I know what it looks like

If you never met my child, or weren't paying much attention to her while she silently finished reading a book behind you, you would think I was a crazy Tiger Mom.

Harp lessons?

Homeschooling?

Extra science AND math lessons?

But let me tell you what life with Chebbles is like: It is being that guy who is charge of heaping coal from the tender into the engine of, let's say, Gordon. And you never have enough coal.

When Chebbles was an infant, my mother told me that the baby reminded her of "Johnny" the robot from the movie with Ally Sheedy, who kept saying "MORE DATA. MORE DATA. MORE DATA."

So what happened first? Chebbles' fierce intellect or my desperate search for additional data for her?

How do I explain that Chebbles is not happy unless she's learning? And it has to be something new?

Last night while I drove her all the way down to the university for her special math program, she transformed from a different girl -- effervescent rather than pissy -- as she sloughed off the effects of being told to "focus" on the busywork she received at her desk in the public school classroom. She read her animal encyclopedia and hollered out facts for my enjoyment during the drive.

Once we arrived, she skipped, and balanced on the walls, and held my hand and asked if she could learn Russian -- then decided that instead she'd like to make her own language, and began teaching it to me.

It looks like I'm driving my kid toward early graduation, to premature exposure to a wide range of academic subjects.

But I beg you, please notice who's behind the wheel.

The cat who lived

I had a third miscarriage last week.

This one died on the same day of gestation that my last miscarriage did: 8W6D. Her heart stopped beating that morning. I went for my 9 week ultrasound, and instead of the thrumming little chest I'd enjoyed in the ultrasounds in the previous weeks, there was just a floating body.

It looked perfect, other than having no heartbeat. The little head and arms and legs, sweet little embryonic proportions. It was rather tough to transition from "Hooray, I'm going to have a fourth child at age 40!" to "Looks like this is it, gang."

Last Friday I had a D&C. The experience was vastly better than the D&C I'd had in December 2006, owing to the incredible bedside manner of the OB I have now. I cried, the nurses were understanding. One told me that her daughter had just miscarried her first baby.

But I confess that although I dearly wanted the pregnancy to continue, to welcome another daughter (and I'm sure it was, judging by the acne she gave me and track record) there are silver linings, if not a uterine one.

I have my energy back, I'm no longer throwing up bile every day. I am no longer lurking around in the background, clutching my Salt and Vinegar Pringles and stevia-sweetened soda on ice. I have energy for my family, for jumping on the trampoline, to train for the half-marathon I'm running in December, for homeschooling and household management, for discipline and FlyLady-inspired cleaning sessions.

Yes I wanted that baby, and I'll think of her forever, but I discovered something in the midst of my grief with this miscarriage. For me, something happens when I get pregnant -- my arms grow a little longer to hold a potential new baby, my heart opens up just that much wider, to allow for another little being. And if the baby dies, my arms are STILL longer and my heart is that much wider -- this pregnancy may not have been in vain. I've discovered space and accommodation for more giving and love in my life.

I took the girls over to the Moraga Pear Festival on Saturday, hopped into an ARF mobile adoption van and promptly adopted the kitten who liked the girls the most. This black kitten had been licking at their fingers through the cage bars, eager to sniff and bat at their hands. When I held him, his purr was instantaneous and loud, even when the girls petted him (in Birdy's case, rather ham-handedly).

There I was, still bleeding, still dizzy from the aftereffects of the anesthetic and deep in grief over my lost baby, but I was able to redirect it into this ridiculously fuzzy cat who desperately needed a home.

The kitten, Rehnquist, has made himself absolutely at home. (Of course he was named after the Supreme Court Justice.) He's gorgeous and affectionate. In addition to his kitten chow, he eats any kind of food he finds on the ground -- hooray! And he follows us everywhere. He lets Birdy carry him around, even though she does it badly. He's fantastic.

If we hadn't come along, he'd still be in a cage. And because we adopted him, the ARF staff can save another cat from the local kill shelter. We made room, because I found I had room in my home and my heart -- room I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't been pregnant for those six exciting weeks that ended in devastation.

I think about Rehnquist's gestation. If there had been an ultrasound of him in his mama cat's belly, his heart would have beaten and beaten. He lived all the way from conception to gestation, he was born and he breathed and now he erupts with the most magnificent purr. Because he is alive.

My baby is not alive, she died last week. Her heart wasn't built for growing. But this kitten's heart is just fine. He is sleeping at the base of my chair right now, with his head resting on his paw, waiting for me to just look at him, to have any excuse to blink his green eyes at me and start thrumming along at my heels.

Visiting Oma in the 1990's-2000's

I would have been flying all day -- first from Boston, then later from San Francisco, and the sky would be lit up with sunset when my plane finally began circling, dipping through the clouds, landing at that miniature airport.

Oma would be wearing her red coat.

Oma was very particular as to which months I should come visit her. She forbade visits during the hottest months, so most of the summer was not a possibility. And not the coldest, iciest months, so the depths of Indiana winters remain a mystery to me.

So it would be an idyllic day in spring or fall when the plane would fly down from O'Hare and drop me into the LAF airfield. As my plane would taxi in toward the little facility, I could see the red coat as she stood peering (fruitlessly, mostly, owing to her macular degeneration) out the large plate glass windows of the arrival gate.

Among the colorful trees, the lit-up sky, then the dark confines of the airport, that was the color that woke me up, and almost always made me cry -- either as I approached the airport, or as my plane departed a few days later.

In later years, she wore a tiny gold guardian angel on the lapel of the red jacket -- I had given it to her after she had been told she was going to die from liver cancer, only to discover that she simply had an infection related to a scratch she had on her leg (an infection that became much worse than necessary because she couldn't see it was getting bad). She lived for more than 10 years after that "death sentence" and I liked to kid her about it.

When the plane landed, they would just pop open the door and affix a little stairway to the side of the plane. My luggage would be waiting for me on a little cart at the bottom of the stairs -- there were usually about a dozen fellow passengers, most of whom were on Purdue-related business.

And I would head into the airport and drop the luggage next to her and hug that woman.

I'd put Oma's smell up against 99% of grandmothers out there -- it was, I believe, a combination of a clear green apple-scented glycerin soap she used, a dash of some variety of 4711, and lurking in her hair would be a cookie-baking smell.

She always baked cookies right before I arrived. It had been established by the time I was 10 what my favorite cookies were, and they were manufactured for me all the way up until her death, when she insisted on a friend baking them for me -- faithful to her recipe -- after she had gone completely blind and was relatively infirm.

Those cookies were oatmeal/butterscotch chip. And she used some citrus zest in most of her cookies, which gave them a perfect little zing. There would be a bag of them waiting for me when we arrived at Apartment 1318 at Westminster Village Retirement Community -- one on top of the fridge, and (jackpot!) one inside the freezer as well. Throughout the weekend of my visit, I would have my hands in that bag after and between every meal. If there were any left by the time I left, they would be packed in my luggage, ostensibly to share with my friends.

Oma was the absolute master in making me feel special. From the moment I was at her side, she would be telling me that, repeatedly. "You are so special, do you know how special you are? Be careful with yourself, with your body, because you are very, very special."

Really, thank goodness for grandparents who make you feel like you might possibly be the second coming of The Messiah, even when you're screwing up at work and another man has just broken up with you, and you haven't slept well for a long time. Because at Oma's retirement community, where I'd stay in a guest room within the facility, I slept like a rock.

"How did you sleep?" she'd ask when I'd pop back into Apartment 1318 the first morning after my arrival. My hair would be wet, I might have even gone running on the flat gravel roads that lead into the cornfields surrounding Westminster Village before I came to see her. Oma's apartment would smell like oatmeal and cookies, and dish soap and general goodness, and we would sit together at her folding table while I ate breakfast, and I'd read her Ann Landers.

After I read the query submitted to Ann Landers, we'd both sit back and think what advice WE would proffer to this poor soul. Both Oma and I were blessed with/suffered from a high moral ground and a certain amount of pitiless judgement. So many of these characters would get raked over our collected coals. About half the time, we'd agree with Ann's assessment. But Ann got softer over the years, and more noncommittal in her answers. Really, it lacked satisfaction.

We'd then find out what the people in For Better or For Worse were up to. We were vociferously opposed to Elizabeth's college boyfriend, Eric, who had that infuriating dimple. We were immensely relieved when she finally took up with Anthony again, after he was dumped by that snotty French Canadian he'd married.

Then after gabbing over breakfast and washing up her white porcelain dishes, we'd find her red coat again and head out into the Lafayette day.

I'd hold onto the crook of her arm, owing to her blindness, and in our wool coats, with the little angel gleaming from her lapel, we'd be unstoppable.

"I may be just a little bit psychic."*

I had a dream in which I was among my SUUSI friends, sitting in a building at Radford College, inspecting a ring.

There was a contraption on the underside of the ring that I couldn't understand.

So I called my friend K. (You might recall that I sometimes dream her memories.)

Lo and behold, she is at SUUSI, that scene happened the day before, and the clever ring doubles a bottle opener.

I am so fascinated by this odd connection between our brains. I rarely hear sound in these dreams, I just see through her eyes for 30-second increments. I don't witness crimes or lovemaking or anything intense, just her day-to-day life. I've had memories from her childhood, as well as contemporary dreams like this.

Why? She never dreams about me. But there you have it. The connection is still live.


* I've always loved this quote from John Ritter's "Slingblade" character.

Planet Mama

Am I the only one who regularly thinks, "I just want to live with my OWN KIND," as though there were a planet out there of people just like me?

In my case this ecosystem would be populated with folks who are irreverent to the point of rudeness and everyone still thinks it's funny.

Am I describing Brooklyn?

In the meantime, I'll content myself with raising three children who make unguarded pithy observations. And I'll always find it funny, even when they're calling me old, yellow-toothed, or clumsy. Because, well, it's true.

I've got the pink blues, in every fuchsia hue...

I have been so excited that Chebbles has been accepted by the gifted institute*, that I've waited with bated breath to learn about other kids in our area who might be like her. You know, talk about the Peter Pan prequel and the mating habits of worms?

Because I think that being gifted can be lonely. I felt like such a turd when I was labeled "gifted" -- then was relegated to a distant corner of the first grade classroom for the duration of the year, along with a little kid named Robert who spent most of his time trying to convince me he was a robot.

Of course she has a bunch of local buddies, but unfortunately very few of them are homeschooled. And I find that Chebbles can hang out with older kids only so much before they realize that she's 5, and she still cries when she loses and doesn't know who iCarly is.

I mean, at least she isn't in a corner with Robert day after day, but PEERS! I need PEERS!

Tonight I finally got my mitts on the list of other kids who are in this gifted program -- everyone in a 100 mile radius from here. And my friends, it's ALL BOYS.

I'm exaggerating. There are TWO GIRLS.

Then after that, it's all boys in the program. And not one of them listed "princesses" or "fairies" in his list of "likes."

Now boys DEFINITELY have their merits. I like to think about the three young men who are growing up somewhere who will someday be my daughters' husbands. Boys are absolutely terrific. Chebbles' best friend since she was 18 months old is a boy (who came over today and delighted us all with his wonderfulness).

So I'm not denigrating boys. I'm just WISHING that a few more girls were lurking on Chebbles' side of the bell curve.

Thank goodness she's a very social gal, and thank heavens for little boys. But honestly, Chebbles just wants a girl her size/age with whom to talk about anagrams and fairy tale variants.

I've sent hopefully-not-too-desperate-sounding e-mails to the parents of the two girls in the program, both of whom live 2 hours away. Here's hoping for a cure for our pink blues.*



* She can't attend the institute until she's 12

* "Pink Blues" is on the "Pinkalicious: The Musical" Soundtrack and I highly, highly recommend it for all genders.

No pressure, Chebbles

Chebbles has gained admittance to an institute that promotes services for the profoundly gifted.

But what if she wants to be a cosmetologist? Would she feel horrible pursuing that dream because she was in that institute, and people from that institute go to Stanford at age 16 and commit to extensive PhD research projects by the age of 20?

I spend my afternoons teaching her to innovate in math problems ("how many OTHER ways can you make 45 cents?"), studying various angles of Ancient Egypt (cuneiforms, anyone?)  plus my house looks like Professor Emmett Brown's house of Botany -- science projects everywhere, and I'm always throwing away a baggie of torn up weeds that turns out to have been important.

So am I going to be crestfallen if she works as a waitress in Thailand for the first 20 years of her adult life?

Everyone says that they just want their kids to be happy -- but that's not the message we send when we so emphatically educate them -- either ourselves or by proxy. What we're ultimately saying is that we want them to find happiness through professional success.

Last night I was sitting next to a fascinating scientist at dinner. She studies the effects of carbon on waterways -- specifically diving into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico to scrape and analyze gunk off of coral. She has been educated at a fleet of terrific schools. And I kept wondering, did you want to have babies? Did you reach a point in your career when you could either pursue a settled-down-family situation or your research? Do you regret that decision?

What if Chebbles throws herself into a similarly fascinating career? That's precisely what we're setting her up for with this current educational plan. The alternative would be to shoehorn her into a more average educational setting and hope she's not pissed off at the missed opportunities years down the line.

Perhaps what I want her to understand as she reaches adulthood that taking 20 years off to raise your kids is an awesome proposition, and I think that there is an opportunity to rejuvenate your career after your kids leave for college.

I want her to have a life beyond her potential and intellect -- a happy life with sustaining breakfasts and daily loving hugs. I know I have never been more fulfilled as when I dropped entirely out of the job market to raise these ridiculous people. But perhaps this prescription was unique to me.

It just seems like we're handing her the Hubble Telescope blueprints and saying, "No pressure!"