To Finn, on his first day of kindergarten

About two hours ago, I abandoned you in your kindergarten classroom.

I walked you to your room and eased you into the classroom filled to fire hazard with five-year-olds, their parents, and more cameras--video, digital, cell phone--than an AARP tour group on a whale watching cruise.

Then I blew you a kiss, swallowed yours, and booked it out the door so you wouldn't see my inevitable and long-postponed (and planned) breakdown.



Sure, I say "abandoned." Based on your response, hoppy exuberance, and all caps glee--MY OWN LOCKER! and MY KIDS! and PLAY DOH!--I think you might choose a verb like "set free" or "liberated" or "finally unshackled from the oppressive, stifling bonds of a mother hell bent on dissing my vibe."

I've asked you--multiple times a day, unfortunately--if you were excited about kindergarten. And each time I did, you'd open your arms wide, so wide they bent around your back, and say, "Mama, I'm so excited." This surpasses any overextended voguing you've done for a Nana visit (sorry Nana), a playdate with one of your kids, or the promise of a Transformer. This, to date, is the most excited you've been about anything.

I'm so glad you don't take after me.

I always loved school--so much that I signed up for three extra years that I didn't have to--but each first day would put me into such a nauseous tizzy in my anxiety over unopenable lockers, labyrinth hallways, teeming kids and later adults, and germy play doh. Even when I taught school, I'd have to take shots of Pepto just to calm my nerves. First days were never my forte.

But kindergarten looks like it's your element. You have such high hopes for this year--that you'll find like-minded Lego lovers, that you'll do scientific experiments that test the bounds of electromagnetism, and that you'll finally, finally, finally learn to fly.



I can guarantee you'll find your Lego crew--and you'll make new friends who share your interests and open your eyes to new wonders. You'll also learn of the dangers of cooties--and, if you're lucky--one of those new friends my inoculate against further infection by that insidious disease. (Or you can self-mediate: Step one: circle. Step two: another circle. Then three dots. That is the cootie shot.) You'll learn how to follow the crowd and stand up for yourself. You'll witness snark, smarm, and generosity of spirit. You may even find your best forever friend, or your first love, among the kids who share this first day with you. And you've just met the first teacher whose influence and passion you'll remember for the rest of your life.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you won't be doing any Faraday experiments. And sometimes, I'll also guarantee, you'll find kindergarten a bit slow. You already know how to do so much--you can read a little, you make friends easily, you can build elaborate aerodynamic objects d'art with the aforementioned Legos, K'Nex, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, you crack jokes at a whim. But don't let your talents keep you from accepting what others have to offer. You came into this classroom with confidence, imagination, and wit. Share it. And embrace the talents of others who are different from you--who can tie their shoelaces, who can make savory mud pies, who carry their magic in their hearts instead of in their hands. Discover them, too.

And as for that last bit about going airborne? I think I may have set you up, kid. There's been a lot of Harry Potter, Peter Pan, and Willa Wonka talk in the Anderson household. I hate to disappoint, but you won't be getting a Firebolt this year. Or next. Your teacher won't be distributing pixie dust or popping bottles of fizzy lifting drink. But there's a world out there, Finn, that's just waiting for you, a world of magic and wonder whose doors and windows and chimneys will open to you if you just believe in it.

And I will tell you this--although you may not literally soar through the air on a magic carpet anytime soon, this year, you will learn how to fly.

Uh, ouch.

Finn: Mama, was there a time when I didn't want you to go away?

Me: . . .

How Do You Celebrate the End of a Five-Hour Fast?

Cupcakes!

Bear brought home a four-pack of cupcakes from Baby Cakes. My ration: one lemon cupcake with lemon buttercream icing. (Keyword: buttercream. We don't go in for fluffy icing.)

It feels good to be among the food again. Yes, those five hours did me irreparable harm that I will have to make up with a parade of good eats for the next several days, proving yet again the unhealthy relationship I have with food.

In that, I like to eat it.

I Had No Idea

In our last episode, Bear had just come home from an emergency cauterisation surgery-type thing. We were happy, I made jokes about his new nose. Things were good.

About six hours after we got home, Barry started bleeding. Again. Two hours later, he got another nosebleed. He controlled it and I started frantically calling our ENT--who is apparently difficult to reach, as he serves all of the nether regions outside of the Kansas City's asteroid belt. We were determined not to go the ER, so I started calling other ENTs that we had visited in Bear's last episode two years ago. They wanted nothing to do with us. Then, an hour later, he got another. And that's where I packed him in the car and headed for the ER.

They admitted us on Tuesday. On Thursday, the doc (and the only ENT that serves our hospital, what's up with that?) scheduled Bear for "real" surgery. On Friday, Bear had lost so much blood from the nosebleeds (that continued after the surgery) that the doc signed him up for a blood transfusion.

Yeah, that's what I said. From nosebleed to blood transfusion. That's one way to spend the week.

So, in all and in short, Barry has spent the past five days bleeding and turning various shades of white and green, pre- and post-op, and I've spent it arguing, fussing, and hiding in the vistors lounge under the pretense of making phone calls so I could cry and generally freak out of Bear's ear shot.

Thank God for Barry's parents and my best friend KiKi, who drove and flew up special. Apparently, Kiki's spidey-sense is so keen (or I'm so very transparent) that after about five seconds on the phone with me, she dropped everything, including her tickets to see her hunk-a-tv-love Stephen Colbert and booked a flight to KC.

Yes, I have a friend like that.

And I've learned a lot that I didn't know over the past week. Like which ER you go to severly affects your after-ER care. That choosing your hospital is as, if not more, important than choosing your doctor. That getting a second opinion is excessively discouraged and some nurses will even bully and terrorize you to make sure you're scared so shitless that your husband and father to your child will bleed out in the ambulance that you won't dare to mention the request-that-will-not-be-named again. And that not even doctors will cross the Missouri river willingly.

The Nose Knows

Reader, forgive me, for I have sinned. It's been nearly two weeks since my last confession. And I do feel really, like, bad about that, because I, like, totally, promised to keep up with this, both for my sanity and your occasional amusement (or disparagement, just don't tell me which one).

Last night, Bear was checked into the hospital for an emergency surgery. Since last Saturday, he's been having these uncontrollable nose bleeds--or I suppose it's really just one uncontrollable nose bleed. We visited three ERs in two different states, and on Monday, finally got into an ENT (which reminds me of those tree monsters in Lord of the Rings). After a prod and poke and an endless stream of blood, he decided to do something besides stuff tampons up Bear's nose. Thirty minutes later, Bear was in surgery.

His nose looks the same, and I'm very glad. He has this nice Roman nose (minus the hook, so maybe not very Roman at all), and he looks much lovelier than he did Saturday and definitely better than he did Monday before the ENT, with bloody (I'm using the American and English sense of the word at this point) gauze strapped to his nose and a bucket of blood waiting anxiously underneath his chin.

I was secretly hoping--you know, after I controlled the panic and screaming--that they'd do a little something something for the snoring. We'll see how that works out.

I have to say that I much prefer being on the other side of the OR doors. I don't handle waiting well, and if you know me, you know I like my information, on my terms and my schedule. I didn't much get my way on either count. There were no diagrams, I didn't even get a chance to research the ENT we went to see for what I thought was a follow up.

It's nerve wracking, this bloody thing. This getting older thing, this seeing someone you so dearly love in pain and, at the same time, trying to figure out how to communicate all this confusion to a four-year-old with the right tone and information. I always thought I'd get to check out a book from the library first before I had to explain to Finn why his dad is bleeding into bucket and why he has to go to surgery. Seriously.

(And this is where you're either gasping at my naivete and or laughing. Indulge. I am a silly, silly woman.)

Soundtrack to the Anal Probe. Humor Me.

I've known, ever since I scheduled it, that some report of Monday's colonoscopy would have to go on the blog. Really now, how do you pass something like that up?

But what to post, pray tell? A play-by-play of the procedure? A description of the day-long starvation and hours of colon prep? Or do I just go with a photo essay?

Uh, three rounds of, No thanks.

So, to get down to business, I must ask myself (because you're not really helping out with the comments box): if I were on the receiving end of the colon post, what would I want to know?

Ah. Yes. Of course. How obvious. The question that burns so brightly . . . scroll for it . . .


What does one dial up on the iPod when preparing for The Probe?

You know, when I popped those ear buds in, I actually thought about it. I really contemplated and weighed my decision. No shuffle. Couldn't just follow instincts. You have to consider that whatever song you choose will forever be linked to That Procedure.

So not just any song will do.

Not just any band can take on that level of responsibility, can hold up against the Anal Probe.

Nothing too cheery, bouncy, or titular connected to the colon, so Fischerspooner's "Megacolon" (three strikes) was out. Because you must not laugh in the face of colonoscopy. That's just not allowed.

You could tear something.

And honey, I'm thinking that's the last place you want a leak.

So I opted to go Hippocratic, and tap into the melancholic, the calming, the weighty. And it appeals to my literary sensibilities to be able to quote the four humors as I'm about to be scanned, to be so sonorously connected in time and tune.

And so, I chose Cold Play as the band I will forever associate with my colon, with my melancholy, with my uncertainty, with my expectation, with my tender hope and overwhelming hunger. As if I didn't before. And as if that wasn't exactly what you were thinking.

(I wonder how it feels to be the band colons choose?)

Such Great Heights

I just got back from a client meeting, and decided to grab a six pack of cupcakes on my way home. You know, I was in the neighborhood and all.

Well, near enough to the neighborhood.

Okay, it wasn't that far out of my way.

Whatever, it was worth the trek across town.

Now, dear reader (well, hi there!), you already know my downright passion for the cake that comes in cups. Beskirted and besugared, what other glory can there be? (A rhetorical I should probably be careful of casting since I live pretty much under the buckle of the Bible's belt. And since I just came from a sketchy side of town. Double the double entrendre. I think I should back away now. Fast-like. New paragraph, please.)

And yet, today, I have reached new cupcake heights. The dreamsicle cupcake with cream cheese frosting. It's dreamy, it whispers of the popsicles I used to eat when I was eight, that used to drip down my freckled cheeks and down my arms and onto my Smurf socks. But the dreamsicle made manifest in a cake is fluffy, not so sticky, and comes with these little orange and yellow sprinkles.

I won't call it perfect. That would be going too far, but, I will say this:

I have licked sunshine, tasted the newly budding spring, and I'm here to tell you it's good.

Why, Hello There

I just found out yesterday that I have a reader. So allow me to give a little shout out to my new and dearest best friend:

Hi Reader! Bienvenue! I shall have a cupcake in your honor.

Wherein I Launch a New Label and Use "Wherein" in My Title. Again.

Every three months, I go to the oncologist.

They have a nice fishtank there. Very clean, very polished. The fish seem to just float in it rather than swim. You really have to squint hard to figure out if there's water, if the fish are even real. I often wonder as I flip through Travel&Leisure's "25 Best Places I Can't Afford to Visit," glancing every few at that fishtank, how often they have to come out and put the Windex to it.

It's all part of the small touches of escapism that are the oncology office--fish tank, travel mags, origami opportunities (seriously, last visit their was a little origami crane competition going on)--and that are balanced out by the Surviving and Thriving class that meets on the other side of the office.

I suppose life lessons can even be found in waiting rooms. (Oo, that metaphor could just keep on going. I'll let you keep it alive.)

So far (test results pending) the visit was, in the parlance of the field, "unremarkable." Except that I'm signed up for a colonoscopy. My doc doesn't seemed concerned about it. Invasive microscoping--maybe not cause for foghorns, but really, very much not the parting gift I was hoping for.

I was thinking along the lines of lollipop.

Or even Scooby-Doo bandaid.

Not sure where they'd put that, though.