The Lion King

We bought a DVD copy of "The Lion King" for Eva, since she was already obsessed with the musical numbers. (This is at least partly due to Dave--Bepa--constantly showing her animated cartoons when we visit. Cartoons like "Rupert and the Frog Song", Paul McCartney's superb musical composition, animated, of a Rupert the Bear story. Eva's a toon lover like her dad.) Besides, The Lion King is one of those iconic films worth owning. There are lots of those, sure, but with kids in the house, animated ones like The Lion King become especially valuable.

Anyhow, we watched it together as a family the night we bought it, and I didn't realize how much I'd forgotten about the story. (Kate was also blown away when I reminded her that the original came out in 1991--it's 20 years old!) The Lion King might be the most successful animated film in history, and though I don't know any numbers on it, probably ranks as Disney's single greatest film, even including the earlier ones which helped make the brand, like Snow White and Cinderella. (Though quietly becoming a fan of ABC's "Once Upon a Time" now has me newly fond of Snow White.)

Viewing the entire Lion King once, and segments since then as Eva re-watches it almost daily (she goes for repetition--and there's no better way to learn something)--my appreciation for the film has only grown. So in this post I'm not going to attempt any comprehensive review, because there have been thousands, but I'm just going to type out some thoughts related to the film.

A general comment on the music. I sing, but I'm not a reader of music, and though I can define an octave, a third, and a fifth, and I know a few other musical vocabulary terms, I'm no musician. So my comments on the music would amount simply to "It's awesome!" Which it is. The playful melody and stretched notes of Simba's "I Just Can't Wait to be King" have a way of staying in my mind. I'm not sure if holding and bending notes up like he does in singing the "just" and "wait" in "I just can't wait..." is a strong feature of African or black American music, but it feels like that. (The bass at which begins the theme to "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids", my favorite cartoon as I grew up, does the same bend-and-hold-the-note.) "I Can't Wait" dances with so light a heart that small ethnic flourishes like a held, bent note would trick it out perfectly. And that kind of detail would be in perfect keeping with the rest of the film.

The animation is stupendous, and one aspect in particular suggests itself to me (aside from the general richness of color and detail in drawing). That would be the faithfulness to biological detail. Now, this is the cartoon world we're talking about, so some obvious departures from reality are needed: namely, that different species associate with on another; and that they all speak a common language; and in the case of this film in particular, that there is an actual government in place, over all the species. But that government is more a function of mythology, which I'll mention later.

Putting aside the obvious suspensions-of-disbelief--for every story requires them in some form--the animals, for being given human qualities, are drawn in very real fashion. Not always: during song and dance sequences (like "Just Can't Wait"), the animals do things they simply couldn't physically. And for comic effect, like getting squeezed, squashed or being in some state of alarm, individuals' (the the bird Zazu's) heads and eyes might swell far beyond their normal size. But these fantastic elements are common to cartoons, and they're balanced by excruciating attention to detail in other things. This balance produces an intelligible caricature of nature, where some parts seem very genuine, as we would observe with our own eyes, and other parts swollen to comic (or horrifying, like the hyenas' eyes and grins) dimension.

As an aside, this kind of counterpoint exists in printed comics too. Pick up any old Calvin & Hobbes and you'll see drawings where the stripes on Hobbes' body and Calvin's shirt don't all stay inside the lines, and they have only four fingers on each hand. But the scenery can be as good as a painting, and the expressions on the faces are eloquent and sometimes very detailed. This balance between realistic and not realistic is basic to animation.

(NOTE: Look carefully at the stripes on Hobbes' arms and flanks. Sloppy sloppy sloppy! And only four fingers. Then dwell on the grass, the water, the log, and their smiles.)

In the Lion King, this detail manifests especially in the movements of the lions. The cubs pad awkwardly around with oversized paws, much like kittens. But it's plain that the artists studied real adult lions closely. When the adult lions walk, especially the males Simba and Mufasa, their heads bob with every step. You wouldn't see the motion any more rhymically in a nature film, or at the zoo, or probably in the savanna either. Second is when the lions are slowing down after running. Being quadrupeds like horses, they have similar rhythms in their strides. As Simba runs across the desert to challenge Scar, we're treated to a long slow-motion close-up of his legs, as the fore paws pass behind the hind paws, all in the air. That's a gallop. And after slowing from a full run, but before walking slowly, the lions trot for a few steps. Invariably, if you see a lion slow down from running to walking or sitting, you'll see those five or six trotting steps as he or she changes to a slower walking rhythm. Biologically accurate elements like those help keep the story so vivid.

And it's touches like those which convince me--not being a biologist,and not really wanting to research it--that even the bugs, grubs and leaves drawn throughout the film are accurate representations of actual African species. Like how in "Finding Nemo", all of the species depicted are known species, including plants and algae. And even the sandy bedforms on the seafloor are accurate for their location in the ocean. I think these animators--especially in recent decades--take their roles as educators and accurate (within the bounds of the story) depictors of nature very, very seriously. I have little doubt that research would identify every insect and grub which squirms beneath or comes crawling out of the log which Timon raids for food (even the little "cream-filled kind").

Enough on the animation. Now I'll turn my attention to the story. Mythically there aren't many characters more powerful than the father who requires atonement. Guilt, doubt and fear are basic to our psychology, and so is the need for release from them. A benevolent, knowing, and powerful parent (whether father or mother) is an excellent vehicle for this. History being what it is, in our society that character is typically male. Suns, lions, kings and fathers have a long symbolic history together. This film taps that symbolism deeply.

The story is Shakespearean in magnitude. Setting aside Shakespeare's magical use of words, Scar is as foul,

devious and personally cowardly a villain as you'll find in any of his plays. And

by executing his brother, and honestly believing he'd also executed the son, he follows as bloody a path to the throne as any including Macbeth. Simba's repressed guilt and hatred of himself, beneath the (actual Swahili! Kate looked it up) mantra of "hakuna matata" is worthy of any drama. (Hamlet's mental trauma was worse but his mother was one of the traitors.) Simba's psychological damage becomes apparent to Nala when she presses him to return. Her confusion at Simba's refusal and excuses are the mirror for the audience

to see the ugliness in his mind. It's up to the mystic Rafiki (admirably voiced by Robert Guillaume, who--along with Ernie Sabella as Pumbaa, and of course James! Earl! Jones!--is my favorite voice in the film) to show Simba that the events of the past are still psychologically present, and with every passing moment, Simba either flees or engages them.

A New Son

World, Eliot James Gregory Sutherland. Eliot James Gregory, world.

Kate's and my second child, our first son, arrived last Friday at 9:37 AM Eastern daylight time. Kate had hoped for a daytime birth, since she likes to be able to see the blue sky while giving birth, and like with Eva, she was blessed with a clear blue daylight sky when the time came. Though this time around was a bit more worrisome than Eva's birth.

Kate had been diagnosed again with pre-eclampsia, the onset of blood conditions in the mother which can lead to seizures (fully blown eclampsia). The seizures are an immediate threat to the lives of both mother and child, so medical staffs take even the signs of pre-eclampsia very seriously. For a layman like me, these signs boil down to high blood pressure and excess protein in the blood.

High blood pressure can result from many factors, but the elevated protein level is due to partial liver failure (and with this some kidney malfunction, I'm told). The liver fails to clean the blood adequately and the protein continues to build up in the bloodstream, and this leads (directly or indirectly) to seizure. Doctors take serious precautions to keep that from happening.

Kate had something like this with Eva, namely the elevated blood pressure but not the high protein count. Still, the blood pressure alone was enough to spook the docs in Rhode Island so that they requested Kate come in to be induced. I won't re-hash that whole episode since I wrote about it two years ago when I posted about Eva's birth. So you can dig through our old posts if you're inclined!

But this time around, Kate's protein count was quite elevated, 3900 g/l, when anything over 300 g/l is cause for alarm. They almost sent Kate down to Portland, instead of receiving her at Lewiston. Even so, Kate got a phone call on Thursday morning, a day after leaving a urine and blood sample at the Rumford hospital (yes, we've moved to rural Maine--another post) from her midwife Jane, directing her to come to the Lewiston hospital immediately to be induced.

After a discussion over the phone, Kate was convinced that this was a genuine emergency and so we made preparations to head in. We packed one bag, dropped Eva off with Kate's mother, and drove down to Lewiston. We were in a calm kind of panic, knowing that time was precious but that a headlong rush might do more harm than good.

We were both relieved to walk into the M3 ward at the hospital--we were now surrounded by the people and the equipment to deal with an emergency--and were shown into a room.

So it came as some surprise when a nurse walked in and said to Kate, "So, you're just here for a 24-hour observation, right?"

Um, no. We're here because Kate's and the baby's life are both in danger, so she's getting induced.

This was news to the nurse, who promised to go get all the facts. A few minutes later she returned, armed with the facts, and apologized. "Your midwife, Jane, is in the OR with another birth," she said apologetically, "and I didn't get the whole story. I'm sorry. We'll be inducing you, yes."

Jane herself came in a little bit later and apologized again, and started discussing options with Kate.

Basically, there's no fun way to get induced. There's the chemical jelly which softens the cervix, but using it would preclude Kate from using the hot tub during labor. So the jelly was out. There was the balloon, inserted up the vagina and inflated to force the passage to dilate. This had been quite painful the first time around, in Rhode Island, for Kate and she didn't much care for that choice either.

Jane was reassuring. "The design for balloons has come a long way in a few years," she said, "and they're much more comfortable now. You'll still feel it, of course, but it shouldn't cause the same kind of discomfort this time around."

With some trepidation Kate chose the balloon. The medical staff went to work, I went for a walk, and we then settled down to wait. Of course, we both hoped it would be quick--maybe an hour or two of balloon induction, hopefully labor would start, and she'd push the kid out maybe around midnight.

"Oh, no," Jane corrected me. "If this goes well, Kate might go into labor tomorrow morning."

Oh, I see.

The folks at CMMC (Central Maine Medical Center) were kind enough to give me an inflatable mattress--as big an improvement, for my part, over the fold-out chair in Rhode Island as Kate's new balloon was for her--and I settled down for a choppy night's rest.

Kate of course got little or no sleep at all, being a bundle of fear, anticipation and hope, rubbed raw by the balloon. I do recall being woken once or twice by nurses tending to Kate, so I suppose I grabbed an hour or three of sleep. But around 7 AM there were four nurses around Kate's bed, asking how she felt and she was describing labor pains. It had begun.

On Kate's instruction I walked downstairs, and after grabbing my obligatory cup of coffee (not part of her instructions) I called our doula, Naomi, and then Kate's mother. We had hired a doula--an intermediary or intercessor for the mother with the medical staff--to provide some extra guidance and reassurance for Kate since we had so recently moved up to Maine.

Kate doesn't especially love change, you see, particularly of the pack-up-and-move kind, so combining the stress of a relocation with being removed from the entire medical staff she'd come to know with Eva's birth, and the birth of #2 so imminent, we decided that another professional caregiver on the scene would be helpful. The idea was Kate's mother's, and she found Naomi, and I'm glad she did.

Naomi said she'd be coming right in. I went back upstairs and Kate was hard at it, with contractions coming every 10-15 minutes. This time around we weren't alone in the room, Kate wasn't walking around, and I didn't have to do as much massage-and-pep-talk duty. I was, in fact, feeling about 50% in the bag from fatigue so I pretty much let the nurses and midwives have at it.

Naomi arrived, and by about 9:00 Kate's contractions had gotten pretty strong. It seemed to me just moments later that she was pushing, and yelling, and then out popped Eliot.

Honestly, the whole thing seemed to me like it took about three minutes. String me up as an oblivious male, fine. I guess I deserve it.

I was impressed that the entire time, as Kate labored, Naomi almost prowled around the bed, focused competely on Kate's face, giving the lower-back rubs that I'd done with Eva's birth, and constantly monitoring Kate's well-being. Really, it was Naomi who allowed me to kind of flake off and just observe things, because she was proactively doing everything Kate had asked me to do back in Providence two years ago.

So now we had Eliot in the world, and of course next up was the afterbirth.

They gynecologist came in and scooped out the placenta by hand, causing Kate to scream, "Stop! I want a DNC! STOP!" But the guy kept at it, then informed her matter-of-factly that he was 95% sure he'd gotten the whole placenta, and if any pieces were left behind, they'd fall out naturally. And that was that.

(And his words proved to be true, though the process was much longer and more traumatic than we expected...and Kate still has angry memories of being dismissed by the insensitive gynecologist.)

Eliot was a serious little runt, 18" long and all of 5 lbs 4 oz. His eyes were sealed shut, of course, and he looked somewhat like a shriveled little pink alien. He screamed at the top of his miniscule lungs whenever he wasn't wrapped up. But he remained in his bassinet next to Kate's bed.

The docs estimated that Kate lost half of her blood with that birth. She was lightheaded and unable to walk for more than a day. She told me later on that Eliot's birth hurt much more than Eva's had. Even though the boy was smaller, I can only guess that was because of the induction, forcing her body to deliver before it had fully prepared itself.

And this post will end here. But much more is to follow, about the beginning life of our second child, Eliot, and the reaction of his new older sister, Eva.

Summer Fun!

Kate here ... I know, I know unbelievable right? Well don't get too excited, I'm just posting some pictures then its off to bed for me! 14 more days of work, and then perhaps I will have more time and energy to start posting again ... then again with a toddler, a new born, and a new house to settle into, maybe not. We'll see ... for now though I'm at least making sure I share these great shots we've taken lately to give you a glimpse at a Sutherland summer (thus far)!

Playing in puddles is what Eva dose best!

Her hair is finally long enough for mommy to start playing with it! - She's all dolled up for the graduation ceremony at RI School for the Deaf!

More hair-dos! - Can't forget the b'ankie!

Enjoying her beautiful new bed set from Mima!

Dreaming about rain and jumping in puddles! She put the boots on herself, take note they're on the wrong feet!

Daddy's beautiful blooming garden!

Two of my most favorite people! So lucky to have them both in my life!

Copters and Tractors and Jets, Oh My!

Dog days of June here. We've just passed the summer solstice, so the long march back toward winter has begun. The weather tends to bounce between upper 60's and lower 80's, usually with some clouds in the sky, sometimes clear blue and sometimes, like today, totally overcast. A couple of mosquitoes humming around. Ordinary Rhode Island summer.

Except that this weekend will be the big air show at Naval Air Station Quonset, about two miles as the crow flies from our home. Several planes have been in the air practicing all week, mostly World War II-vintage props. On the other hand, the big cargo planes aren't coming and going as usual this week, so it's actually been a bit quieter than usual.

Until today, when the Blue Angels took to the air. They're the last act for the Air Show, the rockstars of the whole getup. I've seen them in person, and being no expert on flight, and fearing heights in general, I'm highly impressed by the precision, speed and of course, noise. (The air show folks hand out free earplugs to the crowd--a welcome courtesy.)

So the Blue Angels and a few other jets are now in town rehearsing, and it's possible to hear them screaming and roaring all over the place. It will go mostly quiet for a few minutes, perhaps with a distant purr in the air, when suddenly the scream gets loud again and you can hear a plane (or several) ripping by. If they're especially low--within a few hundred feet--a low hum accompanies the scream. Even as an adult, for me the experience ranges between annoying and unsettling.

For a 21-month-old girl, however, it can be pretty much terrifying. Eva normally loves to watch planes, scans the sky for them, and will point one out as soon as she sees or hears it (and frequently when she doesn't). When the big cargo lugs are coming in and out of the air station, lumbering potbellied 4-prop behemoths, Eva will stop whatever she's doing and stare.

However, when these high-speed war machines go exploding by, the poor girl is no less than nervous, frequently frightened enough to seek a hug, and sometimes dissolves altogether into tears. It doesn't help that right now, as the boys are practicing out there, it's supposed to be naptime.

The planes started flying just as I cleaned up Eva's lunch and brought her into her room for a few books before her nap. I began reading to her when the first group of jets came low overhead.

Now Eva is also learning to listen and talk, and she's growing increasingly sophisticated at it. Just a week or so ago she told her first story, a series of single words which referred to a sequence of events in time: "Mama...dada...pizza...milk...sauce." ("Sauce" being applesauce.) In her babyish way, Eva had described dinner to her doll. Just recently she's begun pairing words, as if she's linking the concepts: "Mama-dada...Mama-Eva...Eva-dada."

Of course she still talks a fair amount of gibberish, that almost-significant alphabet soup of sound toddlers make when they're engaging you but have no English at their command. What's particularly entertaining is when Eva sprinkles actual words in amongst the gibberish. And today, with the planes disturbing our reading session, was the best example yet.

Eva looked up nervously when the planes roared overhead, and clearly wasn't paying attention to Winnie the Pooh, so I started explaining. "Those are planes," I told her, "They're making a lot of noise because they're close to the ground." Of course Eva was just as unsettled as before, so I kept on repeating this, adding that "You're safe. You're here with Dada."

Soon, Eva was repeating, sort of, my words back to me, with her endearingly wide eyes, signed gestures and emphatic diction:

"Eema thama muissu abba pwaaaane."

"Oowa vimmi dikka guwa nooise."

"Matha aiea bamma anni gwoound."

"Amma thama iwi magga safe."

She kept on like that for a little while, nonsense followed by one of the words I'd emphasized to her. I got the feeling it was therapeutic for her, since the planes kept flying by and she was plainly still nervous. At one point, since they were so close, I grabbed her, ran outside and we saw four Blue Angels go ripping overhead in close formation, just a couple of hundred feet above the trees. "Planes," I said, pointing.

"Pwaaanes," Eva answered.

After returning her to her room, the jets came ripping by once more even lower, and I cursed myself for bringing the little girl in too soon. And of course she exploded into tears at the sound, so I went in, calmed her down with another book, and went back out to finish my lunch.

As of right now, the jets are still in the air practicing, and still occasionally flying overhead. And I just checked on the little girl: passed out on her bed, partially covered by her blankie, with one corner stuffed in her mouth.

That's my girl.

My Crappy Garden

I'm a pretty foofy guy. I do have my angry moments, and there are certainly dark aspects to my personality, but by and large I prefer happiness, love and bright colors. So much so that my sister Julie, after seeing the family nameplate I painted for our front door, opined that I'd father only girls.

(Sorry, Jules. Little Fausto's on the way after all. And remember that Dad was a stud athlete but fathered two girls before he & Mom managed to come up with me.)

In high school I took the whole bright color thing to kind of a silly extreme. Miami Vice was big during my high school years, and despite living in small-town New Hampshire and having pretty much no sense of style at all, I did my middle-class best to emulate Sonny Crockett's look. Only in my case, instead of custom-made Italian silk suits, custom loafers and black Ferrari, it meant light blue cotton pants, pastel shirts, boat moccasins and a gray El Camino. It was roughly as convincing as my espresso-and-stache impression of Tony Stark. Less so probably because of the pink shirt and my inability to grow any facial hair. On top of the timid personality and confirmed reputation as a dork.

Anyway, that silly part of my personality is alive and well. It's the part that loves cartoons, the part that revels in reading to Eva in silly voices (the Winnie-the-Pooh characters are a work in progress), and a number of other foibles Kate could tell you about.

I've enjoyed a moderate bit of gardening for a while now, and since graduating college I've always loved having some flowers around. Inside or out (though you have to be careful about the kinds of flowers that attract bugs), blooms and leaves are good things. I read somewhere that keeping oxygen-producing plants in your living space can noticeably improve your state of mind--removing carbon dioxide and replacing it with oxygen in the local environment is a good thing--so I've made a point since then of keeping at least a few green and growing things nearby.

I had a few flower pots while at the condo, but obviously no garden. Now that Kate and I rent half of a duplex, I've made a very small effort to grow some flowers near the door. I'm not going to invest time (or money we barely have) in any landscaping, but I did pull a few weeds near the doorway and prepped a little triangular space--handily marked off with some plastic edging--for perennial seeds.

We now have a half-barrel sitting in the driveway, and then this little trianglular patch near the door. I spent the month of April mixing coffee grounds, which are very good for flowers, into the dirt. The potting soil in the half-barrel remained light and dark, but the dirt by the door, no matter how many times I dug it up and aerated it, has packed back down to roughly the texture of concrete.

In early May I planted seeds in the barrel and in the ground by the door. Among the other flowers by the door were about a dozen morning glory vines, which I was hoping would twine up around the hand railings and provide a nice colorful accent to the main entry. I even planted six morning glory seeds at the front corner of the house, so the vines might creep up the gutter pipe.

No such luck.

The barrel's looking quite nice, but the other two areas, not so much.
Even my my not-so-green-a-thumb standards, these flowers are pathetic. Just sad. I can't wait to move to Maine, where the soil is too acid, and the shade too heavy, for anything but ferns and moss. Screw the damn flowers.

(Of course, that didn't stop me from buying some fertilizer and tossing it on the ground. I'll be getting another bag of seeds and scattering those where nothing's growing now. I guess I'm chronic.

Thrift Store Fever

Recession or no recession, money or no money, for pretty much all of my adult life I've been into thrift stores. I suppose if I'd had all the money I wanted when growing up I never would've had a reason to go to one in the first place, but I've been a regular secondhand shopper for nearly half of my time on the planet. I think it started when my sister Julie got married, and her then-fiance' Halsey told me about a store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I could buy a good used tuxedo--Keezer's. I went, and was blown away. Powder-blue, light gray, white, maroon, long tails, you name it. Of course I got a basic sash collar poly-cotton blend, but I could see that thrift-store shopping is a great way to go.

When I studied in Italy during college, I also got to know several secondhand stores in Rome, and came away with a hideously ugly, green leather trenchcoat, with massive shoulders and a flip-up collar which made me look like a Nazi jackboot. But it was college, and my sense of style was about as fine as my choice of ways to spend my time. (That would be primarily in the basement of a fraternity.) So aside from the green leather trenchcoat (and later a gold lame' tuxedo which I added to my collection), around college I discovered the usefulness of thrift store shopping.

This year, as Kate and I have struggled through the winter on severely reduced means while I look for work, used clothing and other items have become an economic necessity. Thrift stores are almost an exchange mart for baby and toddler clothing, since as a rule the child outgrows the clothing before it wears out. To date we've bought perhaps three pairs of shoes for Eva at retail, but instead dropped $3 to $5 a pair for the used variety. Ditto for jackets and winter clothing.

Kate and I have bought furniture, such as Kate's desk and our couch, from a big used-goods store nearby called Savers. Every few weeks, if we're not out of money, I'll drop by to see if something we're looking for might be there at severly reduced price. Obviously, when shopping used you don't have as much choice as you would at retail. If you're looking for something even moderately specific, you need to be patient and just keep dropping by, and wait to see if something like what you want happens to be on hand. Then, you need to be very thorough in looking the item over, to make sure that it's not defective in some obvious way. The store staff is generally pretty careful about the merchandise they set out for sale, but things like minor rips or burns in clothing can slip through their inspection.

However, it was only recently that I noticed the store's book section. Not that I need any books. I've got a lifetime's library worth of literature, and should I ever have a job again, and should we come to have a decent home, I expect to have a proper library.

Eva's got a library of her own. It's not like mine, though. No Homer or Dante or Joyce or any history or math. No, Eva's library includes titles like "Baby Colors", "Mommy Hugs", "Snuggle Puppy" and "A Very Special Critter". Great books in their way, with illustrations Eva enjoys, and stories she likes to listen to. Since she's learning so many words so quickly now, her ability to listen is improving, and her taste in stories is expanding.

That's good, because I can't tell you how tiresome it gets reading the same three or four books to her every night for months. Even when her selection rotates slowly, it's like listening to the same twenty albums from your youth...until you're 45. After a while you know them too well to even pay attention any more. Maybe Eva's not there with her own books, but I sure am. Dad needs variety. Sometimes I don't care what the baby wants. I need me a little more variety in what I read to her. (I suspect Kate feels much the same, only not so stridently.)

So there's this book section at Savers. I quickly browsed it last week, and found two whole rows of shelves devoted to nothing but children's books. Eureka, I thought, This is how we replenish that library of hers!

Kate's workmates just threw her a baby shower for Fausto, and she was armed with gift cards to Target. I just got a delayed unemployment payment--we'd been surviving without it this past week--and we also got some straight cash for the shower. So I pushed for us to go shopping today, Kate at Target and me at Savers (about a half-mile apart on the commercial strip in Warwick). Since Kate was looking for sandals for Eva--something too specialized to find easily at Savers--she took the baby, and I dove into the books.

Winnie the Pooh, books by Sandra Boynton, Little Critter books (my favorites, aside from the classic Richard Scarry) by Mercer Mayer, and some really excellent Christmas books to stow away--I hit the motherlode today. Seventy cents a volume, so I got twenty books for Eva. Even picked up, since Kate was still busy at Target, a volume of Romantic writing to enjoy over an espresso at Starbucks afterward. As we'd say (and I did) in our Roses and Thorns, my trip to Savers and then Starbucks was unequivocally a rose.

Parental Incompetence, Parental Love

What about when you screw your baby up? Make her sick, make her sulk or cry by acting genuinely inconsiderate, accidentally hurt her (like, say, by washing her hands with water that's more suitable in hotness for adults). You take steps to make her or him better, that's what. And then you employ your common sense, or else hike your butt to the internet or a book or a doctor or a knowledgeable parent or a trusted friend or all of these and you figure out how not to screw your baby up again. And this process, in various guises, over various timescales, is part of the lifelong process of parenting.

Kate and I just got through with an adventure mostly concerning Eva, considering she was the one getting sick. She'd come down with a rash covering her arms and legs, reddish spots one-half to one inch in diameter, some with darkened red rings like the dreaded bullseye of Lyme disease. Rhode Island is pretty much ground zero for Lyme disease--we're less than sixty miles from Lyme, Connecticut, for which the disease is named--so it was a head-slappingly humilitating, not to mention slightly scary, moment yesterday morning when I first noticed the apparent bullseye patterns on Eva's right leg, one on her calf, one on her shin.

Kate and I share one car these days, and she'd driven it to work, so I couldn't bring Eva to the doctor's office. All I could do was e-mail Kate about it (thereby making her worry all day) and set up a doctor's appointment for today, which Kate would have off. Lyme disease incubates slowly enough, and the bullseyes typically appear quickly enough, that even if this was Lyme, I had small fear that Eva might suffer from it chonically. But I didn't want her to suffer at all.

It being a fine hot spell in early June, we walked down to the beach, about a quarter mile away, where Eva could run in the sand and wade in the ocean water of Narragansett Bay. She's always loved water and swimming, and even though she's still intimidated by the coldness and waves of the seashore, Eva's learning quickly that getting wet there is fun. For about three days straight we'd gone down and Eva had run on the sand and gotten wet. I was happy to watch her discovering a whole new part of the world, something she'll be able to enjoy for the rest of her life.

We'd spent the previous weekend in Maine, visiting Kate's parents, and Maine is still in the grip of blackflies. Blackfly season precedes mosquito season, is roughly as annoying, and lasts about a month. After tagging along after Mima through the yard, petting the bunnies, and sitting on the Ranger for a ride, Eva had a healthy number of bug bites. No big deal, we all did.

Flash forward to this week, when after a few days on the beach, the bites have become spreading red welts and the bullseyes had appeared. My level of concern rose steadily toward panic as the day went on, and by the time Kate came home in the late afternoon, Eva's legs were swollen and red, and more bullseyes had appeared on her arms. I was now alarmed.

But I didn't dare tell Kate, because I was about to head up to Boston as part of my process of preparing to enter the Naval Reserves--one part of my plan to make it through the doctorate program--and I didn't want to freak my poor wife out just before leaving for the evening. It seemed to me, worried as I was about those worsening welts, that to tell Kate I was scared, and then leave minutes later, would be like putting a grenade in her hands, pulling the pin, and walking away. A very unfriendly and very dangerous thing to do. Kate's good enough at working herself into a frenzy without my giving her a big push.

Besides, I counted on her sense. If I was scared, so was she, and if Eva seemed to require emergency room treatment immediately, Kate would go. And so she did. While I spent the evening in a Hilton hotel near Boston, studying calculus and the history of maps, Kate was sitting in the emergency room waiting area in South Kingstown. The doctor informed Kate that the rash was most likely an allergic reaction to sand flea bites.

"Has she been to the beach lately?" the doctor asked Kate.

"Um, yeah, for the past three days straight," she admitted, suddenly feeling a bit foolish. So we seemed to have our answer.

A few rubbings of antihistamine topical cream, and the rash seems to be going down, especially in Eva's arms. After three days if the rash persists then Lyme or something else might be involved. So we'll be looking sharply at Eva's skin for the next three days.

Of course I knew none of this while up in Boston. Since we're doing without cell phones for the time being, I had no idea, and I knew that if something like this happened, that I wouldn't. After leaving last night I thought it at least 50% likely that I'd come home to no Kate and Eva tonight, with Kate at the hospital having Eva tended to.

I arrived back home at 2 PM, driven by my recruiter, to no family car. I expected as much...but then remembered that I hadn't brought my own key. I doubted that Kate had left the door unlocked, and she hadn't.

Fortunately enough windows were open that I found one I could crawl through. Not the first time I'd had to break into my own place, but after a few phone calls I'd heard the basic story. Kate filled in the details when she arrived a bit later, having wrapped up this whole episode with a few hours' worth of therapeutic shopping for baby stuff.

So our task now is, how to limit these stupid flea bites without cutting the little girl off from the beach altogether? Homework, homework.

POSTSCRIPT--After sitting down tonight at dinner, as Kate and I were playing our normal Roses and Thorns game, Kate asked Eva if she had a rose. Let the record show that Eva answered "Dada!" for her first rose ever. And then said it again for her second.