Truly Super Duper

REDEMPTION!

This past weekend we all went on a shopping trip to a store.
An ordinary task for most people.
But for us, it is an unusual venture. Ever since Ryan's diagnosis we have kept him pretty sheltered. We do not take him to the stores with us very often. We took him out to a store probably less than half a dozen times last year. Shopping carts have so many germs and shoppers can be quite disgusting sneezing all over my precious boy. Well, maybe not directly on him, but near enough that it invades his air space. Now that he is suffering an upper respiratory infection just days after swimming in the cesspool of consumerism and bad hygiene, confirming my fears, I believe we may never leave the house again.

So we took him to Target this past weekend. Something we probably should've done before Christmas if we wanted to spare ourselves the embarrassment of failing the most important parental seasonal duty. <<see Santa Fail for details>>

We had a bunch of stuff to return (duplicates of gifts) so we were pretty excited about having a gift card to spend! We walked to the back of the store towards the toy section. To be honest, we had our doubts that we would find anything to fit the bill.

"Okay buddy here we are! Now we are going to look at some toys and we need you to tell us if you see the Super Duper Lightning McQueen Thingy." I explained.

"What does it look like again?" Robert tried to get him to divulge more info.

"It's super duper and has strings on it." He had just mentioned this small detail to me last week when I prodded him once again for info. I dismissed it at first but now I am not so sure. Now I am even more confused.

Great. Strings on a toy car? A car puppet? Doesn't make sense.

We slowly proceeded down each aisle and pointed out each Cars toy we thought might be the elusive prize. He dismissed them all. We even tried to play up the coolness of some of them, desperate to fill the void of his crushed Christmas dream, hoping he would be somehow convinced that this particular toy within our budget was super duper. But alas, he was not easily impressed.

We were coming to the end of the toy section. The aisles were now filled with clearance merchandise of rejected overstocked misfit toys. Our hopes were dim but we trudged forth.

Then we spied an entire shelf of large boxes with the Cars 2 logo. We studied the box and discovered it was a slot car race track, much like the ones we remembered having as kids. We reminisced for a moment then focused on our task.

This was not cool enough to be it. Could it be?

Then we saw it. There in the picture on the box, a child holding a remote that had a wire leading back to the box attached to the race track. As if it both occurred to us at the same time, Robert and I said "Strings!"

"Is this the super duper thingy?" I cautiously asked.

"He looked up from his giant Icee cup which was now half gone and nonchalantly said, "Yep, that's it." No thrill, no excitement, no jumping gleefully, no hugging and kissing everyone as he ran through the aisles crying with joy. Nope, nothing. Not the reaction we were expecting.

"Are you sure this is it?" Robert prodded.

"Yep, that's the one. The one with strings." Again, clinical, dry. As if we should've known this from the start. But this time he perked up slightly as he reached for the box to get a better look.

I could see a glimmer in his eyes. The look on his face - truly super duper! This was it! We had finally found it! The holy grail of Lightning McQueen toys - and at an incredibly discounted price! Who knew it would be a slot car track!

I must've been displaying that concerned look on my face that revealed my doubts of it's value as a toy worthy of our household. Robert looked at me then searched the box for battery information.

You see I have an unwritten checklist of toy ownership feasibility. He knew what I was thinking. This toy failed miserably. Being a Libra I like to weigh the pros and cons of EVERYTHING. I am quite proud of the skills I have to make decisions, the only problem is it sometimes takes forever to reach that decision. This one did not take long. My thought process went something like this: (and yes, there are 3 colorful voices in my head arguing at all times, a la 3 Stooges - the classic one, not the one with that modern day reality TV stooge - I can't even bring myself to post a link)

Does it require batteries? YES

Does it look like something we will have to change the batteries on often? of course 

Ugh! Let me guess, probably a size we do not have.

What size? D's
As I guessed, we do not have any - in fact we just gave some away for Christmas

Does it make noise? Yes.
Typical, though not a deal breaker

Does it have parts small enough for Rowan to eat? Yes.  
Uh, she'll try to eat anything
Does it look like they can get hurt playing with it? Huh! 
I can almost envision the blood.

Could they use the parts as weapons? Yep 
more blood. not looking good.

Are there many pieces? Yes  

about a zillion

Does it look like it's going to break? Uh,  

yes.

Do you have to put it together? ...

Duh!

Once together does it stay that way? :(

Warning! Warning!

BUT...

Is this the toy he wanted? Yes! Will he love it? Yes!! Will it relieve my guilt if I buy it? YES!!!

SOLD!

This year I'll be stocking up on batteries and taking him to the store in November, in a bubble, with plenty of Purell and antibiotics on hand. In the meantime, I need to brush up on my kid-speak deciphering skills.  As Lightning McQueen says, "Wish me luck!"

A Pocketful of Pennies

When we were young, my sisters and I were allowed to roam the neighborhood on our bikes. We'd be gone for hours, unsupervised. As long as we were home by dinner time, which we always were, all was well. When it was raining, we stayed inside and played Barbies, or My Little Ponies, or house with our dolls, always barring our baby brother from the play. But you can only play nice with conventional toys and be cooped up inside for so long, before you start getting rambunctious and creative. We'd run around the house like crazy, bouncing off of everything, and climbing the walls, literally. We lived in a single wide trailer which is pretty small for a family of six. The hallways were narrow and perfectly spaced to climb when you were bare foot, bracing yourself on the moulding. I liked to do this daily. Dad would always yell at me and say I was going to warp the walls.

Sometimes we'd take over the living room and play a made up game of "don't touch the floor" in which you'd pretend that the floor was a swamp filled with alligators, the pillows and removed couch cushions were rocks that jutted above the surface, and the couch was a boat that occasionally sank into the depths stranding us on the precarious rocks. A jump rope was a perfect rescue line that helped to get pulled to safety on the shore - the kitchen.

But one of our favorite games was baseball - inside. We'd use the couch, pillows, and bar stools as the bases. We usually used a pillow as the bat too. Various items played the part of the ball. It was only a few steps between bases, even for a child, in that cramped space. But we imagined it to be a vast ballpark. We each played the role of multiple ball players on each team since there were only three of us - we didn't include our brother most of the time. (He was just a baby so he was probably napping.) Being the oldest and bossiest, I also filled the role of the announcer. I would invent different names for each player. We even had pinch runners, a Cabbage Patch Kid, who would be stand ins when the bases were loaded. Now don't get me wrong here, we were not allowed to play ball inside. We were definitely not permitted to throw things, no matter how soft. But we did these things anyway reassuring our mother that we were careful (as we bounced off the walls from a combination of sugar and boredom).

There is one particular game that sticks out in my mind as I do believe it was the last game of our illustrious careers as amateur pre-adolescent indoor ball players. It was a rainy day, not a downpour, but wet enough that we were inside until it tapered off. The bases were loaded. Our mother had once again told us to "knock it off" because we were "going to break something". And wouldn't you know, a few moments later, we did just that.

One of us hit a fly ball to right field, a homer for sure. It flew just over the television and into one of our mother's prized knick-knacks, a small porcelain wishing well. We watched helplessly as it came crashing down and shattered into pieces on the living room floor. We froze for a moment, waiting to sprint to the bedroom as our mother rushed into the room to see what had just happened. Instead of turning angrily towards us, she began to pick up the pieces and then she began to cry. Overwhelmed with shame, we three began to cry as well. We slowly and silently went to our room, punishing ourselves.

While wallowing in our pity, we began to talk about how sad we had made our mom. She had never cried like that before and it was more punishment than if she had chased us to our room yelling threats of "wait til your father gets home." We devised a plan to make it right. We scrounged together what little change we had in our piggy banks and filled our pockets with the loot. We then did something we had never done before. We left the house without permission.

We snuck out the back door and onto our bikes. We rode as quickly and as silently as we could down the street and out of ear and eye shot of our home. We then roamed the neighborhood, stopping at every yard sale in search for the perfect replacement. We found a small crystal bud vase and a porcelain figurine of two doves. We pulled the change out of our pockets and offered it to the seller. We forked over handfuls of mostly pennies, not sure if we had enough to cover it. But the man, seeing our tear stained faces and overhearing our conversations, decided that we had paid him enough and it was a fair trade.

We swiftly and carefully returned to our home, giddy with pride. We snuck back inside and found our mother in the fragrant kitchen standing over a bubbling pot on the stove. We were sure she hadn't noticed we were gone. We cautiously approached her and gave her the gifts. We told her how sorry we were for breaking her wishing well. She silently took the gifts and once again began to cry. Confused and contrite, we returned to our room to cry some more and wait for the real punishment when our father got home from work. But at dinner that evening, Mom didn't even mention the incident.We had made our peace.

My mother barely recalls that day, but she did confess that although she never let on, she knew we had snuck out as our whispering and the squeaky back door gave us away. That day I learned all kinds of invaluable lessons. I learned to respect others - especially my mother's things, everything is replaceable, silence can speak volumes, never play ball inside, what your father doesn't know can't hurt you, and it is not good to make your mother cry (unless it is from happiness - but that's another story).

Little White Lies

Sometimes it’s good to lie to your kids.

I remember being pregnant with Ryan, my first, and saying how I did not want to perpetuate the lie of Christmas, namely Santa Claus. While it’s true I did not want my kid to become one of those punk little whiny eight-year-olds who think that the only reason for the month of December is to celebrate a big fat man in red, or a greedy and selfish kid who thinks that the holiday is somehow a second birthday party just for him. I was more worried about having a broken hearted kid that reflected my eleven year old self after discovering that Santa was not real. Yes, I was eleven and in the fifth grade when I discovered the truth. After a week of kids laughing at me and subjecting me to tales of how they caught their parents on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and placing them under the tree, I bravely asked my mother to set me straight. I think she was shocked that I still believed. And try as she may to keep up the rouse, I could see the truth in her eyes and I was devastated. I probably said something like, “Well, I suppose the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy aren’t real either, huh?” I wept as the bricks and mortar of childhood imagination crumbled into a pile of dust. The dreams and fancies of fantasy and legend vanished into thin air. The twinkle in my eye dimmed to a dull shine. My very innocence died a cruel death that day. I decided I did not want to subject my children to such deception. So for a while I was quite pleased my son had no interest in such things.

But sometimes it’s good to lie to your kids. Sometimes the wonder in their eyes and the excitement they exude make it all worthwhile. My son is 4 this year and so far I have noticed that four year olds have a good memory, can aptly pay attention (when they want to), and take delight in the fantasy and whimsy of fairy tales, as if you can see the gears of imagination working in that tiny noggin. He was not always like this you see. For the past several years the holiday has come and gone with just a mention, just a passing gesture, and without a detailed explanation to the man in red. Not that any in length description would have made a lasting impression anyhow on a kid whose attention wavered at the slightest sound, a kid who changed his favorite color every day, and who could care less about nonsense traditional fairy tales. He has always been a very matter-of-fact kind of kid. He takes delight in numbers and letters and the way things work. His favorite things are alarms and sirens, smoke detectors, and medical devices that make noise. He seemed to prefer the truth and detailed explanations on how things work. Fairy tales and stories were met with looks of doubt and questions of feasibility. You can’t pull the wool over his eyes. He didn’t care much for TV or movies and in fact did not sit through an entire movie undistracted until he was nearly three years old. Then I was subjected to the same movie playing in a loop nonstop for a week straight, hearing him reciting it word for word, until I found myself humming along to the soundtrack in the middle of the day. 

But I digress; I never saw the sense in taking the time or energy to explain the whole story to him when he had no interest to begin with. For him Christmas encompassed the tangible: snow, decorations, a tree, lots of food, and family, and of course presents. That was fine with me. But this year, he is four and he asks a great many of questions on things that are difficult to explain. After a year of dealing with some of those hard-to-explain things in his life, he has discovered that there are some amazing things in the intangible: the giant tumor that could not be seen and that made him very ill, the skill of the doctors and mysterious multi-colored medicines that made him feel better, and the belief in God and prayer that worked miracles on his very life.

So last night, I took a step in the direction I said I would never venture. I decided in a split second that it was unfair of me to rob him of the enchantment and wonder of the belief in mythological beings that have become the cornerstone of any American childhood. I want him to be just a regular kid and experience all the things ordinary kids do. I guess that this is one thing that has changed for our family since he was diagnosed. I've learned to loosen up. So here we were in the middle of the night, way past his bed time, wide awake and having a conversation about winter. And it honestly didn’t occur to me until we were in the middle of a conversation, that he did not know much about the season. I first hesitantly asked him if he knew the story of Santa Claus. His answer was, of course, a confused no. Immediately his delight and anticipation grew as if I was about to present him with a grand gift. And so began my lie.  

He giggled with glee. His eyes twinkled with delight. He listened intently and with such eagerness as if every word of my story was an ever growing crescendo to a magnificent climax. I told him of the village hidden away at the North Pole, the magical elves who cobble away all year long making special toys, the fanciful flying reindeer, the giant red sled and the sack filled with gifts. I described in great detail the velvety red suit, the snowy white beard, the bowl full of jelly belly. I tried not to leave out any element of the fairy tale that I had once treasured so fondly as a child. And when the story was over he asked me to tell it again and again. Each time I told it was as good as the first. It was as if the story was a treasured secret, a pirate’s chest, and he had just discovered the key to unlock it’s riches. And I found myself feeling like a kid again as I recalled the feelings of enchantment. For a moment I had felt that overwhelming swell of mystery and exhilaration that I once felt so long ago. I had recaptured my lost innocence. 

Finally I broke the spell, insisting we had to go to sleep. It was getting very late and here we were giggling and whispering in bed together in the dark of the night. There was something charming about that; being there in that moment in time cuddled under the covers on a chilly night, with my precious son, enveloped in sheer happiness, knowing an intangible, mystical world may exist. As I tucked him in with visions of flying reindeer, magical elves, and whatever else his imagination dared to dream, I realized why the stories have been passed down for so long. I snuggled up next to him and as he drifted off to sleep I began to cry for my rediscovered spirit of youth.