Author: Sheila Quirke

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The Humility of Parenting

Mary Tyler Son is sick.  High fever, violent vomit out the nose sick.  Poor kid.

I felt under the weather Saturday afternoon and evening, but woke up Sunday fresh as pie.  Mary Tyler Son, though, was cranky, contrary, and kind of a pill all morning.  It’s easy to get pulled into that, asking him, “What is wrong with you?,” rather than asking myself, “Wow.  He’s really not acting himself.  What might be wrong with him?”

That latter approach was apparently in the parenting manual I never read.

I got a text late afternoon that poor Mary Tyler Son had a fever of 102.  Of course he did.  Mary Tyler Dad and I both did a collective smack of our noggins at that point.  Of course he had a fever of 102.  Let the Tylenol commence.

I know I shouldn’t test the fates by typing what I’m about to type, let alone thinking what I’m about to type.  Aside from seeing my little one unhappy and not himself, I appreciate the strength of need Mary Tyler Son has for me when he is unwell.  There I said it.  Ugh.  Parenting confession No. 13,598 — I like to be needed.  I like to be able to make things better.

I know more than most that children get sick.  Some children get really sick. Some children get so sick that they die.  This is not like that.  I never took pleasure in holding my daughter for hours on end on the kitchen floor as she wailed in discomfort.   There was no pleasure found in knowing that after five days in the hospital with chemo we would come home to wait for the certain neutropenia to set in, knowing that another hospital day was exactly, precisely eleven days away.

Yeah, this is not like that.

Despite what I wrote a few days ago, I trust that I will see this child, Mary Tyler Son, grow into the person Donna will never get the chance to be.  I trust that he will get taller than me and maybe one day, if I am really, truly lucky, love me as an adult.  I hope for this every day.

But on days like yesterday and today, when the little guy is feverish, not eating much, and under the weather, yeah, I am gonna enjoy the hell out of cuddling with him.  Imma revel in stroking the curls off his forehead, feeling him in my arms for more than a quick hug between games, and feeding him bits of too sweet pancakes, just to ensure something is in his belly.  On days like this, I happily fill the washing machine with vomit covered blankets and towels and pajamas.

When Mary Tyler Son is sick, the world stops.  Our world stops.  We hunker down, settle in, slow down.  We watch kid friendly television, make Jell-o in dinosaur bone molds, and place a moratorium on the one sweet drink a day rule.  I hover, I fret, I fuss, knowing in my bones that this sickness will pass.

And at night, when Mary Tyler Dad has been sent to the guest room (our strategy is that at least one parent should be fresh for the next morning), Mary Tyler Son sets up camp in our bed.  He needs the company, so he’s “not too lonesome,” and I make a nest next to the bed with everything we will need:  towels, metal bowl to catch vomit, thermometer, water, crackers, iPad. It is our routine.  And sometimes, a boy just needs his Mama.

Like at 4:17 AM, when moaning, he climbs into my arms and tells me, “everything hurts.”  I know and he knows that my arms make everything hurt just a tiny bit less.  And I hold him close and whisper “there, there” as I pat his back and smooth his curls.  And in those moments I can do for Mary Tyler Son what I could never do for Donna — I can make it better.

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What’s a Parent To Do?: Watch ‘Modern Family’ and Learn

Modern Family Portrait

‘Modern Family’ captures and holds my attention like few sitcoms.  Part of it is its humor.  Part of it is Phil Dunphy (so sweet, so cute).  Part of it is how they tackle current parenting issues with wit and aplomb.

My own family looks nothing like the Pritchetts.  I don’t have a hot Columbian step-mother; I have a dead mother.  I don’t have a sassy, gay brother-in-law; I have a mostly humorless, tense brother-in-law who really doesn’t like me.  I don’t have three kids that are distinctly different and yet perfectly complementary; I have a toddler son and a daughter who is buried in the earth.  I don’t have a fancy home in close proximity to my father and sibling’s fancy homes; I have a condo with neighbors that make too much noise. Sigh.

Sometimes real life sucks.  Perhaps if a humor writer took a hand at Mary Tyler Family, there would be less cancer, less loss, less fracture.

Whatever.  My point is that I look forward to those twenty-two minutes a week that I can suspend my own family issues and laugh with the Pritchetts.  Big belly laughs.  Full on laughs that both have me identifying with the parenting issues of the week and cringing just a bit by the bold honesty of it all.

In the past two episodes alone ‘Modern Family’ has covered leashes, or “child safety tethers” on young kids, aging, failing marriages and compromise, lying and cheating kids, infighting over different parenting methods, and marital jealousy.  Sounds depressing, but it’s not.  It’s refreshing, which is so much better.

There is an openness and bright light that ‘Modern Family’ brings to modern parenting that I completely appreciate.  A week or so ago a friend with a blog (hard to believe, but I have dozens of those), made what I thought was a pretty innoculous Facebook observation about seeing a toddler in a leash. Yes, a leash, not a “childhood safety tether.”  She had never used one herself and wondered, innocently enough, if kids in leashes are getting enough exercise.  Well, the Internet parenting snipers reigned down on her.

Scout’s honor, this gal is on of the sweetest, most rationale, and loving women I know.  Her observation was directly in line with the content of her blog (family nutrition and health) and the judgment in her words was non-existent.  The comment thread was full of vitriol, much of it geared towards her.  How dare she? was the common denominator.  How dare she ask such a question.

In modern life, judging has somehow become equivalent to stoning.

Modern Family handled this leash/tether issue with grace and humor.  Cam, the stay-at-home dad of young Lily, “a bolter,” was all for it.  Mitchell, her working dad, hated it, mostly because of how it would be perceived by others.  Well, Mitchell, of course, was right — as he was judged by family and strangers alike.  That’s what I call equal opportunity judging.  When the weight of all that disapproval got to be too much, the leash came off and Lily bolted.  Of course.  What’s a parent to do?

That simple question — what’s a parent to do? — and the fact that it is asked in the first place, is why ‘Modern Family’ is courageous television. Truth is, there is no right answer and there is no easy answer.

In last week’s episode Cam, good old, well-intentioned Cam, informed Claire, his Type A sister-in-law, that they were using a new parenting method and no longer saying “NO” to Lily.  Naughty Lily, who was a guest in Claire’s home, and doing naughty, annoying, wasteful things.  In modern life, there is no such thing as the “village” that Hilary Clinton immortalized.  It no longer takes a village to raise our children, it takes tomes and tomes of parenting theory books.

These books and parenting theories work hard to answer that question of what’s a parent to do?  They do it by telling us exactly, precisely, and definitively what to do.  Problem is, these parenting books are like bubblegum — they come in a hundred and one flavors and lose that flavor quickly.  Claire and Cam, in a tense and hilarious exchange, come to blows over her not respecting his new rule.  He leaves in a huff, his parenting ego bruised, angry at Claire and no doubt embarrassed at the exposure of his new rule as bunk.

And this is where the good folks in ‘Modern Family’ differ from my own family.  Somehow, someway, they continue to love and respect one another in their differences.  Their individual styles and quirks and failings and parental idiosyncrasies are tolerated, and better yet, acknowledged and laughed over.

In my family, our idiosyncrasies turn into a bunch of idiots, sins, and crazies. Sigh.

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How Cancer Still &%@$# With Me

Twice since my daughter died have I been convinced that Mary Tyler Son had a brain tumor. 

The first time was last April when four days in a row he woke up complaining of a headache.  Headaches, but specifically morning headaches, are one of the primary symptoms of pediatric brain tumors.  I didn’t know that before I moved to Cancerville, but now it is seared in my brain.  His two year old self also seemed not to be 100%.  His appetite was down a little.  He was a little more needy.  Yes, those are both symptoms that something could be seriously wrong as well.  It doesn’t matter that they are also symptoms of a cold or a virus or a simple change in mood. 

My thoughts raced.  I went from 0-60 in seconds, anticipating his diagnosis, treatment, and certain death.  I spoke about it with Mary Tyler Dad incessantly during that week.  A pit presented itself in my stomach that grew larger by the hour.  I dreaded picking Mary Tyler Son up from the babysitter, wondering what she would reveal about the symptoms he surely demonstrated.  Every day, it was the same, “Nah, he’s good.  He ate well and played well and all seems fine.”  That didn’t matter.  All I felt and all I saw confirmed the worst.  It was happening again.

On the morning of the fourth day, I called my sister at 7:00 a.m.  She was sleeping.  Bah!  How can she sleep at a time like this?!  Then I called my Dad.  He gave me sane and good advice.  Call Dr. Stew.  He was right.  We contemplated calling our pediatrician, but when you’re worried about your only surviving child having a brain tumor and one of the leading pediatric neurooncologists in the world is in your cell phone, you call him.

I did.  Dr. Stew returned my call by lunch time.  He was just as I had remembered him.  Calm, compassinate, caring.  He listened to my concerns and asked me questions.  At the end of that exchange he told me that he was more concerned by the tone of my voice than anything I had said.  He offered to see Mary Tyler Son that day.  He offered to schedule an MRI before the weekend, if that was what was needed.  And then he spoke some wisdom that I think about every day, “You can’t ever erase what you know,” he told me.  I felt better instantly.  Just confirming that Stew was there and available seemed to be enough to soothe my panicked and traumatized soul.

Strangely, Mary Tyler Son never complained of another headache.  I got over it and life returned to normal.

Until, that is, last week.  On Wednesday morning, as he was leaving for his sitter, we noticed a distinct limp in Mary Tyler Son’s gait.  He told us that his foot hurt from the “perfect rock.”  The perfect rock is a largish granite rock in a neighbor’s yard that we walk past daily en route to his sitter.  Mary Tyler Son likes to crawl on it, stand, and launch his little three year old self off of.  He is proud of himself.  I encourage it regularly, standing there and applauding his every leap.  Sure enough, his sitter confirmed that, yes, Mary Tyler Son and his little friend had been jumping off of it repeatedly on Tuesday afternoon.  Because our neighbors had picked him up and sat with him until bedtime so we could be at a St. Jude’s fundraiser (oh, the irony), we hadn’t noticed it until Wednesday.

But, you see, none of that mattered because in my head Mary Tyler Son had a brain tumor.  A modified gait or loss of a physical milestone is another one of the primary symptoms of a pediatric brain tumor.  What we were seeing was surely that.  His foot looked fine.  I could flex it every way under the sun and there was no pain.  This had to be, of course, a brain tumor.  Mary Tyler Dad thought I was crazy and overreacting.  There was more discussion about seeing the pediatrician.  We set a deadline for Monday.  If on Monday there was still a funny gait, we would deal with it then.  I tried to breathe.  In and out.  In and out.  In and out.  The dread was highest again at pick-up time.  What would the sitter say?  Would she, too, see what I saw — the initial formations of the disease that would take both my son and daughter?

Adding to my anxiety/fear/terror was Mary Tyler Son’s words.  He starting asking, in a whiny tone and with his arms extended, “Mama, carry me.”  Those three words plague me.  They clang around my head like the clapper inside a bell.  Loudly.  LOUDLY, LOUDLY, LOUDLY.  Those words fill me with dread as they are the exact three words Donna spoke before she herself was diagnosed with her brain tumor.  I thought she was being lazy, or wanting to be coddled.  Most of the time I would carry her in those couple of weeks, but some of the time I required her to walk, even when she wailed or cried.  That particular memory haunts me. 

In the end, Mary Tyler Son is fine.  No worries.  I have relaxed, as of Mother’s Day, as his limp has disappeared.  And with the limp disappearing, so too have the commands to carry him.  I am breathing again.  In and out.  In and out.  In and out. 

PTSD is how cancer still fucks with me.  As Dr. Stew says, I can never erase what I know.  And I know too damn much.