If you sit on the toilet in the half bath on the first floor of our house, your face is one foot away from a window looking out on the road. So if you’re careful in adjusting the shutters, you can watch the world go by while you do your doodie in privacy. If you’re, say, a guy peeing and you forget about the shutters, then the world passing by might have to see your sweet cheeks, for better or worse.

Right. I’ve already completely lost my train of thought, and I’ve only been typing for 45 seconds. Give me a second.

Oh. Here’s where I was going. I ran in for a quick pee and what did I see out the window but two teenagers fighting. I couldn’t hear them, but it was clearly a lovers’ spat, old school. She was moping and gloomy, staring at the ground and very emotional, but silent. He was angry, gesticulating and nattering. They were just standing there in my front yard, fighting. I didn’t like that. Nick came over, because I was peeing so he had a sudden inchoate need for me. I told him to look out the kitchen screen door, which is five feet away from the toilet. He pressed his face on the screen and stared at the young couple, but they took no notice. I told Nick, “say hi.” He complied. He put on his biggest smile, started waving wildly, and screamed repeatedly. “HI! HIIIIII!! HIIIIIIII!” The teens looked over in anger and shock. They scurried off down the street, just exactly like I remember peeps doing in the ’90’s when I would happen to interrupt their crack-ho deals on Logan Circle in DC. Good riddance.

Little kids are good for something after all.

I know this is a bit of a cheat, but I really don’t want to spin on actual poop today. It was just an ordinary but shitty – and very long – day in the life of a middle aged, financially stable, jobless mom in America.

12:00 am. Get up to pee. Blame the BP meds.

1:00 am. Get up to pee. Blame the sparkling lemonade and gin.

3:00 am. Get up to pee. By now I’m shuffling like Jack Nicholson at the end of Cuckoo’s Nest. Blame everything.

5:30 am. Respond to Nick’s plea to snuggle by letting him nestle his little sweet head in my right armpit and throw the rest of his body across me.

5:45 am. Remove my now-asleep arm from under Nick and try to put the rest of me back to sleep.

6:30 am. Respond to Jesse’s plea to snuggle. She takes the left armpit, Nick takes the right again. I’m now in a crucifixion posture. They each throw arms and legs across me, and then the dog lies down on my crotch. I stare at the ceiling.

7:15 am. Wake from a light doze and roll out of bed, while Nick relentlessly goes about the business of trying to get Jesse and me to play with him. Get dressed and try to stop drooling so I can deal with morning time.

8:00 am. Jesse’s out the door with Anthony for her twice-a-month chiropractor visit. I have to holler goodbye from upstairs because Nick is pooping, and he’ll only do that if ma or pa is reading him a book. Wipe his ass, get him dressed.

8:15. Nick and I head to Whole Foods for dinner party shopping. Friends are coming over Saturday night. At W.F. Nick has a tantrum about which type of yogurt tube he wants. I won’t get him the box with the cow picture because the other brand, which tastes exactly the same to Nick’s delicate palate, is on sale. Bad, cheap mommy. I make it up to him by letting him eat half a chocolate bar, or at least that’s what he manages to put down before I notice and take it away. The sugar buzz hits him in seconds, like a needle in a vein. Eventually I give him my iPhone to shut him up but he locks the phone somehow. Never mind. Nick keeps talking and yelling.

10:15. Home. Put away groceries, clean up the living room, pack Nick’s swim bag, check my calendar, make lists.

10:40. Play time with Nick. We have 30 minutes, and this is his time. If there is any mercy in the universe it will smite his dragon collection and turn it into a pile of ashes. Nope. No mercy. Instead I have to watch 3-headed fire dragon, aka secret night dragon, digi-volve into spinosaurus and back over and over again, and ladybug goes on rides on ice dragon’s back, and we have battles with poison darts, ice daggers, sun rays, and tornado winds. Nick is upset by my mountain dragon’s innovative and dramatic diarrhea-rock storm attack; he walks away shaking his head and groaning.

11:15. Run out to Dominos. I’m picking up 36 pizzas for Jesse’s second grade picnic. I have to do this with Nick, which adds unique challenges. I save him from impaling himself on the exposed long piece of re-bar in the parking lot and remember to say thank you to the pizza guys. The pizzas barely fit in the back of my VW Passat wagon, because it’s so full of all of my re-usable insulated bags.

11:45. 100 second graders see me arriving at the park with a cascade of pizzas. I’m a rock star. For the next hour, I help serve out food to kids seated at trough-like picnic tables. All the food has been carefully selected for Jesse’s class (mostly by me) to avoid eggs and nuts, so that her little friends don’t accidentally taint her or another little girl in her class. The other classes are supposed to have their own thing going. 15 minutes in, I catch a teacher’s aide from another class squirting ranch dressing onto plates in Jesse’s class. Come on! Obscenities swarm but I swallow them and bark, “WHOA! Is that ranch? Did you read its label for eggs? GIVE ME THE BOTTLE.”

When it comes to my Jesse’s egg allergy, I don’t have room for diplomacy, good manners, or anyone’s feelings. I have a job to do. I’m bitchy enough that the lady hands the bottle over snappy quick, like a plebe. Sure enough, eggs. Hearty heart-felt apologies ensue. Whatever. There’s a new person on my shit list.

12:45. Drive home to quickly feed Nick lunch before swim lessons. I have exactly 1 hour from park departure to pool-side. We get home and I find something for Nick to eat. I scratch the back of my head and notice it feels like it’s been rubbed with gooping handfuls of bacon fat. How long since my last shower…? Huh. 15 minutes until we have to leave. I rush upstairs and take a 3-minute shower. I remember to brush my hair before dressing.

1:45. I’ve arrived at Nick’s swim lesson on time, barely. Lucky for me, his semi-private lesson friend is a bit late. Yay! I feel downright competent. Then swim teacher Sarah approaches. “So I guess you forgot about Jesse’s lesson yesterday?” Shit shit shit. Embarrassing, but water under the bridge now. I get to spend the next half hour having Nick show me his best swim moves — stationary forward kick, spin-in-place-like-Eeyore backstroke, quiver-in-terror jump into pool, and put-my-face-in-the-water-like-it’s-boiling-oil. After the lesson and cleaning up, there’s time for 15 minutes at the indoor playspace at the gym.

3:00. Leave the gym. Nick accompanies me to Ace Hardware and Pik & Save groceries for sundries and booze. We’re moving fast now, because I have a lot to do and there’s no margin.

3:30. Pick up Jesse. Deal with all that crazy and head home. Walk in the kitchen door and make my own crazy noises. I realize I haven’t had a chance to wash any dishes, not even breakfast. Do the dishes – by hand, because the dishwasher is permanently broken and replacing it is a long story. Make chimmichurri sauce for Saturday party. It takes a surprisingly long time to take 2 cups of cilantro leaves off the stems, but it tastes so much better without the stems. Worth every minute.  Clean up the mess from that. Find snacks for the kids. Yell at them a couple times for fighting.

4:45. Anthony made it home, so I get to take Jesse to her shrink alone. Tiny woot woot. It turns out to be a good session, very positive and constructive. Dr. Abrams reminds me how wonderfully Jesse is doing, how far she’s come, how amazing she is. He’s always so up-beat and positive. I’m not really good with that sort of attitude. It’s amazing that he doesn’t annoy me.

6:00. Leave Dr. Abrams’s office and head to dinner. Anthony’s got Nick. Jesse wants Qdoba. Done. I remembered her iPad, so she eats and plays, hassling me intermittently to complete difficult levels for her in Thomas Was Alone.  Then she wants ice cream. She’s been awesome, so we hit Baskin Robbins and chill out.

7:30. We get home finally. I run upstairs to find my boys. Anthony is sitting on the footstool next to the toilet doing his book-reading duty while Nick does his doodie. It’s a rare double-poop day. Anthony’s in a mood, because he just keeps reading as I stand at the bathroom door and say hello. Nick takes a break from bearing down; his eyebrows rise and he points to me. “Uh, Daddy. Look.” Yeah. Hi guys. Good to see you too. I run straight back outside to mow the lawn. Anthony’s in the throes of spring allergies and I have to get it done, because it’s going to seed.

8:15. Done mowing. The kids are watching Willy Wonka and dad has gotten everyone ready for bed. Get cleaned up myself. Type this post while Nick intermittently asks me to snuggle.

9:00. Done. I am completely cooked. But scrolling up through this list, I’m thinking… Maybe it wasn’t that shitty a day. Just busy and long. It could have been worse. I could have been constipated.

Going on 3 or 4 months now, every time I think Nick can’t make me any more bat-shit crazy, he evolves to a whole new level of annoying. Right now he’s clingy, needy, whiny. He’s prone to tantrums. He’s got terrible separation anxiety. He’s incredibly picky about food. He won’t sit still for anything. He wants to caress me with his feet and hands all day long; it’s creepy. He hates sharing my attention. The second Jesse comes out of school, he intercedes before I can even manage a hello hug, running off like a rabbit or grabbing my hand and dragging me around while he screams.

A few days ago as we waited at Jesse’s school pick-up, Nick was better than normal. I hadn’t done or said anything to him that I would regret later. Jesse came out and we had about 3 seconds of peace as I gave her a hug. Next I turned to a fellow mom to say something. Suddenly Nick ran up to me and (oh my gawd) pulled my shirt up, all the way up past my bra. I blurted an obscenity, I remonstrated, I pulled my shirt back down in terror. The usual. Jesse hustled Nick a few paces away to safety as I nattered. I suspect most of the 30 other parents standing around didn’t notice, either because they were dealing with their own kids or because they’re used to Nick and me.

I told Anthony about it during breakfast the next day. I was irritated about something Nick was doing at the table and I started whining about his developing GBD. (I just made that up, generalized behavior disorder. Is that a thing?) Nick sat there fidgeting, listening intently and looking like he felt cornered. I got to the part where he pulled up my shirt, and I described my horror at my bra being exposed. Just then Jesse called out from the living room, in a dismissive tone that said it was no big deal: “It was only an inch of your bra. That’s all I saw.” Anthony burst out laughing while I gesticulated behind Nick’s back to get Anthony to stay serious. I failed. Nick was relieved to be off the guillotine.

A few minutes later Jesse wandered nonchalantly into the kitchen and over to my chair, leaning in on me for a light hug. She finished her thought, looking at me all sweet and innocent-like. “A four year old is an annoying age, an irritating age. You just have to tolerate it.”

Mmmm. I’m not sure I agree with Jesse, but I have to give her proper respect for coming to her brother’s aid on an issue where she can anticipate a lot of angry push-back from me. Siblings should stick together.

My brother Mark tells an apocryphal tale about being lined up with Ted and Eric for spankings when they were little, after Dad discovered one of them had done something really naughty. Dad couldn’t figure out which kid was guilty, so he told my brothers that they’d each get a spank, one after another, until one of them told (I would have been too little to make the line up). Dad had huge, scary spanking hands. Mark remembers it with fresh pride as if it happened yesterday: the brothers never broke. No one tattled, and Dad finally gave up.

It remains an unspoken and (I believe) unbroken code among the four of us. No matter what else goes wrong, even between us, we’re banded together in loyalty, against our parents and the world. We may not have always believed it of each other, but I do think it’s true.

If I knew my dad at all, I know that he would have been impressed and entertained by his loyal boys, but also very grumpy about his total lack of authority. He would have been even more grumpy about spanking them, because it couldn’t have been something he wanted to do. He wasn’t a hitter; he was a grumbler and yeller.

Listening to Jesse as she leaned on me, I thought of Mark’s story and felt the same as Dad must have – a mix of respect and pride, plus a healthy dose of grumpy. All I could do was stare at her and shake my head. She gets outraged at Nick herself. He drives her crazy. So what’s she doing defending him? When did my kids get old enough to gang up on me?

Parenthood fills me with hubris sometimes. I float up on a cloud of ego, buoyant from the lightweight moral advice I blather at my kids. All of that is just empty noise. In the end, they’re apparently learning one of the most important family-value lessons on their own: you have to defend your siblings from your parents, even when you’re defending behavior that really pisses you off. I guess that’s because it’s between you and your brother (or sister), not between him and your mom or dad.

I’m incredibly proud of my kids for starting down this journey of loyalty to each other at such a young age. But I still yelled at Nick and gave him a time out before the morning was done. Thanks to Jesse, I didn’t feel as bad about it as usual. He had her to help him through it.

Jesse’s second grade class gets these little pamphlets called “book talk,” in which they practice composition by responding to questions about a book they’ve read in class. I don’t know who comes up with this crap. “Fox thought the sky was falling. Would you ever believe the sky is falling? Why or why not?” That just slayed me. Jesse was flummoxed too. She could only answer the first question, thus: “No.” Accompanied by a helpless shoulder shrug untranslatable to paper. The second question stumped her completely.  She became overwhelmed by anxiety, because she was supposed to write FIVE sentences about this absurd subject. Also she couldn’t answer technically because she doesn’t yet have any real concept of what the sky IS, let alone why it can’t “fall” in the thumpy sense of a rock. So Jesse was falling apart, in tears. Anthony and I had to intervene. Anthony gave it a go, dictating the following extended response to the question: “No. Because that is stupid.”

Notably, this didn’t help Jesse’s mood. We ended up having a long talk, full of all kinds of useful and profound advice. Sometimes schoolwork is stupid, but you have to do it anyway. When it’s lame, just write something stupid and don’t worry about it. Mommy and daddy won’t judge. Second graders should think in short sentences, not long sentences, and say obvious things. Then you will be able to write five sentences about anything. Stuff like that. There are a lot of good reasons why Anthony and I never considered home schooling.

Today Jesse pulled a book talk thingy out of her backpack and, among other things, showed me this question:

My interest was piqued. This is what she wrote:

Five sentences, reducing Anthony and me down to our parental essences. Anthony gets creepy thoughts out of Jesse. That is amazing. If I were Anthony, I’d be walking around on cloud nine right now, thinking to myself, my daughter just told me I rescue her from the monsters in her head. Awesome.

As for me, I helped Jesse make short sentences. Now I’m walking around thinking to myself, my daughter just told me I advised her to dumb it down. Put me on the list for mother of the year again.

We spent most of the Memorial Day weekend gardening. I don’t go in much for token remembrance days, and I don’t feel like spending just one day out of the year glumly remembering fallen soldiers. I feel that we should remember their ultimate sacrifice every day, rubbing our noses in it repeatedly and thinking hard about whether the wars we wage — justified or based on lies — are really worth the lives of the boys and girls we send to kill and die in them.

Instead of focusing on truisms, I prefer to honor the dead by simply embracing life, even as I struggle to grasp the horrible reality of soldiers dying in battle. Hence gardening. At this time of year, it’s a life-affirming labor. Anthony and I dug and split plants, thereby re-enacting the fish-and-bread miracle (gardeners’ edition). We effected a different kind of miracle by relocating a couple dozen volunteer hellebore seedlings from under the parents, our beloved plants spreading around the yard like a mushroom cloud. As we weeded here and there, we spied out rare trilliums, less-rare jack-in-the-pulpits, dainty lilies-of-the-valley, and many other untended treasures. Jesse and Anthony filled our pots with a lively array of annuals. We discovered baby chickadees nested in a deep dark hole on an old stump. We could barely make them out, so we used a flashlight to give the kids a better view of new life finding shelter in a dead thing. The wee babies stared up at us in frightened and curious silence, while the parents squawked their helpless ire from high in nearby trees.

The kids came outside Monday just as a long breeze blew a cloud of white petals off our apple tree. The petals flew thick through the air like snowfall. Nick burst into laughter as he ran to the tree with his arms raised, yelling in noisy wonder about “all the flowers in the air!!” Jesse joined the chase with more peals of laughter. It was very beautiful. I took a break from the hopeless task of getting creeping charlie out of our lawn by hand, watching quietly as my kids reveled in this simple and extraordinary moment. I was surprised to find that my mind was filled with one word, a mantra. “LIFE.” My heart tied up in achy knots. I don’t have a fully realized word for the feeling, but I think I was happy.

Anthony also found the dead chipmunk in the attic that was making our garage stink. He brought it out but it was really stuck to the big garbage bag it died on, so he left it in the open air next to the garage. Maybe a coyote or raccoon will come by and get some sustenance from it. We found a dead goldfinch under the bird feeder, with no obvious signs of why it died. Before I tossed it into the woods, Jesse wanted to see if its head was missing, because for some reason this spring she’s seen several headless (dead) ducks along Lake Michigan. I saw a tiny dead field mouse next to the road on a dog walk this weekend, no signs of trauma. The wild animals are struggling this spring, after a bitter arctic winter. Life and death are all tangled up together, as usual.

Jesse has never really been greedy, apart from rare phases of normal childhood jealousy and desire. She’s not that into stuff, even though she has a lot of it, and she shares without reservation. After the dentist pulled two molars out of her mouth yesterday, I wondered aloud what the tooth fairy might bring. Usually it’s books or toys, but I was thinking maybe this time the tooth fairy might bring money. Because maybe that would be easier for the tooth fairy, hypothetically speaking. But Jesse told me she hoped the tooth fairy didn’t do that, because she already has money. So next I asked her what she would want. She answered, “I don’t really like to say ‘I want’, mommy, because that sounds very selfish. ‘I want I want.’ It just sounds greedy, and I don’t really need anything.”

Contented sighs filled my heart. And yet, because Jesse is who she is, it would never occur to her that she could refuse to put her teeth out and tell Tooth Fairy not to bring her anything. That would be hubris. So she wrote a note to T.F.:

“Please don’t send money because I am already earning money.” Wow. I wonder what the world would be like if more adults felt that way. Also I think it’s sweet that Jesse warned Ms. Fairy about the stink of her rotten teeth.

Nick has always been naturally more greedy than Jesse. He wants a piece of the action, no matter what it is. He wants stuff. He’s still good at sharing (he’s had a nearly-perfect role model in Jesse since the day he was born), but he’s more materialistic. I don’t fault him for this, because I think it’s just how he’s wired up, and we’re working on it gently. This morning I was pottering about taking care of mommy business while he played. He took note of me writing a check and asked me what I was doing. “I’m giving money to your school,” I answered. “They’re collecting money from families to build a cabin in the woods space.”

Nick goes to the Schlitz Audubon Nature Preschool. Today is his last day at the preschool, ever. There are three outdoor classrooms. The only one without a house-like-structure is known as “the woods space,” and a wonderful mom has spear-headed an effort to get families in the class of 2013-14 to donate money to buy a cabin for it. It ain’t cheap. If you donate a hundred bucks, you can have a hand-carved wooden oak leaf attached to the cabin with whatever names on it you want. I’m going for it. I think it’ll be a pretty cool legacy to the school from our year. Plus I’d like to see a leaf on the cabin with Nick’s and Jesse’s names, since they’ve both spent many delightful hours at the school. In the years to come, we can go visit the building and find their names, retrieve happy memories, and thus hold onto a piece of these joyful early years.  As such, for me it feels less like a charitable donation and more like a selfish act. I’m still being greedy, even though I’m giving money away.

Nick was contemplative when I told him what I was doing. He stared out the window into our back yard for a moment, and then he looked up at me, speaking his four-year-old mind. “Ooooh. The woods doesn’t have a cabin… We can buy one for it?”

“Yup. That’s why mommies and daddies are donating money.”

“Can I give some of my money too?”

(more contented sighs in my heart.)

“You don’t have to, but yes, you can.”

He ran upstairs to find his tiny cache of cash. I honestly don’t know where he keeps it. He came down with a dollar bill. This is a mighty treasure, exceeding an ordinary tithe by a wide margin. I put it in the envelope and bit my tongue, which wanted to tell Nick he didn’t have to give that much.

“Is that enough to buy the cabin, mommy?”

“No,” I chuckled, remembering that wee kids have no concept of scale when it comes to cost. “It’ll take a lot more than that.”

“Wait a minute,” he announced, as he ran upstairs again. He came down next with his tiny hand full of change from his piggy bank, to add to the kitty. Three trips later, he was finally done, but only because I had sealed the envelope, and also I fibbed. “Yes, Nick, I think that’s finally enough to buy the cabin.”

After I tucked the envelope in a safe place, I melted into a puddle of happy on the floor of my living room. My kids have given the one-two punch to greed in the last 24 hours. I hope they hold onto that goodness in their adult years and keep teaching me lessons in generosity after I’ve forgotten them myself. The road to greed is broad and well-trodden, a veritable trench. I wish with all my soul that my kids take the road less traveled by, and perhaps make all the difference.

I took Jesse to the dentist today for fillings in a baby molar. Jesse faced it like she does many anxiety-inducing activities these days — she shuffled into the office like a POW being marched to an annihilating doom, her face blank and fatalistic except for a few edges of worry around the eyes.

We go the Fun Kids Dentist. I can’t tell if “fun” is meant to modify “dentist,” which would be a little twisted, or “kids,” thus implying that you shouldn’t come here if you’re no fun. Either option seems wrong to me.

Most of the kids have their mouth work done in a big open space, which fills with noisy little voices and squeaky toys and little people wandering around like drunks.  But the shop also has a couple private rooms for kids who can’t handle the herd. Jesse can’t manage it because the noise and bustle can rattle her badly. Also the clinic and all its patients wouldn’t be able to manage it if Jesse blows an anxiety gasket.

Jesse’s anxiety disorder is a demon that comes and goes without any obvious trigger. Some days are worse than others, and some days are truly awful. When it revs up, her anxiety is a deep-rooted fear of just about everything real and imagined, expressing itself in strange noises and behaviors. It’s the dread knot in the throat, uncontrollably blossoming over and over again, the anxiety itself creating further anxiety as she tries to grasp what’s wrong. Weekly talk therapy helps, but I believe deeply that the best therapy for Jesse at this young age is having a parent by her side to shore up her emotional reserves.

Going to the pediatric dentist is a constant reminder of the many separation rules our culture imposes on parents and children, starting right from the beginning of life via cribs and sleep training. Dentists in particular are always trying to spirit my kids away from me, with admonitions that everyone will be better off without me there. I don’t think so, friend. I’ve watched Marathon Man. No one is working on my spawn’s teeth with dental tools unless I’m in the room. I’ll stay for the rectal exams too.

We get a private room at the dentist, because of the anxiety (Jesse’s, not mine). (I think.) Nonetheless, the hygienist, whom I will call Pat (because that’s her name, of course), gave me The Talk about how parents aren’t usually allowed in the room. I said that’s fine, but I stay. Pat retreated to a secondary position: they ask parents to be absolutely silent and stay out of the way, so the child can develop a rapport with the dental staff. I secretly rolled my eyes. I’ll try not to talk too much, I answered, and I will rub Jesse’s feet as discretely as I can while you do your thing.

A lot of people conflate anxiety and depression. The two problems can indeed come hand in hand, but they’re not the same. Many well-intentioned grown-ups come at Jesse as though she’s depressed and needs an up-beat, gung-ho adult to make noise and distract her. Anxiety isn’t like that, at least not Jesse’s. Up-beat buzz just makes it worse. It makes Jesse anxious because she’s thinking things like, there must be something for me to worry about because this grown-up is sure trying hard to make me not worry. In this vein, Pat —  as well-intentioned as any adult could be — leaned over Jesse as she lay on the dentist bench, looked her dead in the eyes, and said cheerfully, “Oh honey, you have to let go of all that stress! Stress will kill you!”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Pat was actually very charming with Jesse, leaving aside the “you’re killing yourself” gaffe. She didn’t even seem put out when I eventually explained that I ignore separation rules — especially at school — when it comes to Jesse, because it’s a choice. I can choose to give her the support she needs to find her courage, or I can choose to give her anti-anxiety drugs. Many educators are very hard-assed about not wanting me to do things like give Jesse an extra hug when she’s crying about going in to school, or walk her to her classroom on a day when things just feel bad. I ignore them all. They can talk to my back as I hug Jesse or walk on through the front office with her.

Last week, as Jesse and I toodled around on our bikes, she asked me an odd question. “Mommy. What do you think of me?”

As usual, I wasn’t sure what emotional vector this question was riding on, but I gave it a college try. I told her I think she’s a brave and strong little girl, because even though she has a lot of fears about the world and about school, every day she gets up and does what she’s supposed to do, and also I know she’s working really hard on controlling her tics. I started to say something like, “I know your egg allergy makes you a little more anxious about your world too, like when kids bring treats to school, so I’m even more proud of you for —“

Jesse interjected, serious and resigned. “I’m not just a little anxious about the food, mommy, I’m really scared.”

It was so honest and true that it took my breath away. I hid my tears from her and pedaled along, wondering if she would feel any different if she didn’t have an anxiety disorder. Her fears are well-founded. But would she experience them differently? Would they be less demanding, less constant, with less negative effect on her body and behavior? I’ll never know. But I know enough now to not dismiss her feelings or her reality. Instead I said, “I’m sorry, Jesse. I’m always right here next to you, fighting to keep your world safe. So far, we’re doing good.” It seemed to be what she needed to hear, or maybe she just acted satisfied because she decided it was what I needed to say.

So it goes with anxiety. I need an arsenal at the ready to help Jesse fight back the demon, who comes calling without warning. My weapons of choice are my own warm body, my advocacy, a strong emotional back to carry her through the inchoate fire, or a firm hand to hold hers when she’s strong enough to walk through it on her own emotional feet. Sometimes I manage and sometimes not, especially when the demon surprises me.

At the dentist today, I managed. Jesse’s fillings turned into a tooth extraction. The dentist had to pull two molars. Jesse lay there patiently for almost an hour with different things stuck in her mouth, listening to the dentist and Pat discuss and plan and change course, her hands tucked under her butt so she wouldn’t twitch too much. Whenever I saw her starting to do her agitated-nervous squirming thing, I massaged her feet and calves and reminded her to breath through her nose so she’d get plenty of laughing gas. I answered questions she was too nervous to answer. A couple times she called to me because she couldn’t see or feel me; hearing my voice and feeling my hand on her leg eased her. Jesse handled it all like a champ, and when they were done she smiled and said thank you. She was mature, polite, pulled-together. It was awesome.

I got in the way of the dentist, but I think I helped Jesse. So I feel like we beat the demon today. Do-over tomorrow with whatever life throws at us.

Even the New York Times wrote about how hard this past winter has been on midwestern gardens. My own feeling is that the article was published by the Times as a sort of curiosity piece about those crazy people somewhere west of Manhattan, with cutesy quotes from quirky Wisconsinites to add color. Nine years ago, reading the article would have made me chuckle and shake my head, and then I would have rented Fargo to keep it rolling. Because Fargo has anything to do with Wisconsin.

But I’m enlightened now. I’m becoming one of those crazy midwesterners — only without extended family living in six houses within a mile of me — and this may be the year when I finally go native on the gardening front. I’m giving up on my dream of re-creating, here in the harsh Wisconsin air, our slightly-southern gardens of the DC/Maryland area. This winter broke me.

Everything seemed fine until really late in the winter. The snow piled higher and higher, and the animals got hungrier and hungrier. Anthony noticed it first. “Carla. Have you seen what the rabbits are doing to your evergreen?” Then a few days later, “Carla. Have you seen what the deer have done to your maples?”

I had to stop typing just now to put my hands over my eyes for a moment and pull myself together. I am actually grieving for my beautiful little trees, and it pains me to write about it. I feel regret, loss, guilt, a physical pain in my gut. I also feel a feral rage at the animals that ate my babies. One day I was chatting about the situation with our neighbor Pete, as he walked by with his dog Robert. It’s pronounced “Row-Bear,” a fact for which I have no explanation. It puzzles me. I don’t think it’s a Wisconsin thing, but I’m not sure. I said something about what the deer and rabbits had done, and how I wanted to kill them, and I called the deer “f*ckers.” Pete looked a little disappointed in me and spoke gently, saying something like, “well… maybe they were hungry and just looking for something to eat.” I rolled my eyes into the back of my head and made faces, but this is also why I’m fond of Pete. He’s right of course, and I’m so glad that I could provide them with a late-winter feast.

No no no no. I am not glad about it. I am grumpy. Because look at what the rabbits did to my beloved evergreen, just 4 feet tall after 7 years, a slow-growing asymmetric floppy beauty.

The snow piled up a foot or two and covered the bottom limbs, which is why they’re still there, at least at the outer extremities. The rabbits came and hung out on top of the snow, issuing shit in prodigious quantities.They ate the middle of the tree. Then the snow melted, and the middle of the tree was gone, and all the lower limbs were weighed down by a 2-inch thick layer of rabbit shit. It was just sickening, like something out of a horror movie. I actually had to shove and shake the shit off the lower limbs to set them free, there was so much of it. I love this tree so much, but the reality is… It’s stupid-looking now, no longer delicate and strange. Dare I say it aloud? It may have to be euthanized.

Then there are my maples. I know Japanese maples are a touchy thing in Wisconsin, and I’ve had several fail in different spots in my yard. Even the Times article commented on it: “Certain plants that were “on the edge of their hardiness” in the Great Lakes climate, like Japanese maples, did not survive.” Okay okay. But MY surviving maples were in two microclimates that were warm enough. Two are up front near the vent pipes for the heating system, and one was in back on a protected hillock right behind the house. They were making it and thriving. But then this winter happened, and the stinking deer. They killed the maple in back.

The deer ate every branch that would have carried a leaf, and then some. And look at the base. The bark is gone. It’s as good as dead. I pulled the tree out and cringed as I hacked off its well-established roots. Anthony couldn’t say goodbye. He took it down to an ungardened hillside and shoved it into the dirt, with a dry hope that it’ll survive to see another season.

The maples up front were likewise decimated. They were fountaining, lush ornamentals, well-established and thriving. Now it looks like Edward Scissorhands pruned them.

I can only post up a picture of one of them. I can’t take it anymore. It just hurts too much.

Also did you notice what an excellent photographer I am? Do you like the way I captured the beauty of our tarp-covered A/C condenser as well? I’m just trying to change the subject.

Even our wee magnolia suffered this year. Usually it’s covered in beautifully delicate white flowers in early spring. This year, it was not.

The fourteen flowers that did manage to open were ripped off by heavy rains a few days after they bloomed. I guess I’ll just mulch, fertilize, and wait eleven short months for another shot at magnolia glory.

Until a few days ago, I found myself going outside every day to stand glumly before my trees’ broken and maimed bodies, staring blankly as my slippered toes turned frost-bit in the spring chill.

It’s turning around now. A few warm days here and there have started to slake away the dormancy, in our garden and my heart. This morning is glorious, sunny and — for a Wisconsinite — balmy. It’s over 60 degrees!

After 3 nights stuck in bed between Nick and Jesse’s squirming bodies and pokey toes (Anthony has been trapped in Palm Beach since Thursday, poor man), I woke up seriously grumpy. Before my eyes opened, I was snapping unpleasant and inappropriate edicts about where the kids could put their toes from now on. Jesse started whining so I sent her off to her own room. Where she should sleep anyway. I had to walk the dog, who was stopping to sniff something every foot or two. It drives me crazy and turns me into even more of a nattering crazy person than usual.

Still, by the end of my walk, the bright day had lifted me up. There’s green stuff coming in everywhere, and it’s so beautiful that the kids and I decided it’s a perfect day to go to Jumping Country, an indoor blow-up play zone. Why waste a day like this on the outdoors? We hopped in the car and did a full-freeway-freeze-out, windows and sun roof wide open, bouncing and head-bobbing our way north to Grafton as we sang along to Pure Pop on the radio – Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, Timberlake. I even remembered to pack my 1-quart coffee thermos, so I am SET on this sofa in this warehouse, typing this blog post on this iPhone, my kids lost in the bowels of enormous polyurethane structures. It’s spring in Wisconsin!