parenting and children

Grumpy at the swim meet (30 minutes later)

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Okay I’m adjusting my attitude here. I’m trying to get more up beat. But it ain’t easy. 

Everyone is swimming two events on this team except Jesse, who’s only doing the 50 freestyle. I asked why, because they promised me she’d be in at least two. The answer was inchoate. I think they think they’re doing her a favor because she’s shown some, uh, very anxious behaviors at prior meets. 

But nothing could be worse than sitting around on your ass all day, waiting and waiting. And waiting. Still waiting. To swim for 45 seconds, once. 

Jesse’s really struggling with this. Having a hard time staying calm.



Mm. On the up side, Jesse’s heat is scheduled for 1:45 so we won’t have to stick around until the end of the meet to leave. I hope her iPad battery holds on. 

I anticipate that at approximately 1:47, I’ll be standing poolside next to the starting block for Jesse’s lane. The scene is playing out in my mind already. She pulls herself out of the pool. As her arms heave her up, I reach over and jam her sneakers on before her feet even hit the deck. Then I inspire her to run by poking her cute little butt cheeks. We scream “FREEEEEDOOOOM” like Mel Gibson’s William Wallace while we run pell-mell straight to my car, which I’ve pre-packed with all our gear. We never look back as I screech out of the parking lot, leaving a cloud of road salt behind us. 

Grumpy at the swim meet

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oh em gee. It’s the Sunday morning after Daylight Savings Time kicks in, and I have to bring Jesse to an all-day swim meet that starts at 8:00 am. That’s actually 7:00 am. Who does that? Who schedules something like this for 200 kids the day after DST? Some boob, that’s who, in my grumpy opinion. Plus I had to drive 30 minutes to get here and pack a bunch of food to get through the day, so I had to get up at 5:45 Real Time. 

This is our JCC team’s — and my — first all-day meet. I had no idea it was A Scene. People are arriving with pillows ansd sleeping bags, giant coolers and camper chairs. It’s a freakin’ tailgate party in the gym where we all have to hang out for the next 472 hours. 



Aargh. And look at the weird thing going on in the pool. 



It looks like a salmon migration, only it’s children, all putting their hearts into a good warm-up before it’s even 8:00 real time. 

Screw DST. I gotta go find some coffee. 

Grumpy about separation anxiety

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My kids were born with terrible cases of separation anxiety. All they wanted to do as babies was hang onto Anthony or me 24-7 like little monkeys. What’s up with that? I read everywhere that my babies would sleep through the night for 14 hours by the time they were three months old, and also they’d enjoy hanging out by themselves in bassinets and face down on carpets, staring blankly at bright red-and-black plastic toys that make analog noises. Obviously, my children have some significant disorder that caused their reality to veer hard from the life of ease that’s allegedly available to all other parents and babies. Or I have a parenting disorder.

Jesse used to have terrible, terrible separation issues when she was a really wee one, and of course eventually we learned that she does have a disorder in the form of general anxiety. So it’s a good thing we ignored all the books and refused to make her scream her way alone through the nights. Even Grand Sleep Master Ferber acknowledged that a child with anxiety and separation issues shouldn’t be subjected to cry-it-out sleep-training, but he never offered a lick of advice on how a parent goes about determining if a 6-month-old infant has such issues. I found Ferber’s omission outrageous and irresponsible. What was I supposed to do — ask the baby? “Hi sweet pea, woo-joo-boo-jooooo. Do you feel abnormal anxiety about things, my little peanut? Tell me about your deepest fears and nightmares. Woo-joo-boo-jooo.”

Jesse used to cling to me desperately when I dropped her off at school. Sometimes she still does. The only time she consistently didn’t turn back to reach for me was during the 7 months she spent in a Montessori prison, at the tender age of 5. She would get out of the car and never look back as she walked away, her body set, her step resigned as she prepared to face 3.5 hours of emotional abuse from the nasty piece of work who called herself a teacher and pretended to care about Jesse. I still look back on all that with shame, and I’m grateful the memories finally seem to be fading from Jesse’s mind. Why did it take me so long to see that Jesse’s behavior was an indictment of my failure to protect her from something terrible? I suppose I could look back on it with pride. At least I didn’t mistake her depressed walk-away as something positive, hey-look-at-how-independent-she-is-now!

Hm. Nah. Better to feel guilty about it.

Anyway, on the rare occasions when Jesse still needs to cling to me at the schoolhouse doors, I let her cling. I’d rather fill her cup than put another crack in it. Plus it leaves me less grumpy.

Nick also has a lot of separation anxiety, but the last couple months it’s gotten all wacky. He can be sitting in a room with me, not five feet away, wrapped up in some form of play or staring into his iPad. Suddenly he’ll cry out in terror. “MOMMY?? WHERE ARE YOU???”

Every time he screams out like this, I feel goosed. He does it when I’m on the can. He does it when I walk out of the room to get a kleenex. He does it when I go downstairs to do some laundry. Frequently when I head out with a bag of garbage, he’ll race out the kitchen door after me. “MOMMY?? WHERE ARE YOU GOING???” Sometimes he’ll let me walk the dog down the street by myself while he stays in the house. I have to promise to stay without eye-shot of the driveway. Even so, at least half the time he’ll come out to the street in his bare feet to hunt me down. Announcing where I’m going and what I’m about to do makes no difference, because he apparently has the short-term memory of a small-brained dog.

One day he did it while I was playing the piano loudly and badly. Nick was sitting on the floor just a few feet away while I generated some serious decibels. A Chopin ballade, I think. “MOMMY??? WHERE ARE YOU????” I was irate, and I chewed him out. “WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING?? I’M RIGHT HERE! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU???”

He was visibly relieved as he answered sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders. “Oh. I forgot.”

My kids follow me around the house like little comet trails. Last week we were snuggling in bed in the morning, and then I decided to get up. I made the mistake of announcing my intent. Suddenly Nick and Jesse were on top of me. I struggled for a full five minutes, in a quiet and desperate battle to get them off me without hurting them or myself. It was like having two tiny zombies after me. They were relentless and unbelievably strong. They wanted a piece of me. I suppose one could argue it was sweet and loving and all that, and I confess it was… but on a demented level. I was exhausted when I finally broke free, and thankful to make a break for the bathroom. I need some space from my kids’ separation issues.

* * * * *

Today we did something new. Jesse is nine now. Notwithstanding social norms that appear to require that I not leave my kids alone until they’re 19 or 20, I feel that she’s old enough and responsible enough to be home alone for short periods of time, like if I have to run out for 15 minutes. With the doors locked and a phone and the dog by her side, she’s fine until I return. I’ve proposed this to her on many occasions to no avail. Her separation anxiety kicks in, and she always follows me out the door. But today she was home sick (again), and I needed to pick Nick up from school, and she was tired out from running errands with me. She decided to stay home for the 15 minutes it took me to retrieve Nick.

I wasn’t sure how it would go. I showed her again how to call my cell phone. We practiced. She said she was fine. I headed out the door. Sure enough, her anxiety acted right up. I was still in the garage when the first telephone call came through.

Oh wait, that was me calling her. I just wanted to make sure she was okay and wasn’t going to run out behind the car as I backed out so that I could run her over.

Jesse was fine. So I drove off. My stomach was feeling kind of funny so I thought I might need to run back home to go to the bathroom and check in on Jesse, but I decided to wait it out. The second call came as I pulled into the school parking lot. Now I was really worried I would have to run back home to grab Jesse.

Wait. I actually think I made that call too.

After I got Nick, we hustled back to the car. He was in a real hurry to get back to Jesse, I tell you, probably because he wanted to make sure she wasn’t losing her mind to fear. In fact, he almost fell over from rushing back to the car so fast, so it was a good thing I had him by the shoulder of his coat to help drag him in the right direction.

Okay okay, I’ll just go ahead and admit that I placed the third call too, as Nick and I drove back home. By then, Jesse was completely exasperated with me. I was obviously interrupting something.

I started to worry on a whole different level. Would the house still be standing when I got home? Would Jesse still be inside? Was she planning to take the dog on a walk without me? What if she got lost?

Meanwhile, my stomach kept churning. It was probably from all the pickles I ate at lunch. Also I was feeling a little short of breath. Sometimes that happens when the days are really, really cold like today.

When Nick and I got home, Jesse was running around the living room taking photos of Madeline with her iPad. There was a kitchen chair next to the fridge. Huh. Jesse explained that she had gotten some treats for Madeline. I think she might have also snuck some treats for herself. Jesse was relaxed and cheerful, completely at ease, and a little disappointed we got back so quickly.

I was so happy for her. It’s a good thing I don’t have separation anxiety. I’m obviously helping Jesse get over her own anxiety by being a great role model.

Grumpy about pool pee

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Jesse has a swim meet tomorrow. She’s been having an anxiety attack about it for about a week. Yesterday and today she woke up making noises that were somewhere between yodeling, whining and keening.

This morning she flopped into bed with me and Nick, and as she wheedled I finally remembered an old lesson from therapy: the unknown danger is more debilitating than the one you can see and understand. That’s what makes an anxiety disorder so disruptive sometimes. Your body says something terrible is going to happen, but you just don’t know what — it’s a shadow lurking around every bend, and you can never really name it. Accepting that it’s only in your imagination sometimes just makes it worse, because then you feel bat-shit crazy.

I asked Jesse, “What exactly is making you so anxious about the swim meet?”

“I dunnooooo.”

So we set about putting a face on the monster in the closet.

Jesse has the ordinary fears — I’ll suck at the meet, I’ll let the team down, I’ll swim the wrong stroke. And also one more. She worries she’ll pee in the pool while she’s competing because when she’s nervous she feels like she needs to pee. This is what she’s most afraid of today.

I said aloud what none of us really wants to think about: every competitive swimmer pees in the pool at some point. I guarantee it. It’s the dirty secret. Pool pee. It’s not something Jesse needs to worry about. If she pees, she pees. No one ever has to know.

Jesse’s swim coach went there with me today. “I see maybe 400 people in this pool every day. I PROMISE you, at least a hundred of them pee in the pool.”

Uuuugh. Head. Spinning.

Jesse is having trouble finding a balance between her anxiety about the swim meet and her OCD reaction to pool pee.

As for me, I find that knowing the face of this particular monster has made things worse. I was fine before. Now all I’ll be thinking about at the swim meet tomorrow is pool pee.

Grumpy about Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s Day is a pain in my ass. The kids have to take Valentine’s cards to school for each of their classmates, and historically it’s just been a messy and painful proposition in my world. What a shameful waste of resources in a resource-depleted world. Can’t a class full of kids just all stand in a circle and hug each other? I bet that would do more for them than a mess of cards with illegible handwriting.

But this year Nick is old enough to participate in making his cards, and Jesse is sometimes Little Miss Pulled-Together, so I felt less apprehensive as I stepped into the Valentine cycle. I got materials together for cards — card stock, heart doilies, ribbon, some stickers, tiny cupcake papers which we mashed out and pasted onto the cards, organic lollipops. I felt so Martha Stewart. Both kids were home sick today, and everything was laid out on the dining table, so we got down to business this morning. And in one of those magical interludes that sometimes happens in a life, Jesse, Nick and I spent a FULL HOUR peacefully making Valentines. No fighting. No whining.

Frankly, it was bizarre.

Nick’s K4 teacher sent home sheets with little photos of each of his wee mates, so we cut those out and glued one onto each card. Nick took a look through the pictures and focused on one kid. He shook his head disapprovingly. “That dude behaves real bad in class, mommy.”

“You still have to make a Valentine card for him.”

“Why.”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. You can’t leave him out.”

Nick looked at me sidelong. I was making no sense to him. Jesse stepped in with the profound wisdom of a kindly nine-year-old who’s spent a LOT of time in therapy, and who remembers well how her own strange behaviors alienated her as a wee lass. She spoke in a blunt, matter-of-fact tone. “Nick. Sometimes when a kid is acting bad in class, he just needs someone to say, ‘do you want to play with me? I think you’re nice. I like you. I’ll be your friend.'”

She paused in her card-making to look at Nick for a second. “You should do that.”

My corporeal form disappeared and I melted into a soulful puddle on the floor. No no no, that’s not right. My body felt like it was filling with a joyful anthem, somewhere beyond the words and music of this world. It blared inside me like Gandalf’s staff set alight, healing the dark and grumpy and cynical corners of my being for a moment.

Then I thought things like, wow. Jesse’s pretty amazing. It’s like stardust is glittering out her eyes, and rainbows are coming out her ass. Which isn’t as obnoxious as it sounds. I was just feeling a little overwhelmed, and I didn’t think the kids would understand why I was crying, and thinking something silly like that made me laugh a little instead of tearing up.

Right. So Nick was sold. He went ahead and made a card for his bad little mate. A few minutes later, Jesse looked down the list of her classmates and spied “Amy.” (pseudonym, right?) Amy isn’t very nice to Jesse. Amy tries to put Jesse down in art class and seems to make fun of her a lot. Jesse tolerates it and pushes back well, but she is not fond of Amy. She didn’t want to give Amy a Valentine’s card.

I reminded her of what she had just told Nick. Jesse jumped on it without hesitation. “You’re right, Mommy!” She pondered for a moment as she rummaged on the table. “I heard her talking with Mrs. Gember a while ago and I heard Mrs. Gember say, ‘your family is going through a lot right now.'”

Why does my Jesse hear and remember all these things?

Jesse decided to make Amy a beautiful card.

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Not bad. I like the composition. I suggested Jesse not say anything she didn’t mean — no reason to be fake. She could just say “from Jesse.” But she chose love. Her gift to her own self-worth was not to write a special message to Amy. She nodded confidently as she made that decision.

For other friends, Jesse wrote very personal messages, one-liners. To a buddy who worked hard on a backflip off the balance beam in gym: “You do awesome backflips.” To a friend who’s shy about her freckles: “You have such beautiful freckles.” To a  friend who’s obsessed with a hat: “I love the meow hat that you wear.” To a friend who gets her in trouble for laughing in class: “I like it when you bother me.”

Then there were the ones that were strangely sad in their honesty. To a boy who used to run and play wildly with her in first grade: “I remember when we used to race together.” To a girl who was a dear friend in kindergarten and first grade: “Me and you loved to play together.” These are kids Jesse has lost touch with, hasn’t connected with this year. Should a nine-year-old be feeling nostalgia and longing? Maybe Jesse understands love better than a lot of adults.

Jesse secretly made a card for us as well. We didn’t wait for Valentine’s Day to read it:

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I think this little girl may heal me yet.

Grumpy about cargo farts

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It was another cargo fart day for Nick. We’ve had way too many of these lately.

He took a dump this morning in private, and before he let me come in to wipe his ass, he mercy-flushed. When I approached him, he explained to me that the piece of poop was “SOOOOO HUUUUUGE” that he just had to flush it. Then he also pointed out the extensive smear marks remaining in the toilet from that turd trying to circle its way down the toilet drain.

Sigh.

When Nick says his poops are huge, he’s not exaggerating. They are, as I’ve said before, man poops. Given their length and diameter, I don’t understand how they can exist in his little torso. It defies anatomical explanation. I hypothesize that there’s a wormhole inside his body that leads to another dimension in which the stools are stored until they’re ready to re-enter earth’s atmosphere and exit his poophole. Maybe the wormhole was formed from all the probiotics and yogurt I feed him.

Anyway, in the course of communicating essential bowel movement facts to me today, Nick stood up, which means his butt squeezed up, which in turn means the messy poo sticking to his ass got smeared all over his cheeks.

Sigh.

I got him to bend over and put his hands on the floor, and I went at it with some wet wipes. For some reason, I had a gag reflex going and my eyes watered. I’m not usually like that, but the smell and mess today were something else.

We both survived and moved on with our day. But about an hour later, Nick spoke as he wandered over to me. “Mommy, I pooped my pants.”

Sigh.

He was walking a little funny, but not like a chimpanzee.

“Is it a lot or a little?”

“Just a little, mommy. I fawted.”

We ran upstairs to the bathtub. Before I could stop him, he shoved his hands into his underwear to fondle his butt.

Sigh.

I tried not to over-react. I managed to pull down his pants without his hands touching me, and sure enough there was a little squirt of the Wet Brown Stuff nestled snuggly in his underpants.

You know the drill. Shower. New clothes. Wash the shit off the old clothes. More gagging and eye-watering. Small load of laundry. Recover.

I keep telling Nick not to fart if he has to give it a good push. I keep telling him to sit on the can before he bears down even the tiniest bit. I keep telling him that an honest fart doesn’t need any help. It has no impulse control. It just blurts naturally. It’s like a bubble popping. It’s like a breeze casually blowing through the trees. It’s like a little kid tripping over a tree root. It’s like, it’s like… It’s like all sorts of things that don’t involve shitting in your pants. He’s not listening to me.

Nothing defeats me like the shit my kids give me.

grumpy about the pick-me-up card

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My last post was about how annoyed I am about misdirected inspirational one-liners. So it goes without saying that Anthony and the kids reacted to my grumpy by giving me feel-good cards.

Last week Anthony had to go to Florida for a few days, to a conference where he didn’t have to present or discuss anything. He had to spend his days socializing and eating well and working out instead. Without Jesse or Nick or me. Poor, poor fellow. While he was gone, Nick came down suddenly with a bad fever late Friday night, which left him acting lethargic and miserable like he had the flu. And Jesse seemed to be developing a new cough. I took them to the doctor first thing Saturday morning, and then Nick and Jesse and I were trapped in the house for 24 hours as we waited to see if his flu test came back positive. (I take quarantine seriously for infectious diseases and viruses. I don’t want to be responsible for infecting somebody who has compromised immunities. You probably don’t want to get me started on the anti-vaccination movement.)

It turned out Nick just had a really bad ear infection. Still, being trapped in the house for a couple days with one sick child and one stir-crazy child is always emotionally exhausting for me. I don’t get all “la la la let’s do some crafts!” I get all “stop coughing in my face! Stop whining! Stop playing with the dog’s butthole! Stop touching me!” I’ll never know if the kids really are jackasses or if it’s all in my grumpy, irritable head.

Okay, I do know, but I don’t feel like saying it out loud right now.

So Anthony took the kids away for lunch and a matinee when he got back in town. After 5 sweet, silent hours by myself, the minions came back bearing cards for me.

Here was Jesse’s:

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Dang that’s a cute little round thing. Hedgehog, right? The message inside:

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Aaaw. And Jesse wrote this note:

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“Sometimes when I’m a little prickly you still love me. You still are nice to me. You’re the best!”

Wishful thinking on Jesse’s part, I think, but sweet. I felt like I was the prickly one, but Anthony quietly chewed me out when I said that out loud, pointing out that Jesse was saying she was the one being prickly. Check.

Nick also gave me a card.

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Okay then, tell me. What do you see? A giant blue peacock? Are those feathers a romanticized depiction of my enormous ass? (Shrinking, by the way, thanks to the bipolar diet I’m on.) This is apparently what Nick sees:

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Really. I’m amazing. Amazingly stinky when I forget to shower, amazingly prickly when I’m overwhelmed by the kids, amazingly under-achieving? I know I know I know, head slap that grumpy out of me! The best part was Nick’s special message to me, dictated to Daddy, who wrote it in his best handwriting:

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Perfect. Nick loves me 69. Just last week he loved me 15, so the vector is moving in the right direction. Someday he might even catch up to me:  I love my family infinity.

grumpy about the holidays – day 25 (Curtains Up)

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Merry Christmas! Ho ho ho! I stayed up too late making magic for the kids, so I’m really tired. My fingers are numb and arthritic from putting together 4.2 million Lego pieces. I was almost reduced to tweezers; my eyes are permanently crossed. My grip is exhausted from trying to rip open cardboard boxes and put together the stupid Hot Wheels set Jesse insisted Santa would bring. (He did. It’s awesome. At least, it was awesome for the 5 minutes she played with it this morning.) My stomach is distended beyond all reason from overeating.

But still, it was a really amazing Christmas and I’ll save the grumpy tales for tomorrow. Jesse has never made it through a Christmas season with so much attention to simple happiness, and with so little affectation of anxiety. It was the best Christmas gift ever. Nick was a five-year-old enjoying his first fully conscious Christmas, full of wonder, curiosity, joy, and greed. We didn’t have to get up too early, and I only yelled at the kids a few times (and really, it was my own fault for getting them the three-foot-long light sabers).

The Star Wars Legos, which consumed me for way too many hours, were well received. “Whoooooa, it’s exactly what I wanted,” said a tiny, awestruck voice from the living room.

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The hexbot car thingy went over well, and the house wasn’t too trashed.

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Jesse got me an elf apron.

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And really, after putting that on, nothing could bring me down. (Except for maybe this picture. Gawd, go on a diet FINALLY girl. Too much chin and cheek.)

Jesse put together an apple galette, and she didn’t even spit or cough on it.

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When we were good and stir crazy, we grabbed the remote control helicopters and a few dragons and headed over to a park with a large field, right next to Lake Michigan. We flew things, chased the dog, and wandered down to the lake. On the trail to the lake, Nick and I avoided all the zombies, vampires and witches, probably because he let me vaccinate him with my kisses.

We even found a magic portal.

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I told Nick that if he crawled through this strange little doorway created by the two saplings, he might find himself in another place, someplace magic. He didn’t want to do that. I did, but I didn’t fit. Oh well. On we went to the magical lake.

There was no snow on the ground, but the beautiful day made up for it. We wandered cheerfully down the beach, breathing in life and enjoying each other’s company. Anthony found a big stick, and like a good dog he carried it down the beach.

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The clouds were perfect; my family even more so. We laughed; we were at ease; there was much smiling and simple pleasure, and always love.

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If there’s such a thing as a perfect day, today was it.

Grumpy about the holidays – day 23 (counting my blessings)

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Yesterday some peeps who matter to me lost a brother and a son and an uncle and so on, in a car accident. They are such decent and good people, and there’s nothing I can do for them except to keep on keeping on. It’s a senseless and untimely death, but for that matter, what death isn’t?

I find that it’s easy, in the face of death, to forget about the silliness and joys of the world, or worse yet, to decide they need to be set aside for a time so that one can devote one’s full energy to, well, suffering. Sometimes grief is so utterly overwhelming you have no choice but to give in to it.

The horrible reality of life is that it’s full of death. And yet here we are, bearing children who are destined to die, and even making the best of it. We live on both sides of it all.

Last week Nick asked me, “Mommy, when I die will I not be real anymore?” It was a gut-punch. I had to catch my breath and dig deep to stop the tears, and I wasn’t even sure why they wanted to come. I answered best I could. You will always be real, forever, no matter what happens to your body, or this world, or this galaxy, or this universe, no matter what else is real and what is myth. The dinosaurs died 60 or 70 million years ago. Most of them returned to stardust long ago. But they’re still real, as real as the mountains we climb and the lakes we swim in, and they’re still shaping our world.

To myself I added, you’ll always be real to me, as real as the extraordinary love and pain and guilt I feel right now, feelings that are bound together in a strange dance as I watch my children awaken to mortality and suffering, as they learn to live on both sides of this journey we’re all on.

Jesse once sat on the can taking a dump, pondering death and heaven. I don’t recall her words exactly, but she put two ideas together as she bore down:

Mommy, you always say that a piece of your daddy is in your heart, even though he’s dead.

That’s right, I answered. He’s always with me.

She continued. My friend at school says when you die, she believes you go to heaven.

That’s right, I replied, a lot of people believe that.

Then, said my beautiful, magical little child, since your daddy is in your heart, it’s like heaven is in your heart.

Right. That’s where I think the people we care about stay, after they die — right here with us, despite all the mistakes, the failures, the fights and regrets, and despite all the love.

Grumpy about the vacation: Assateague

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We’ve finished up our camping interlude, with 3 nights at Assateague and 1 quick night at Kiptopeke State Park in lieu of a hotel.

We got dirty and had fun in the ocean and bay, except for times when we were dirty and didn’t have fun. That’s how it goes when you travel with two little kids and a grumpy mom.

The first tent night was tough. Jesse had a hard time settling down, and there was much moaning and groaning. We fixed the problem for the other nights via extreme bribery, 5 entire bucks if you can be quiet for the night. It seemed wrong somehow to be barking at my child at 2 am, “remember the 5 dollars? Be quiet right now if you want them!” But it was effective, so I was satisfied.

There were wild ponies right in our campsite!

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Down side: steaming piles of horse shit right in our campsite.

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We had loads of fun on the beautiful beaches. The surf was mellow and we lucked out with low tides, so the kids were able to enjoy pretty calm seas on the first ocean trip of their young lives. We built a sand fort and populated it with little mole crabs we captured in our digs. We eventually set the crabs free in the surf and mocked the passing lady who was grossed out that they were STILL ALIVE.

Nick didn’t act like a kid who’s afraid of water as he waded out into the frothing surf and vanquished waves with his imaginary powers. Jesse swam in and rode waves on her boogie board, overcoming anxiety and outright fear. She was tiny and lithe and spectacular. There were pelicans, herons and egrets, gulls, wading birds, horseshoe and normal crabs, dolphins, and a huge school of fish the dolphins had herded to the surf. Magical.

Down side: sand. We discovered that Nick is OCD about sand between his toes, requiring surgical precision in the removal of each grain when we leave the beach. Jesse is OCD at-large, so at random moments she just freaks out for a while about sand on different parts of her body. All we can really do is grit our teeth and wait until she works through it.

I have no beach photos to share. I didn’t take any because I was playing. Sometimes I like not having pictures; they have a tendency to replace broad deep memories with a limited, one-dimensional idealization.

But also sometimes I wish I was a pro so I could capture an image that was the event unto itself. One evening we saw the full moon rise before night fell. The sky was red and purple from the setting sun, and the moon shimmered through a mist of clouds. It lasted all of 20 seconds before the clouds covered it up, and it took my breath away. Unfortunately, this is the image my iPhone captured:

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Yeah. That little dot in the sky is the big beautiful moon. The real thing was much more impressive. I wish you had seen it with me.