Being The One

As a pediatrician, I got the chance to preview parenthood in more detail than many people likely do. The five-year-old little boy who clutched his mom during bedside rounds my intern year stands out even now: he buried his head in her chest as soon as we entered the room. She whispered, "Does something hurt or are you scared?" He managed to whisper that it was the latter and she held him tight, soothing and reassuring him while she listened to the plan for the day.

I carried that rosy picture along with many others as a boon of future parenthood. The chance to cuddle, to protect, to take complete care of my own little person someday - and, yes, in all honesty, the chance to be so important, to be the one. The one a child immediately turns to, relies on, needs.

Since that encounter, I have had two sons, and it thrills me to know end to be, along with my husband, their person. Nothing compares to the sound of little boy feet running toward the door with the greeting of a wide smile, a "Mama!," and eventually, "Mommy's home!" To the high-pitched voice calling your name in the middle of the night because of a scary dream or a need for water or just some extra cuddles. When in shyness they hide behind me, hugging my legs, my heart bursts with joy and wonder at the chance to be part of this classic, perhaps cliched but no less endearing, image of a child clutching his mother for comfort.

A few months ago, I saw a teenage boy in my office for consultation. I'm training in pediatric hematology/oncology, so trips to my clinic can be nerve-wracking for patients and families. This young man's sheer terror at what he feared were symptoms of cancer (happily, they were not) was visible, audible, nearly palpable. When I sent him to have blood drawn and imaging done, I heard him say to his mother, who had accompanied him, "I need to call [insert girl's name here]."

His reaction startled me. I could appreciate the anxiety, but the realization that, even with his mother beside him, his instinct was to turn to someone different - presumably his girlfriend - took me by surprise. Once I reminded myself that it was, in fact, developmentally appropriate for an adolescent to be developing relationships and establishing independence from his family, I was left with sadness. Someday, far sooner than I hope, my boys will turn to someone else as their person. Someone other than me will be the one.

I sit with that sadness even now. With each milestone, it mixes in with the joy and pride. And as my children grow and I grow, my work continues to provide examples of the realities and possibilities of parenthood. So when I encountered another adolescent who, facing a challenge, had little support and no peers, romantic or platonic, to whom to turn, my apprehension and sorrow began to abate. I want my children to grow and develop, to have healthy relationships and support, even if they must eventually come from someone other than me. 

For the time being, though, I'm fortunate to have my days peppered with eager footsteps, warm hugs, and sticky kisses. And when I dropped my older son off at school yesterday, after we had said our goodbyes, he ran back for one more hug. I savor every single one.

The Year in a Word Cloud

Hostage

Tonight there will be no ransom paid, despite the long list of demands:

wash the dishes
clean the kitchen
wipe down the highchair
finish charting
return emails
analyze research results
research preschools
order Spiderman pj's
check yoga schedule - missed it tonight, maybe tomorrow
pay bills
fold laundry
feel guilty for not doing more


Tonight, the hostage will be released after being locked away too long. Into open arms it will stumble, what was once so comforting feeling foreign, unsure how to proceed. It is time to disregard the ransom, knowing such a sum will never truly be paid: best just to let it go, start anew.

Tonight there will be no ransom. Only the freeing of that long-awaited, so often yearned for, prisoner:

Sleep.

[Watching our friends get] Married... with [our] Children

Let's bring the boys to the wedding, we said.

It will be fun, we said.

We were so cocky. Bean had been to several weddings and loved to dance, we reasoned. And Teeny, though young, was just so chill that it wouldn't be a big deal. An outdoor, afternoon wedding of a laid-back couple with tons of family medicine and pediatrics residents in attendance. It would be like a weekend away without needing to pay for a baby-sitter. What could be more perfect?

We rented a house through Airbnb so that we would have plenty of space and the boys would have their own rooms. We beat traffic on the way there and spent the next morning exploring the cute town. We stumbled upon a farmers' market and ate ice cream for lunch. The boys even went down for a pre-wedding nap.

On the way to the wedding, we talked about how we would need to be very quiet. (We had no illusions that we would actually sit down for the ceremony, but planned to watch from a safe distance.) As we rounded the side of the beautiful inn where the festivities were being held, the bride was just starting to walk down the grassy aisle to the strumming of a guitar. Bean pointed to the musician and began shouting, "Man playing 'tar!!!!!"

We retreated. A staff member inside kindly pointed out a large picture window overlooking the lawn where we could watch without disrupting things.

At that point Teeny let us know that he was hungry, so I settled into an armchair in the corner to nurse him. My husband headed to the window with Bean, but there was a problem: the parlor of the inn was filled with so many nice things and Bean needed to investigate all of them. There was a large birdcage containing actual birds and a stone fireplace and so many trays of seashells and trinkets and shiny objects. In other words, it was a room we had no business entering.

"We really need to rethink whether we bring the boys to weddings," my husband noted a few minutes later in a tone that struck me as irritable, though he adamantly denies having felt annoyed. I sighed and internally (or maybe externally) rolled my eyes. We were in another state and the celebration that we had traveled here to attend had just begun. There could be no second thoughts.

As soon as Teeny had finished nursing, my husband pounced. "My turn to hold him!" he exclaimed, which was code for it's your turn to chase the toddler. But Bean was in great spirits, happily occupied by tracing the contours of the stone fireplace with the car key that my husband had handed him to play with. I relaxed a bit and began to really take in the gorgeous setting. On the other side of the fireplace, I noticed a basket filled with books and a plush stuffed lobster. As Bean began to edge too close to the hurricane jars lining the hearth, I lifted him up, intending to plop him down by the [unbreakable] lobster. While in the air, he started to protest: "Hold key! Hold key! Hold key!"

Which is what he says when he wants to hold something that he is not holding.

I looked down at his empty hands. "Key? Where's the key, Bean?" I asked in an urgent whisper, not wanting my husband to hear. "Bean, what did you do with the key?"

"Hold key!!" he wailed, and I left his side, hurricane jars be damned, to retrace my steps, scouring the floor.

"What does he mean, 'hold key'?" my husband asked, because of course he was right there and had heard and now realized the predicament.

"Don't worry, I'm sure it's here - " CRASH!!!!!! 

I spun around, expecting to find my family covered in shards of glass. My husband, with Teeny in his arms, had sprung to action trying to find the key, but in doing so had knocked over an end table. An end table that had held a glass dish of beautiful, fragile seashells.

Of course that was the moment that the inn's manager entered the room.

"I'm so sorry! We're so sorry!" my husband yelled, frantically gathering shells in one hand while cradling Teeny in his other arm. 

"Hold key! Hold key!" Bean continued to wail.

"Just let us know how much we owe," my husband huffed, still scrambling to scoop bits up off the floor. "And also, we're missing a car key."

Outside, the ceremony came to a close. The bridal party and guests began to make their way back up the lawn toward the inn. Having already crawled along the floor to peer under the couch, I stood up and spied the key nestled behind a throw pillow. Somehow the glass and shells and whatever else were picked up off the floor. My husband and I gathered our things and, each taking a child, stepped out onto the back porch where guests were now mingling over cocktails. In the kind of frustrated yet silent agreement that comes from more than a decade and a half as a couple, we parted ways, each joining a separate section of the throng.  

By the time dinner started, Teeny was napping contentedly on my shoulder and Bean had begun to make his presence known on the dance floor. We had caught up with old friends and made new introductions around the table. And for the rest of the night, our family was happy and smiling.

I had thought that some time would need to pass before we could speak of - and certainly before we could laugh about - the scene at the inn. But as he pulled our car out of the parking lot at the end of the night (well, the end of the night for a family with small children), my husband grinned. "Well that will make quite a story."

Since that time, I have referred to it as "The Wedding Where We Almost Got Divorced," though he swears it was never that serious and he was never that annoyed. And as for bringing the boys to weddings? We haven't done it again. 

At least not yet.

My Target Guardian Angel

     I like to think of myself as someone who generally has her sh*t together. Someone who is skilled at multitasking, who keeps her cool when things get stressful. Which is how I found myself at Target last week staring at one cart full of children squirting poop and tears and another piled high with cartons of diapers and wipes. Oh, and three huge containers of animal crackers mixed in there for good measure.

     My plan had seemed foolproof. (Okay, at the very least, doable.) Feeling too guilty to have a huge order of mega-packs of diapers shipped when there was a store nearby and I had a day off from work, I had placed my order online and selected in-store pickup. The next day, I loaded up my sons, two-year-old Bean and three-month-old Teeny, both freshly fed and changed, and headed out. Bean’s naptime still loomed a good two hours away and Teeny usually snoozes happily on and off throughout the day, so conditions seemed ripe for success.

     All went smoothly as we circled the store to grab a few small items and made our way through the checkout line. We headed over to customer service and the guy behind the counter pulled up our record then wheeled out a shopping cart filled with large boxes. He eyed the cart I was pushing, the main section of which held Teeny in his infant carrier and the front section of which held Bean. “Do you need help?” he asked halfheartedly, as I started loading the boxes underneath. I waved him back toward the counter where other customers had begun to line up because, I figured, I’ve got this.

     The tipping point was when I tried to snug two of the containers of animal crackers in the front with Bean. He didn’t want to share his space – in fact, he suddenly wanted out of the cart right now - and began to whine, which escalated quickly to a wail. Teeny, who had woken up a few aisles back but until now had remained quiet, decided that he, too, was done with this expedition and would prefer to be held and fed. It was around this time that he also let out a poop explosion that not only blasted out of his onesie but, as I would later discover, puddled into the carrier, soaking the seat cushion and dripping through the cracks to the coat the plastic base.

     I tried firmness and then bribery with Bean, trying to coax him into letting me stuff several items in the seat beside him as I simultaneously tried to shove another carton of diapers onto the shelf below. I’ll just squish everything together, I thought, as the boys’ cries continued to escalate. It will be fine, I reasoned, with less and less conviction.

     “Can I help you?” a new voice asked. I looked up to see a petite woman eyeing our situation with concern.

     “Oh no, it’s all right,” I said, waving a hand at the general chaos before me. “We’ll be fine.”

     She frowned. “There’s no way you’re going to fit all of that. Here, I’ll wheel the other cart out to your car.”

     “Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, only if there’s nothing else that you need to do.”

     “Only return a pair of shoes,” she said, “and I can do that after I help you.”

     I sighed. The boys’ chorus continued. I acquiesced.

     “I remember having young kids,” she said as we headed out to the parking lot.

   I wanted to explain that it’s not usually like this. That during residency I resuscitated babies while swollen from belly to ankles as I carried my own; that I managed the ICU with no in-house fellow or attending. That I pride myself in working full time, raising my kids, and keeping our house and lives in order. That complications and multitasking are kind of my thing. And yet as we wheeled our way down one row of cars, stopping so that I could survey the lot in search of my vehicle, realizing only after I spotted it that I driven my husband’s car and not my own (and moments after that that while I was now searching for the correct model of car, the one I was currently steering us towards wasn’t actually ours), I felt like my sh*t couldn’t be less together. I hurried along, willing this interaction to end so I could return to at least pretending to be a competent parent and adult.

     We parked the carts once we reached the right car, and I hustled the boys into their seats, promising Bean that he could have some animal crackers if he would just wait a moment longer. I began loading boxes into the trunk, praying that the woman wouldn’t notice that we were also barely going to be able to fit everything in the car around the clutter already there and wondering from which of my sons the scent of stool was now wafting.

     As I thanked her, perhaps too hurriedly, the woman paused and held my gaze. “This was my random act of kindness.”

     I must have given her my best What, now? look because she quickly pressed on. “One of my friends just lost a baby. Her other friends and I are doing random acts of kindness this week as a tribute.”

     I don’t know what I said next. I’m not even sure what I felt. I know that the woman wished us well and that, sitting in the parking lot with the air conditioning blasting, no longer in a hurry, I ate animal crackers with Bean. I stripped Teeny down, sopping up the poop as well as I could but also knowing that whatever I missed could be washed out later. I nursed him until he calmed and then buckled him back into his seat. I drove my boys home. And I hugged them hard.

             

*Cross-posting with The Growth Curve

A quick intro since this is my first post:
Hi there! I'm Beckster, mom of two little boys, wife of my high school sweetie, and pediatrician in Providence, RI. I love to write and luckily I realized early on that it just might be the thing that keeps me sane through my medical training and practice. I'm currently a fellow is Hospice and Palliative Medicine (and one-year position) and after that will begin a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.