Snapshots: Way Beyond SADS

MORE than a little wing, there.

We’re at the Midway Park and Fly for an overnight check-in and Chris, a man-of-girth parking attendant, has lifted my carry-on to the shuttle.

"Wha’cha’ flying?" he asks FD.

"AirTran."

"AirTran it is."

Yes, AirTran has wooed us away from American, at least when we fly south. And we do this so often that the Park and Fly knows our name. They reserve us a special angle parking spot against the garage, Aisle J.

I’ve blown off a Sunday full of patients and FD has a new baby in the hospital, so both of us have misgivings about the trip. But we’re Bubbie and Saba* and we have a job to do.

It’s supposedly snowing down south. We land and it’s not snowing. It’s driving snow. Someone up there is pelting us with snow. There is snow on the ground, at least two inches, and the kids in the row in front of us are saying, Yeah, we’re getting four inches, for sure. Maybe more.

This isn’t why Chicagoans fly south.

The city is up in arms, freaked out, at a standstill. They don’t own scrapers in the south. What’s a snow scraper?

They don’t know about salt. There are no in-service workshops teaching Streets and Sanitation that if you salt icy streets, magic, snow will melt.

I look out at the ground crew scratching their heads. A minivan with a miniscule plow at the bumper weakly pushes snow along the tarmac. "That’s what they use to plow runways," I crack to FD. He chuckles.

"So glad you’re in a good mood," I shoot back.

Our son picks us up from the train. The city has a nice public transportation system and you know I love trains. He looks good, our boy, as all young people look good to us, but he seems to look better than most. He tells us our granddaughter has her wish, this wish for snow, and I’m thinking . . .Marvelous, should have brought my skis. We pull into the driveway and there she is building a snowman with her aunt.

And everything changes.

The endorphins rush from the walls just seeing her. FD is out of the car in a flash, building a snowman, too, searching for a nose. Of weaker stuff, I slowly gather my things, wave to the kid, and head indoors to see her sibs and stretch out a bit. It's a long time in that sardine can they call an airplane.

These other grandchildren are edible, so I eat them, mostly visually, the camera snapping away. My beautiful daughter-in-law is laughing as I brush snow off my sleeve. She's apologizing. "We didn’t ask for the weather, honest, Mom, you have to believe me."

Sure I believe you. I continue to eat her children, three months old, six months in all. We do multiples in our family, not quite on the scale of the octuplets, but doubles aren’t that unusual. And for me, having had twins over thirty years ago, having one of these small people father very new multips--well, watching him and his lovely wife juggle the two of them, it’s déjà vu all over again.

They try to feed us, but we’re too busy with the entertainment.

None of us wants to go anywhere and there’s ICE out there, you know, and people can’t drive in this, some of it could be black ice. We're led to believe southern drivers are all homicidal maniacs; we believe what you tell us.

At some point FD thinks of the obvious way out of the cabin fever that has followed both of us from the airplane and gingerly suggests, "Let’s go to Target!" Well, this is an acceptable field trip, nearby, and there’s always room for diapers.

Before we go, my granddaughter reminds me that I'm supposed to make her warm milk and honey, some weird tradition she associates with me, so we do this. She’s sipping, searching her brain. "Remember those kids at your house. . ."

"Your cousins! Yes! We’re all going to be together again soon, for Pesach. (rhymes with grey socks and it's Hebrew for the Passover holiday coming up). And you’re going to see all your other aunts and uncles, even the one who JUST became editor in chief of law review and it’s not based on looks. . ."

"And, and, and. . .play with the kids."

"Uh, huh."

“What’s this?” she asks, tugging at the tangerine silk blouse I have under a pale orange cotton sweater. Neither is warm enough in this unexpected cold, but surely better than the silk kimono on a skinny fellow we saw rushing off the train. Did you see that? A kimono! He must be freezing!



"Do you like it? It’s my tangerine blouse. Want me to get you one, too?"

And we’re off to Target. I buy her mother a book, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison. It comes highly recommended, although I haven’t read it myself. This is my cheap way of getting books. I buy them for Rac, she gives them back to me to read when she's finished, then I send them to the next bidder in the family who shows an interest.

It's that or the library, also a good thing, but they charged me $2.40 for an overdue book the other day, and I swear** to you, I renewed it on time.

Anyway, it’s pretty hard to find our favorite three-year old a tangerine shirt, so she opts for a dress, navy and kelly green, although she really wants a frilly, lacy, yellow Easter frock that just doesn’t work for me. We find a Size-Me chart and she stands up next to it.

"You’re a 4-Toddler," I say.

"A FOUR!!!! I’m a FOUR!!!! My mommy says I’m THREE! But I’m really FOUR!!!" As in, I knew it.

We put in a solid couple of hours shopping and eating, meeting her mother and sibs at the pizza shop, and everyone behaves incredibly well. We return home for bath time and I'm elected to do this, which only makes sense, since I bought the new rubber duckies, the yellow ones, you've seen them, with the big momma duck and her three babies. I have also donated a fourth duck, a brilliantly engineered species that is really for testing the bath water to make sure it's not too hot. There's a sensor on the duck's underbelly and the word HOT will turn white if the water might roast your kid. The idea is that you put the duck in the water before the kid.

Anyway, the kid is swimming and splashing and I’m washing her, amazed at my good fortune, and it’s a good time overall, even hair-washing goes very well. At some point I sigh and say, "Maybe we better get you out of the tub now. I have to go."

She gives me this incredulous look. “You’re going?”

“Well, Saba and I have to get back to Chicago early in the morning.”

"You’re going?"

"You’re coming to visit soon!"

"Maybe I’ll come to Chicago with you now," she reasons. "And I’ll see Blue*** I want to go with you now. On the airplane." Done.

"But you’ll miss everybody, you’ll cry within minutes, as soon as you realize your mom isn't with us. You'll miss her, and your daddy."

"No I won’t."

"You’re only three."

"I’m four."

"Come on, let’s get you out of the tub into pajamas."

"No. I’m coming with you."

"Ask your mommy."

She lights up. Idea. She wriggles out of her towel and works the idea over with her mother.

Rac gives me a look to kill, as in, how COULD you?

But our little three/four year old is in pajamas and she knows she can’t go. But it is sad, and there's no getting around it, I've failed her. She thought we had a chance.

Next morning there’s hardly any more snow on the ground. Things melt quickly in the south. FD and I are back on a plane and the pilot’s telling us what to expect weather-wise in Chicago. We have a little snow.

He also tells us we’ll be taking off in ten minutes. A half hour later FD grumbles, “Good thing the pilot’s not a surgeon.”

“Huh?”

“You know, Uh, lady, the surgery only takes ten minutes, you’ll be out of here in no time. Oh Mr. Jones, that surgery went just fine, just great, you won’t have any pain (sic)."

FD is in a hurry, hates wasting time. He wants to discharge that baby and AirTran doesn’t seem to care.

I’m marveling at my view. Usually I sit in front of the wing but somehow couldn’t get that seat, and now I’m right here, on the wing. I look down and see the wing is made of several pieces and shapes, and one of them has arrows.



“What’s the story?" I ask anyone in hearing range. "They don’t know how to put the wing together without the help of arrows?”

Something to do with airflow. I change the subject.

“I can’t wait to see my fish. I hope they’re all okay. Number #4 takes good care of them, which makes sense, since food is a priority for him. But you know, a mother worries.”

I ramble on, FD seems to be listening, maybe. “I worry a little about Blue, you know, I really do. He's my favorite fish and he’s grown so big so fast. Maybe he has heart trouble. How would we know if he has heart disease?”

“Don’t worry,” FD quips, totally deadpan. “He swims every day.”

We land with a thud and I’m pretty sick, stumble out off the plane. Chris, our driver recognizes us as we take a seat on the shuttle. “Didn’t I drive you here just a couple of days ago?”

“It was just yesterday,” FD tells him.

“How could you go for just one day?” Chris is flabbergasted.

“Gotta’ get back to work,” I offer weakly.

“And this weather,” he continues. "To go from there to here. . ."

He lets us off at our car and before we can blink Chris is sweeping the snow off the car with a huge rubber snow scraper. This is not your average snow scraper, it’s more like an industrial push broom.

“Where did you get that?” I cry enviously. “I must have one.”

He mumbles something, but I’m thinking: If it keeps up, this global warming, this climate change, call it what you will, then there’s a new niche in the south.

Think . . . . scrapers.


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*The Wall Street Journal did a piece about a month ago on grandparents and how people in my age group hate old-fashioned names like Bubbie, Nanna, Gramma, Tatti, etc. The labels make them feel old. They want their grandchildren to call the Fred, Sally, Gert, Debbie, Jim, etc.

Who ARE these people?

**blee neder, meaning I don't really swear.

***Blue, my favorite fish, is a Niger Trigger. He's from Nigeria and builds things out of sand when he gets bored.

Friend Poaching

Well, you know I like the window seat. That's New York City.

In the airport, waiting for the good people at American Airlines to call Group Six on a return to Chicago, I'm getting a little hot in my winter coat, even if it is the right coat for New York City on a bright sunny winter's day.

Only last night, at a wedding, I'm freezing. There's a tradition to marry outdoors, something about being just that much closer to everyone's Higher Power. And since it's too cold for that, the wedding planners brought the outdoors indoors, opened a literal door, welcomed in Higher and the 32 degree early evening chill.

I say to a friend, a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, "I hate being cold. I hate being hungry. I could never have made it in the camps (the concentration camps). I wouldn't have lasted a week. I'm not made of the right stuff."

She says, "Not many people did make it, dear."

Rrrright.

The Story:

We're all staying in the same hotel in Newark. The parents of the groom have arranged a group rate and transportation to the reception in New York, and a tall, elegant, African American gentleman picks us up in a rickety white bus that has seen better days.

I'm sitting next to my friend Mi. (The names I use here, well, they're any old names, generic, unidentifiable names).

Mi is sick with a virus, eyes all watery. She's wondering which drugs to take to dry herself up. She says, "I should be home in bed with a cup of hot tea."

I say, "Yeah, seriously. Why did you do this? Why did you come to this wedding? Are you crazy? You should be in bed with hot tea and a warm TV."

She nods. "Well, you know. It's Debbie. If it were anyone else, maybe, but it's Debbie. She's my best friend." Then she thinks about it. "She's everyone's best friend. You ask anyone on this bus, they'll tell you. 'Debbie's my best friend.' "

And I know it's true, of course. Because Debbie's my best friend.

We get to the party and there's a great shmorg. You can see our best friend's touches everywhere in this affair, the food, the flowers, the colors. I have a bite and see Debbie's mother-in-law, Regina, who happens to be a close friend of my mother-in-law, regally march into the room, lovely in her gown.

I rush over to greet her. She truly looks marvelous and she might even know it. When women in their eighties look marvelous, when they're breath-taking, radiating that very, very warm glow inside and out, for many of them do,* when they're happy they can glow in a way that's even richer than the glow you see emanating from ingenues.

When I see that glow, I just kvell**.

Regina and I hug and kiss, and when we get past how wonderful she looks and how terrible it is that I didn't insist that my mother-in-law come along for the wedding, I whisper in her ear. "You want to know a secret? You want to know something nice about your daughter-in-law? About Debbie?"

"Sure!"

"They all talk about her, you know."

"Nu? What do they say?!"

"All of her friends say the same thing. They all say, 'Debbie's my best friend.' Everyone says this. It blows my mind, such an incredible thing to have people say about you. And they say that about your Debbie. Everyone thinks she's their best friend."

She seems pleased.

It's a great party, everyone has a little of that glow thing.

At the end of the evening I'm thanking my hosts, saying goodbye to people. I see Debbie's mother, another one of my favorite people, along with Debbie's mother-in-law, lazing out at a table for ten by themselves. They're all smiles.

"We were just talking about you," says Debbie's mom.

"Me?!" I'm all excited. They're talking about me.

"Yes, you," Regina confirms. "I was just telling her what you told me earlier about Debbie."

"Hey," I object. "I'm just telling over what Mi told me. I'm just moving along information."

They smile. They're tired. And happy. It's been a beautiful wedding. We're all out of words. I sign off. "Okay, gotta' go, the bus driver is waiting. He's working pretty late."

And we're back on the bus, a long way from our hotel. And I'm power napping off and on, my head on FD's shoulder. Mi is a row in front of us, quietly catching up on the phone with her guy. He missed the wedding.

And she sneezes. Softly.

Everyone on this midnight bus is tired and quiet. Probably nobody heard.

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* My mother-in-law has this beauty, as does my mother, and many other women I know.

**Kvell rhymes with Mel and means, in this case, melts, but really it means plotz, (rhymes with dots) which means, also, has to swoon there's so much good feeling.

It Never Rains in California

Every time I visit the kids and we hug goodbye, it breaks me up.

Last night I took a red-eye from Los Angeles to Chicago so I could see Sunday appointments as usual. FD stayed on a half day more because he hadn't joined me in L.A. in December when I ran away for a long weekend with the first degrees. So he needed a little more time to get his fill.

We were in Miami only a few short weeks ago for barely a weekend to see the other side of the sandwich, my parents. It's hard saying goodbye to them, too.

If you know me by now, then you know I like life uneventful. I'm not so big on excitement. I like things to happen on time, people to be accountable, and days to unfold as predicted, within reason. So yeah, I get disappointed a lot.

But do you remember that song about rain in California? It never rains in California, but girl, don't they warn ya'. It pours, man it pours. . .

I got off that plane Thursday afternoon and dragged my beat-up carry-on outside to the curb where FD would be pulling up any minute with my grandsons in a rented PT Cruiser (a funny looking car that reminds me of the old Pacers, if any of you remember those). He hadn't rented it. Empath Daught's car was in the shop.

And sure. It's drizzling.

In a couple of minutes I see my grandsons making faces at me from the windows of that funny-looking red Pacer wanna' be. I pile in with my stuff and contort those uncomfortable greetings you ply when you're in the front seat and the people you're dying to hug are in the back seat. (FD is all business when he's driving airport traffic, no hugging him).

Within minutes the boys, 3 and 5, decide to be thirsty. This is a state of being for little kids. It's one of those binomial things. They're either hungry or they're thirsty when in an automobile. With adults it's all about the bathroom.

I whip out my phone to call Rac to set up a time to see my granddaughter, another thing necessary to keep me whole.

OMG, Rac cries. It's POURING here. POURING.

Sigh.

This is an event in Los Angeles, pouring. Not on the order of an earthquake, but it's huge. Rain is still unusual. There aren't any basements to flood, so it's hard for some of us to be truly empathetic, but they do have mud-slides and no one seems to know quite how to drive. Can I take the canyon? Dare I take the canyon?

We swing over to the K-Mart to buy a bottle of water and some cups to hydrate the boys. And a package of Tupperware. I had a bunch of small gifts, plastic frogs, bugs, that sort of thing, and want to prevent Empath Daught from stepping on them for days on end if I don't supply the containers. And I can't bare to see them strewn around in a morass of toys in the toybox. The boys actually take care of their toys if they have a method. I find this true of most kids.

The bottle of water, of course, is too warm.

We pick up Empath Daught, and as always, I'm overwhelmed at how well she looks. She could have walked out of Vogue. I say as much and she says, Well, you know how it is. I look kind of young, so if I wear anything but a nice, tailored look, they don't take me seriously at work. They treat me like I'm sixteen.

She's not sixteen. So although every other designer in Los Angeles works in jeans, sweats, or pajamas, my kid does not. She's dressed. And yes, given the chance, she's dressing me, too.

We have a great weekend and the sun comes out on Saturday for about 3 hours. I see the whole thing. The kids play all kinds of games outside (in January!) despite my insistance that these are not appropriate games. They like games like Hit the Orange with the Baseball Bat, Smash the Orange on the Side-walk With Your Shoe, and Whack the Tangarine on the Tree. Let's not forget Putt the Lemon. (Sure, I exaggerate. They only smashed two juice oranges with their shoes on the sidewalk and whiffed at the ones on the trees, missing completely.)

By Saturday evening the boys are worn out and my granddaughter blissfully exhausted. My son has scored some Garth Brooks tickets (GARTH!) for Rac, his deeply Southern spouse, who simply can't wait to get their little girl to bed so that she can get ready to see the true love of her life. I can hardly hug Rac goodby since The Controller has those little arms clinging tightly to her neck.

And it has started to rain again.

Y, my son-in-law, asks if I mind if he takes me to the airport. Do I have any special need for E-Daught to make that run? The weather's SO bad. Or FD, perhaps? Do I want FD to drive me?

No, Y. Any time to talk with you is a good time. The plane's delayed. After all, it is RAINING. The kids are in bed, so the four of us eat our fifty-seventh snack of the day, moussaka and Parmesan, you can't have too much of that, and gradually wind down the visit. When it's time to go, I hug my daughter goodbye.

FD catches the mist in my eyes. She hugs hard and well, one of those amazingly satisfying hugs you get when you've been apart too long and you're not sure, really, when you'll hug again. FD asks me for the third time if I have my boarding pass and my driver's license, and why am I taking this red-eye flight, anyway, past midnight?

Y takes me to the airport and repeats, at least a dozen times, I've never had to drive in this much rain before. I'm so glad your daughter didn't drive you.

Me, too. She should get some special time with her daddy. I think of the two of them together, the boys asleep, and feel good.

The flight's really late, of course. How could a flight crew possibly find their way to the airport in this weather, and so late at night at that? I'm sitting at the gate typing away at something and I hear my name called over the loud speaker.

There's this mixture of excitement and fear when that happens, you know.

I gather my stuff. They want me to change seats so a child can sit with her mother. Sure, I say. What am I supposed to say, No? Then I correct myself. Uh, how far back, um, am I going?

You still have your window seat and you're moving up a couple of rows, actually.

Actually, I'm sitting behind a crying baby and am effectively blocked from ever leaving my freezing seat at the window because two enormous men in blue jeans from Oklahoma are in Seats C and D.

I smile at them and remind myself that I'm flying a red-eye to see the Big Dipper from the window of Row 8, and to catch a sunrise peaking over a sleeping, yet dazzlingly lit major metropolitan city. And I want to see my usual Sunday morning suspects-- on time.

Despite the crying baby I'm asleep within minutes and wake up only to catch a glimpse of those stars (you can touch them), then go back to sleep. But before I do that, I think back on that goodbye in the valley.

It wasn't always like this. No trouble saying goodbye when they left for summer camp. No trouble when they left for Israel straight out of high school for a year, or two, or three of seminary/yeshiva. We visited.

No trouble when they left for college, and not all that much, really, when they married. As long as one was around things were okay.

And now we have two, perhaps soon, even more. So why now?

Oh, who are we kidding? It's not a now thing. But as I age, it does seem that I'm getting a little more vulnerable, a little more emotionally reactive. I know I've seen the phenomenon in my practice with other people, patients, even colleagues. Especially colleagues! But nobody ever warned me about it, really. I don't think I read anything about it in a textbook or a journal, and it seems that I never needed to know about this, particularly.

Am I generalizing?

So I did a little research. It seems that older people are actually happy. As we age, we have to learn to regulate our emotions. It's that or feel totally out of control. Our social circles get smaller and smaller (attrition) and we value the relationships we've got. So we either (1) reappraise the situations that make us angry, anxious or depressed (the stuff of cognitive therapy minus the expense of professionals) OR we (2) suppress the thoughts that bring us down.

Suppression is thought to be the least optimal solution, and is associated with memory loss, something none of us even want to think about.

All of this emotional work begins in late-middle age, supposedly.

I'm supposed to be getting a grip on my emotional reactivity. On the other hand, what if I like it? What if I think it's rich? What then?

My guess is that those of you with small children don't have to worry about this stuff for quite awhile. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Tonight I picked up FD at Ohare, Terminal 3, Baggage Claim 6. We took off our coats and he looked at my sweater a little curiously, a sweater that our daughter had insisted I wear home.

It looks so GOOD on you, she said, But it needs a good cleaning. Do you ever wear the white jacket I gave you?

Wore it all the time in Miami.

Good. Take this sweater. Please.

Honey, I don't need it.

Take it, please. Just take it. Besides, you paid for it.

Huh?

Sure. When I lived in New York, remember how I bought all those clothes, just charged them to your credit card? You were so nice to let me do that. This is one of the sweaters I bought when I was away at college.

You never spent that much. You bought this while you were at Parsons?

Uh, huh! And it's perfect for you. Tell them to get those little fuzzy things off, those pills, at the cleaners. They can do that, you know.

See? Things do have a way of coming home again.

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