Langer Loksh

The Yankee Clipper

Charlie has had his first haircut. He behaved very nicely though he did need the paci. Joe the barber moved as if in a dance with Charlie, speaking softly and clipping gently. "He tilts his head to the right," I pointed out, so Joe wouldn't cut crooked accidentally. "Yes," said Joe as he snipped, "and his hair swirls to the left." This guy knew exactly what he was doing. And we got lollipops and a certificate. (Thanks Jess!)

Get Over Yourself

A woman with cute little five-month-old boy/girl twins came to our Early Intervention group for the first time this week. The girl baby has normal hearing, and the boy baby has mild hearing loss in one ear and mild to moderate in the other. The woman, who was very slim, wore very tight low rider jeans and a black lycra t-shirt with a cut-out in the back confirming the brand name of her nursing bra. After momentarily spacing out on her elaborate smokey eye makeup--five-month-old twins? How does she apply eyeliner? Oh right, they aren't mobile yet--I attempted to welcome her. "One of my best friends has mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears," I said. "She's a psychologist." The woman nodded with interest. "So how was it for her?" she asked. "Did she date?"

Exsqueeze me. Did she DATE? Who didn't she date? (Kidding, Al.) The reason I mentioned my friend's Ph.D. is that I thought maybe this mom would be wondering if her kid would have any trouble in school. Academically. Because he has some hearing loss. Not, say, bad breath, or braces, or black sneakers, or a third eye, or an ear that looks like a mushroom. Even I don't worry about Charlie dating. I envision his multiple girlfriends waiting for him outside of detention because his teachers mistook his inability to clearly hear instructions for willful disobedience. We will outfit him with the appropriate vintage muscle car / diesel pick-up / Harley and requisite Doc Martens / Double-H boots / Adidas when the time comes.

Two things could be happening here. This woman has totally fucked up priorities, or she was trying to use humor to express her anxieties. I won't know unless she comes back to group, and she didn't seem all that happy to be there. She made me wonder: Is that how I sound when I express anxiety about people staring at Charlie or about how wretched grade school and junior high will be, even though I know it will be equally wretched if not more so for Summer because that's the way life is? Do people just want to haul off and slap me? Let's give this new mom the benefit of the doubt for now. I can't even remember where my head was at when Charlie was five months old, and there's only one of him.

What Family's For

"One of us has to pick up the Jenga blocks and one of us has to make sure Charlie doesn't kill himself," I told Jeff last night after we'd finished eating dinner at his grandparents' house. "I choose the Jenga blocks," Jeff said. I stood next to Charlie as he followed his big sister balancing on the bench of a picnic table--and watched as he fell between the table and the bench, knocking his head like a pinball on both slabs of wood. There was a lot of crying and a lot of blood--bloody nose, fat lip, egg on the side of the head. Jeff, sitting on the floor across the room surrounded by small rectangular blocks, looked at me and shook his head. "I choose the Jenga blocks," he mouthed.

But Charlie quickly calmed down and returned to his previously scheduled activity of charming everyone's flip-flops off with his smiles, bear hugs, and gross motor feats. Jeff's cousin Jessie, who lives in England and was meeting Charlie for the first time, was smitten. "How can you guarantee I'll get one just like him?" she asked. "Well, he is exhausting," I said, pleased with her compliment to his disposition and not even thinking about the craniofacial stuff. It wasn't until I woke up this morning that I felt the full emotional impact of Jessie's words.

Who cares if my white J. Crew tuxedo blouse is covered with blood stains? I'm still smiling.

Angel in a Buick LeSabre

My mom's cleaning lady, Rosa, told my mom she just had to read The Purpose Driven Life. "It's not religious, is it?" my mom asked Rosa. "Oh no, not religious," Rosa said.

Unless you consider Jesus to be a purely secular figure.

When my mom called me this morning to tell me about it, I was surprised that she hadn't heard about the woman in Atlanta who'd used The Purpose Driven Life to save her own.

My mom checked the book out of the library and began skimming. What she read reinforced a nagging feeling she's had for quite some time: she suspects she does not do enough to help others.

She went forth unto the mall, where she comforted the Estee Lauder saleswoman who had recently lost her husband. Then, at the Shop-Rite, my mom droveth around the parking lot helping another woman who could not remember where she had parked her car.

Finally, driving in her neighborhood, she came upon a man lying face down on the sidewalk with his head on a towel. She sat there for a minute behind the wheel. Is this a sign from the Lord? In helping others, has she found her true calling? Just as she is about to get out and aid the man, he stands up.

He's with the water company, working on an underground pipe.    

What Friends are For

On the way down the hall to Summer's preschool room, Summer was walking with her head turned back towards me and Charlie behind her. I saw it happening and couldn't engage my mouth fast enough to call "Stop!" Summer turned and smacked her face into a window frame. A purple ridge immediately sprouted on her forehead. We sank to the hallway floor and she sat in my lap and cried. "I just want to go home!" she wept. "I don't want my friends to see me all fussy!" I told her, "That's why they're your friends. They're going to help you."

I coaxed her into her room where I knew the teachers would have ice packs. I sat with her on the couch and tended to the bruise while Charlie emptied the basket of small trucks one by one. Summer's best friend Matthew came over and said, "I'm sorry you hurt your head, Summer."

By 9:20 I had to leave to get to Charlie's music class on time. Summer and Matthew were sitting on the floor together looking at the individual pictures of each child in the class. I gave them each a kiss and left with Charlie.

I called later to check on Summer, and her teacher C. said she'd had a fine morning, collecting nuts and spotting mushrooms with her friend Lily during their nature walk. It was Matthew, though, who'd eased her over that bump, just as Summer has helped Matthew adjust to his first year at school. The teachers predict that in the middle of this year the boys and girls will split and stop playing with each other. But I hope Summer and Matthew will always be important to each other.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel

Charlie's Tab, Part II

Well aware of the Waterford Crystal Incident and the Cat Bowl Affair and the Coffee Carafe Situation, I reacted quickly when Charlie opened a cabinet (I know, we still don't have cabinet locks! It's like we're just plain dumb or something!) and selected, for his smashing pleasure, the flying-saucer-sized glass lid for the Crock Pot. Redirecting Charlie to the two cabinets filled with kid-safe plastic containers, I secretly placed the Crock Pot lid in the bottom part of the hutch, which Charlie hasn't even yet realized is a cabinet filled with highly breakable items, with no cabinet lock, right down at his level.

Then, since Massachusetts was holding a gubernatorial primary, I went to the computer to look up the platforms of the three Democratic candidates. Charlie took a tin bucket out of the toy box and placed it in the middle of the floor. I didn't see what happened next because my back was turned, but a large framed poster from the Vatican, that had been leaning on a book case, fell face down and shattered when it met the tin bucket. I spent nap time picking up huge chunks of glass and vacuuming up shards.

A little while later I heard a muffled crash from inside the hutch. The Crock Pot lid had slid down from its perch on top of a bunch of other vases and chip-and-dip sets and landed on the blue glass iced tea pitcher, which broke. I shut the door and haven't opened it since.

Open Heart Surgery and Rocket Science

Today in our hearing-impaired-baby parenting group I got two reminders of why we're so lucky to live in this brainiac city. First: Sahana and Aniha. This family moved from India to America just a few months ago. Aniha is two years old. No one in India figured out that she was hearing impaired, even though she wasn't talking. Once she got here she got fitted with hearing aids and suddenly started talking. After that, Aniha's mom Sahana smiled a lot. But today she began to cry in group. They just found out that Aniha has three holes in her heart and needs open heart surgery right away. Had Aniha been born in America they would have realized this much sooner! Fortunately we have some of the best doctors in the world right here in Boston. We all want to do what we can to help Sahana and her family get through this surgery as they have no friends or family nearby.

Second, Christy and Nathan. This family moved from Wisconsin to Massachusetts just a few months ago. Nathan is one and a half. Christy's husband is doing some sort of double degree grad program in Pittsburgh where he is in school for 12 hours a day, so Christy and Nathan are living with a friend in our area until January, when Christy's new job in Indiana starts. The good people of Wisconsin neglected to properly test his hearing even though he failed the newborn hearing screen, and he is just now getting hearing aids, thanks to the good people of Massachusetts.

Christy is an astrophysicist working on a new telescope, the Euro 50. It will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever built, more powerful than all the other telescopes ever built before--combined. Christy's job is to write the software for the robotic polishing system that will shape the baseball-diamond-sized mirror of the 50-meter long telescope. When she told us all of this, we kind of sat there with our mouths open. Then Colleen, a mom we all revere not because of her career but because she has a teenaged son with his own MySpace page and she's already covered parenting terrain that the rest of us can only have nightmares about, laughed out loud. "I can't even drive by my old high school," she said, cowering behind an imaginary steering wheel.

This afternoon I saw my neighbor Vlad at the playground. He's a telescope engineer too, and I told him everything Christy had told us about the Euro 50. Vlad hadn't heard of it and seemed pretty skeptical. "Next time you see her," he said slyly, "tell her I'm working on a telescope three times bigger."

Balls of Steel

Screaming down the GSP...

Achtung! The Circle of Smiles Post