Langer Loksh

Waving at Cars, Part II

Tonight when I left for yoga, Charlie toddled out to the porch and pressed his pudgy hands against the plexiglass porch door. Jeff expected him to cry. Instead, he simply pointed at me driving away and said... "Car."

Here he is eating rocks at the beach in Plymouth today.

Outed

When I started this blog, only my relatives read it. Now, anyone can find it on a search engine. I'm not 100% sure how that works, but I've developed some sort of critical mass of links or hits or something, and I'm now easy to find if you're searching for Disney Princess or hemifacial microsomia or microtia or, apparently, "midget needs his diaper changed." Yes, I can see the search terms people use to end up here. And sometimes it's disturbing.

This week someone from my Yahoo! microtia group came upon the blog of Julie, mom of Miles, a three-year-old undergoing ear reconstruction via the Medpor method. (Quick reminder: rib graft ears are less perfect looking but more tried and true.) Julie posted her opinion of rib graft ears on her blog (specifically, that they are ugly), and this other mom felt very angry and insulted when she read it. So she wrote this crazy venomous post to the Yahoo! group about how Julie is "sooooooo two-faced," and the board erupted. It was like when [Name removed because it's freaking me out how many times people have Googled this person to end up at my site--yes, I can see how you get here*] kicked me in the butt for saying that Doug Spitzer was her boyfriend in fourth grade. In other words, totally age-appropriate--if you're NINE! I wish I could post some of the more flammable material here, but I'm afraid that would get me in trouble. One adult with microtia struck a positive note while trying to get people to see how silly they were being:

"My Grade III ears look infinately cooler and more elegant than your Grade II and Grade I ears. For starters, having absolutely no hole whatsoever is just too cool for school. And the long slender even strip has a certain uniform grace to it. Finally, my pointy tip is elfin in its attractiveness. "

After the flame war, lots of people visited Julie's blog, and because she has a link to my blog, they found me next. Anyone reading my blog should know: it's just me, stumbling around my feelings about having a child who looks different and has a hearing impairment and what, if anything, we're going to do about it. It's awkward, painful, and often joyful. Most important, it's helping me, so if you don't like what you read, just ignore me.

*Updated 11/12/06: Here's the real story behind the butt kicking.

Waving at Cars

Charlie uses just one word consistently: car. His favorite activity is bounding down the sidewalk, waving at cars.

This morning after I dropped Summer off at preschool I got an answering machine message from Charlie's Early Intervention speech pathologist. She wanted to prepare me for Charlie's annual evaluation, at which they will determine whether he is still eligible to receive services. Priscilla, the speech path, always talks too long on the machine, gets cut off, and has to call back again to finish. She said Charlie will definitely qualify because he has a hearing loss, so the evaluation (which is completely screwing up my work week) is a formality. Then she said she thought Charlie's expressive language was a little delayed, and his receptive language has been inconsistent, so could I come up with examples of commands he follows? (Answer: none.)

I have no idea why Priscilla felt the need to ambush me with this on my answering machine. She is really a great person and she should know better since she's the head of the speech program at our EI. We hadn't talked about Charlie being delayed at all. Hearing it that way--on my machine, as I was dropping Charlie off with a sitter after dropping off Summer before sneaking in a grocery run before work--really felt like just that: an ambush, like she popped up from behind a car with a hand grenade.

I know that:

1. Saying your kid has a language delay is not a hand grenade

2. Charlie doesn't have a language delay. Summer only had one word at this same age and now she talks nearly incessantly. For some reason lately she begins every sentence with "Eventually..." My brother didn't talk until he was two and grew up to be a professional talker on the radio.

Logic, however, does not apply when it comes to mothers and babies, so I cried. It's just like the eye patch. On one hand, it's great to catch problems early. On the other hand, we wouldn't know about these supposed problems if everyone wasn't looking so hard for them.

Last week, for example, I brought both kids to Charlie's hearing-impaired-baby playgroup because I knew another mom was bringing her big kid and that Summer would enjoy playing with her. Charlie's eye was red; I figured something got in there and he couldn't blink it out because that eye doesn't blink. They tossed him out of group because "weird eye viruses are going around." I ended up following him around the parent discussion room as he bonked his head on every shelf and table leg in the room while Summer and her new friend took advantage of the play-doh in the baby room. Of course, Charlie's eye cleared up just fine.

Will everyone please leave my kid alone? Because he's just fine the way he is, particularly his crooked smile.

I called EI and moved that annual evaluation to August because I don't want to wreck my week for a formality. Then, tonight after dinner, I walked down the sidewalk with Charlie and reminded myself that nothing matters right now but slowing down and breathing and waving at cars.

And we're skipping group tomorrow--we're going to the beach.

The Circle of Smiles Post, and by the way How Do You Like my Google Ads?

What's for Lunch?

Those of you who do not live in this fine Commonwealth may not have heard about the Fluffernutter debate raging under the gold dome of the State House, so I thought I'd share.

A state rep from the People's Republic of Cambridge, outraged that his third grader had been served a Fluffernutter for lunch, tried to ban Marshmallow Fluff from school lunches. Fluff has been made by the same Massachusetts company in Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin, since 1920. A state rep from Reveah countered the Cambridge guy with a bill naming the Fluffernutter the official state sandwich.

This all happened the same week that Whole Foods Market decided not to sell lobsters anymore, because of the heartless way that lobsters are treated. As if the dead cow stocking the Whole Foods butchery cases had such a nice life. Chef Jasper White pointed out that 10,000 families in New England and Canada make a living off lobstering. "Lobsters," he told the Globe, "are for dinner."

We was Robbed!

The rain had stopped for the moment, and Charlie kept lunging at all the windows and pointing and grunting, so we decided to go for a walk. Summer pedaled her second-hand Huffy trike. We went a few yards down the quiet side street but Charlie kept turning around and booking for the busy street so he could wave at cars. (Charlie's third word: car. Sounds a lot like cat, which evolved from puh-CAH.)

We crossed the busy street and then hooked around to visit Henry and Emily, Charlie's friend from Early Intervention and his big sister, who's a little older than Summer. We parked the trike on a patch of dirt at the edge of Henry and Emily's lawn. We went inside, said hi, and then, because they had guests over for dinner, went back outside to leave. The trike was gone. "That's what happens when you live in an urban environment," said Jeff, who, having had his own chickens growing up, apparently believes that our little village center is the South Central Los Angeles of New England.

At first Summer cried and stomped her feet. Then, as we hunted around the neighborhood, she got absorbed in the mystery. We didn't see the trike anywhere, so we went home and called the police and filed a report. "It had blue pedals!" Summer shouted as I described the bike to the woman at the police station. I hung up and told Summer that the woman would tell all the police officers in town to look for the trike, and they'd call me if they found it. I'm sure we'll never see it again. But we'll make the police blotter in the paper.

Hormone High

This week we visited a playground in a neighboring town--a very conservative, historically significant, old, old money town. Some high school girls were prowling around in teeny denim miniskirts and lace-trimmed, spaghetti-strapped tank tops, tossing their glossy hair. There were one or two boys in huge cargo shorts and white t-shirts. One boy was lying on his stomach on a picnic bench; a girl called over to him that she liked his ass. Another girl sprinkled water from her Poland Spring bottle on a boy's chest. The girls were like she-wolves hunting in packs. The boys were bewildered. One boy attempted to interpret a she-wolf's stalking behavior: "Do you need a ride home?"

I talked about it tonight at dinner with a friend who's a high school teacher. "Yeah, you just described my class," he said. "What's even worse is all the body image stuff these girls put themselves through."

What is with the high school girls? And their parents? Because my dad wouldn't even let me wear shorts to the mall. And he was right. I am sure I sound like a prude, or at least, a shriveled, bitter crone envious of the glossy-haired youth, but in my day (the 1980s), we did our pack hunting at track practice in gigantic t-shirts, boob-squashing sport bras, and flourescent Hind running tights, and we were plenty successful. So successful that I suddenly had a curfew at age 15. When I turned 16, my parents gave me a watch and said "This one won't be slow."

Now I feel even sleazier about having bought little Summy that beach chair with the midriff-baring Barbie doll on it. I support the empowerment of young women, and the last week of school in high school is really fun and exciting, but I also believe in being respectful to yourself and your community, and that means not dressing like a Kneeland Street hooker on a playground in the suburbs.

My Chief of Staff

Allison: So your birthday's comin' up!

Me: Yep! 35. I'm going to run for president.

Allison: Oh yeah? I got some pictures say you won't.

Not One, But TWO Kimball's Secrets

When we got to Kimball's in Jaffrey on Sunday, the kids were asleep in their car seats so I had Jeff go get our cones while I stayed in the air conditioned car. I'm going to let you in on a little secret here: orange sherbet with chocolate sprinkles. I know, I know, why would anyone get orange sherbet when they could get caramel cashew chip or mocha almond assault or... well, anything chocolate. Just go to Kimball's and try it, you'll see. Jeff discovered it late last summer, deep into ice cream stand season, when he'd had chocolately things enough times to allow himself to take a chance. The payoff was huge. Seriously delicious.

So anyway, Jeff comes back to the car with the typical preposterous Kimball's "kidde" portion--three scoops totalling a pint of ice cream, teetering on a cone, with a paper cup and plastic spoon for backup. $3.30. I got out of the car so I could have full range of motion for cone stabilization. I immediately realized the cone was terminally unmanageable, so I dumped the ice cream into the cup. The plastic spoon was too flimsy to work the ice cream back onto the cone. It was like being handed a juicy, rare steak, with no plate, and a tongue depressor instead of a knife and fork. I turned on my flip-flop heel and headed to the ice cream windows. All I wanted was a simple ice cream cone, not a pint of melting mess that I couldn't negotiate into my mouth. These Kimball's people need to be schooled. After all, I scooped my way through college. Other girls worked out at the gym. I had one muscle--my right bicep, from scooping.

"STOP!" Jeff yelled, lunging his considerable torso between me and the serving windows. "I am not going to let you ruin it for everybody else in the Kimball's-portion-loving world!" He managed to squash a scoop's worth back onto the cone, though the sprinkles were no longer sprinkled but mashed into the matrix of orange sherbet in a most unsatisfying configuration. We fed the rest by spoon to Charlie in the back seat, by now awake and hungry.

Last night we met some friends at the Kimball's in Westford. My friend Alissa ordered ahead of me and I heard her ask for a doggie scoop of black raspberry for Sylvia. That's the second secret I'm revealing to you here tonight: just a smidge of ice cream, perfect for a preschooler, and they only charge TWENTY FIVE CENTS! I hope that by revealing this I haven't ruined it for everybody else. Don't all run down there tomorrow asking for one or they'll get wise.

Here's Summer hitting golf balls after her doggie (or is it "dogge"?) scoop of black raspberry. Having had the orange sherbet with chocolate sprinkles on Sunday,  I opted for the caramel cashew chip this time. Charlie chose simply to run into the parking lot fourteen hundred times. That is how I maintain my noodly physique, even though I eat ice cream every day. Well that, and the nerves.

Cranio What?

Charlie walks all over now. Even when he falls, he pushes himself back up and starts walking again. When he walks his head is usually pretty straight. If he's sitting or playing or sleeping, though, it's a little bent to the right. This persistent torticollis, or muscle tightness on one side of the neck, is the only reason he still qualifies for physical therapy from Early Intervention. (That, and if we wanted to do electrical stim for his facial nerve, but no one seems to think that will work at all.) Dr. J. seems unconcerned about the head tilt, but I don't like it. I told Mary E., Charlie's physical therapist, that I wanted to work on it some more.

We took Summer's dry-erase easel and drew a grid on it, and stood Charlie in front of it. Mary E. showed me how his hips and shoulders are nicely aligned; the problem is just from his neck up, and some small portion of it is an optical illusion because of his crazy ear. But his head definitely tilts a little to the right. Mary E. told me to apply gentle pressure to the base of Charlie's skull while he is sleeping. This is something called craniosacral therapy. As I understand it, there is fluid in your spinal cord and brain that sort of has its own pulse. Since Charlie's skull is ever so slightly squished on one side, the fluid may be bottlenecking there, disrupting the natural rhythm. Mary E. says that with very gentle pressure on certain body parts, one can restore the healthy flow of this fluid. It sounds a little flaky, but harmless, and Mary E. herself is not the least bit flaky, so I agreed to try it. Every other night I sneak into Charlie's dark room and hold his head in my fingertips. I only stay for a few minutes, counted on the blue glow of my watch.

Today Mary E. worked on Charlie as he was napping. "He was so good!" she told me. "He let me work on his chest and he didn't wake up at all." She can definitely feel where the problem is. "I do this thing where I pull on the ears, and normally you feel like you're going to pull the kid's ears right off," she said, "but on this side (the right, the torticollis side), it was like he was pulling back!" She's going to come back and do it again.

I think it's helping to relax his neck, but it might be my imagination. The whole thing might be my imagination--I just combed through my recent photos to find one to insert here, but Charlie's head looks straight in all of them. But it's not my imagination. We mothers know. I remember hearing the author of Flags of our Fathers speak at a conference. He said the mother of one of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima identified him by his fatigue-clad rear end. She'd diapered it enough to know. She was right.