a post called “A Great Man,” which was about and for Pops. It is all still true.

“From the first he loved Princeton – its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds …” – Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Tomorrow is Pops’ 90th birthday celebration. Wow! What an icon this man is. I know there will be Princeton talk, possibly some handing down of orange paraphernalia, and tears. From the first time I saw Princeton, Labor Day 1991, with Dad, I have loved it too. And the whole time, from day one until now, my love affair with Princeton has been intertwined with Pops’ own deep connection to the place. His experience and mine were radically different, and yet we both came away with intense commitment to and affection for the place. In my mind this is central to Princeton’s power: it is a place that can be both wildly various and fundamentally singular.

I’m struggling right now to write a birthday card to Pops, to put into words what he means to me. This man, blisteringly intellectual, stubborn and passionate about his hobbies and interests, more brave and curious at 90 than I am at 33. Who got onto a steamer ship in his mid teens to come to the Hill School as a boarding student from his home in China. Who to this day remains fluent in Mandarin, who uses email and makes ship models from tiny pieces of balsa wood. Who reads and travels voraciously, who is a consummate adventurer. His Christmas card last year was a photograph of himself hanging from a zip line, high in the trees, in Costa Rica. Who never misses a Princeton reunion. I am grateful that I was there in 2006 to walk with him in his first P-Rade as an official member of the Old Guard.

Notably, Pops’ old age has softened him – a man that I recall as being intimidating and slightly aloof has become one who chokes back tears at toasts and who drove long distances to meet my children as soon as they were born. I remember the spring of my freshman year I made him a frame with several photographs of campus, and a handwritten rendering of the quotation above. It was for his birthday, then, 1993 – it must have been his 75th, I realize how. I remember still the short personal note I wrote, and it remains true now: “It is an honor and a privilege to share the legacy of Princeton with you.”