Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

On the way home from gymnastics and ballet today, I forced the kids to listen to MLK Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech, which was broadcast in its entirety on NPR. Yes, I know -- a three year old and a five year old aren't exactly the target audience that NPR was going for, but I was both emotionally and academically struck by the broadcast.

As a person who's written a fair bit on race and religion, and whose grad school education also focused on this, I was experiencing a certain amount of dissonance as I thought over the covert racist structures that are repeatedly duplicated and reinvented within American culture, yet I was also struck by the strides made, the fact that Annemarie and Cole (and undoubtedly, Micah with them) have friends of all colors and backgrounds and they think nothing of it. This was so unlike my childhood, which happened in a place that a sociologist friend tells me is one of the whitest free-standing (ie, not a suburb of a larger, more racially diverse city) cities in America.

Was it this dissonance, this concern for the hiddenness of racial structures everywhere, the awareness of my absolutely racist experiences as a child, that caused me to discuss the topic of racism with my children in the car? Annemarie was at first absolutely uninterested in the topic, and kept going on and on about how i had forgotten to pick up Craisins at the store. Cole, who is learning that winning my favor has much to do with patronizing my rants, reassured me that I should go on, because he was listening.

So between the Craisins and Cole, I talked about who MLK was, why he was dead, what he believed in. Cole chimed in that the bad king Herod had killed him; I was struck by so much there, but said little except that I couldn't remember the name of the man who had killed him, but I was fairly certain it wasn't Herod.

At this point, we were silent for just a moment, just at the same moment that MLK spoke that he had a dream that little black children and little white children might hold hands some day. And I thought of how we had just left the gym where Annemarie and her friend Maggie, an African American, had just been holding hands during a rousing rendition of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as they giggled almost uncontrollably, attempting to shake each others' heads off. That, after all, is how you warm up in preparation for gymnastics.

So I mentioned that to Annemarie -- that MLK had had a dream that she was now a part of. She stopped talking about dried fruit for a second, confused -- what had she been a part of? I explained that she and Maggie together was a sign of something good. She then told me that she guessed it had never occurred to her that Maggie was different in any way that would matter (she didn't say it lke that, of course, but that was the gist). Of course, she knew that her skin was different than Maggie's, but why would that make a difference?

I love how children's questions interrogate so much.

Head Lice: A Really, Really Good Time

I must start out with a note about my survivor's guilt: our recent brush with head lice appears to have been so mild and so, well, convenient, compared to how it has gone for some friends, that I feel ashamed even speaking about it here.

But the topic of bugs in your hair is just so darn interesting.

We received a call the other evening, a few hours after spending half of the day with some good friends at a playdate, from the mother of the other play-ee. I could tell immediately that something was wrong. The mom, C, sounded very upset. It seems that her daughter, one of Annemarie's best friends, had been complaining about an itchy head for several days. And like most moms, she didn't give much thought to an itchy head, which can be and usually is attributable to a thousand other things (dry winter skin comes to my mind....).

Yet on that particular day that we played, and fairly soon after we left, the itchy head topic came up again at their house, this time with an investigation of said head. And being the responsible friend she is, C was calling to let us know that we'd officially been exposed to head lice. C's poor daughter was just crawling with them, it seems, and to make it worse, she has a ton of hair, which makes treatment very difficult. And did I mention that it spread to the whole family, as the little suckers (pun intended!) are so very prone to do?

So after hearing about the terrible trouble that they'd gone to in attempting to rid their home of the bugs (the laundry -- high heat! the vaccumming -- EVERYWHERE! the constant, constant, constant, sorting through hair to see if there are more eggs, more live ones, more....ugh), I ran to the drug store to get the lice killing shampoo so that we'd have it on hand if the bad guys appeared on our scalps, too. Must head them off (ANOTHER pun intended!) at the pass.

Now I won't go into what a ripoff that lice shampoo is -- 7.00 for an amount so small that you must purchase several bottles if you have long hair -- but I will say that I almost didn't use it after a first, cursory glance through Annemarie's hair revealed nothing. I typically don't like to dip my children's heads in pesticides, after all. At least not every day.

Yet as I was about to return the stuff, I decided to take another peek. And THERE, on ANNEMARIE'S head, was a LOUSE! Don't be fooled if you've never seen one. They are not microscopic. And while they might be fast, they are also not hard to see. It was a bug so large that if it were to land on me while I was sitting outside, drinking an iced tea, I would be aware of its presence and kindly ask it to leave. Particularly if it had plans to set up shop in my hair.

So after we confirmed that Annemarie was, in fact, hosting the insect world in her fine flaxen hair, we used the shampoo, and happily I can report that we've seen no signs of any creepy crawlies. Come to think of it, we never even saw any nits, presumably because we caught it early enough.

If this topic doesn't have your head itching right now, you're a little less than human.

Onto Mommy's Underwear and Theology

WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Mention of Leslie's underwear.

Have I told you about how Cole and Annemarie delight in playing dress up with our clothes? Undoubtedly this is something that all kiddos like to do, and it just so happens that we have a closet big enough that a kid can walk inside, and if strategically silent enough about it, close the door and never be detected in the process of tearing all of our clothing from their hangers.

On a day last week I "lost" Cole in the house -- which happens quite often -- and I found him in my closet trying on my thong underwear. I found this amusing on about 3000 levels (not the least of which included his comment: "Mom, your underwear is hard to get on. And it's really little"). At this Annemarie inquired why I had such little underwear. I explained the whole panty-line thing -- that women who wear form fitting pants don't typically care to show panty-lines, and thus they wear panties that, uh, don't have much to them at all.

Now I could see the wheels turning in Annemarie's head. Annemarie, the quintessential rule follower, had started to worry about whether *she* had panty lines. I reassured her that these were things that little girls did not need to worry about, and that for that matter, it wasn't really anything of any importance at all. Just an aesthetic preference I had.

So later that day, at lunch, she sat down at the table and said:
"It's OK to have panty lines."
me: "Of course it is."
A: "Sure. Even GOD has panty lines."

I told her that I wasn't sure that God wore underwear, so I couldn't vouch for that one. But I was sure that God wasn't against panty lines, so at least we had something we could feel certain about :).

A Prayer of Utter Penitence

Oh gods of the blogosphere, do forgive me, a lowly blogger, who has failed in the simplest task of my position as blogger: recording my virtually useless bits of trivia with anything close to frequency. I pray that I get better in consistency and frequency of postings. I do not think you can do anything about the fact that my bits of trivia are likely virtually useless, so I will not bother your high holy selves with that one.

But if they could have high entertainment value, that would be great.

Amen.

Onto Something Else

Jake has been a rather constant presence in my thoughts for the past couple of weeks, and after watching the Animal Control website like a hawk, I am now rather convinced that he is dead. As I believe I said earlier, this is actually a comforting thought to me. To know that he is not cold and hungry is something to take comfort in. His pen has been put up, and his dog bed and food bowls now occupy a place in the garage. I'm not ready to permanently get rid of that stuff yet. That's for later. I still have to call our wonderful vet to let him know. When Elle died Dr. McKee made a donation in her name to a local animal charity, and also sent us a sympathy card. I don't know if this is standard behavior, but it showed his -- and Elle's -- humanity. And since he took good care of Jake, I think this last call to him is fitting.

But onto other things.

Two funny comments escaped Annemarie's mouth over Christmas break. The first occurred when a relative headed for the backdoor of my grandparents' home with a cigarette dangling from his lips. This sort of act (ie, smoking) is sort of taboo to my rather Puritanical grandparents, so most everyone noticed it. Including Annemarie. You should have *seen* the look on her face as she turned to me and half hissed, half whispered, in utter health-conscious horror, "DID YOU SEE THAT MAN? (this is her second cousin, someone she's seen possibly three times before) HE HAD A SMOKING CHEMICAL IN HIS MOUTH!"

And another funny moment occurred when Annemarie reunited with her cousins, people she sees only about two to three times a year, but whom she talks about almost constantly. Our three nieces and one nephew are the cat's meow to Annemarie, and she takes great pleasure in receiving gifts that are like the ones they recieve, particularly matching clothes, so that she can emulate them as closely as possible. This, as you might imagine, has both its upsides and its downsides.

When together, they spend almost all of their time pretending something, and some sort of girly dress up ritual is almost always involved. On this particular night Annemarie and her cousins emerged from one of the bedrooms wearing their pajamas, and smelling strongly of a various blend of perfumes applied so heavily that pajama cuffs looked noticeably moist. As they all stood together showing off their jewelry -- and their overpowering smell -- I noticed how cute Annemarie looked among them. For while everyone else (ages 7 and up) was wearing two piece, shirt and pants pajamas, my Annemarie stood there among them in a set of pink, zip up the front footie pajamas, totally unaware of how young they made her look. The fact that she was oblivious was the icing on the cake. I wanted to weep motherly sap and shake her by the shoulders, begging her to stay this perfect little age, to be five forever, where she is still so unaware of so much. It was a delightful little display. And stinky, too. Very stinky.

Did I just dote on her adorable innocence? About 30 minutes later, when things got too quiet for my comfort, I found her and her cousins sitting on a bed, the three cousins engaged in their individual video games that they recieved for Christmas, with a disgusted, stinky, footie-jammied Annemarie sitting in the middle of them, her five year old job of applying lipstick displayed in a bright pink stain that was closer to nostril than lip. She was 100% pissed off that she was less than cool because she was less than video-gamed. "Why don't you ever get me video games, mu-THER?" she hissed my way as I entered the room.

Uh, excuse me, child? You're in footie jammies. You don't get to talk like that.

Perhaps an Obituary

WARNING: DEPRESSING POST!

I've got to get this off my chest, where it has been sitting for about a week too long.

You may have read two posts ago that things in the Smith house were feeling a little tense, in part over 12 year old Jake the Dalmatian, who has been a constant presence in our house as long as we've been a legal "we"; in fact, it was two months after we were married that Brian and I called about an ad in the local Pennypower for a Dalmatian puppy. Being the sap that he is, Brian cut out that ad for safekeeping once we brought Jake home. We still have it.

The life and times of Jake have been interesting, to say the least. Jake's best friend/sister/wife (we could never tell.....), Elle, was ours two years before that, and for a very long time all of us made a home together, soon joined shortly by a couple of cats (my animal rescue instinct was strong and my resolve weak!). And thus there were six, two human, the rest somewhere in between.

While Elle was the wiley one -- always into something, and smart as a whip -- Jake was the dumb, cuddly one of the bunch. I don't mean him disrespect; really -- it's just the truth. Jake wasn't particularly oozing sense, but what he lacked in brain power he made up for in his very loving nature. Jake *craved* attention. And he never figured out that he wasn't a puppy, nor a lap dog. In fact, up until very recently, Jake attempted to climb into my lap. Jake weighs 60 pounds.

When Jake was six, we packed all of the Smith mammals up and moved them to California where I could work on my Ph.D. This is the specific point in time when I remember things going downhill for both dogs. We had almost nothing of a yard, and walking our two strapping dalmatians became a dreaded chore, as they were unpredictable with other dogs (dragging me along.....). Once, when I was pregnant, they pulled me over while I walked them. After this incident the regular walks stopped, which was sad for everyone.

But California also challenged the animal relationship in other ways, because living in a condo complex brought new animal worries as well. A dog that barked more than 5 minutes equaled a $100 fine for the owner; the same fine was issued if an escape happened. We lived in fear that our animals would do something other than sleep. Our garage became the animal sanctuary.

So it was with great anticipation that we expected our move to KC to resolve so many of these dilemmas. And for the most part, it did. Honestly, we never expected Elle to make it out of California. When Elle died last Christmas, we were both sad and amazed that a dog with such arthritis and cateracts (not to mention the victim of several strokes), could have made it as long as she did with her mind as clear as it was. Until the night she died Elle was mentally with it.

But not so with Jake. Elle died peacefully in our basement, where she slept. We both led Jake down to sniff her body, the only way we knew to let him know what had happened. Maybe his indifferent response was fueled by the fact that he already knew what was coming. After all, she had given us the enormous gift of dying on her own; we'd already agreed that if she was alive by morning we'd have to bring her to the vet to have her put down. Things were just that bad -- when your dog can't walk, and won't eat, it's all rather obvious.

While Jake seemed initially nonplussed about Elle's death (after sniffing her briefly he ran back upstairs as if nothing had happened), over the next few weeks and months poor Jake lost ten pounds, began to whine and cry almost incessantly, followed me everywhere, and started to sleep 10+ hours a day, in addition to the time he spent sleeping at night. In short, when he wasn't sleeping, Jake was sad and clingy.

And then the bladder incontinence began, the urinary tract infections that would never resolve, and closely behind this (no pun intended!) the bowel incontinence, and the bony growths that started to fuse his spine. While in the big scheme Jake seemed relatively unaffected by these things, from a cleaning perspective I was constantly flustered. But then his mind started to slip; what I knew was that over the past few months Jake's behavior closely mirrored Brian's grandfather's very recent demise to Alzheimer's. Jake had become irritable, absolutely unpredictable, forgetful. I could live with the fact that he was following me everywhere (even to the bathroom!), and I could begrudgingly clean up after him, but I couldn't take him parking himself in the middle of the kids as they played, and then growling at them when their play disrupted him. He has snapped at both of my sons.

This past Saturday afternoon -- a week ago tomorrow -- Jake disappeared from Brian's parents' farm, where we took him with us for Christmas. At one time Jake and Elle ***loved*** that place. It was pure freedom. Without Elle, however, I suspect that Jake saw the farm as nothing more than too much space, and he was constantly pleading to come inside. So perhaps you can understand my confusion and worry when, after being pushed outside because of his whining during Christmas dinner, Jake was no longer waiting at the door once the meal was finished. I don't know if he went off to die, as people say that dogs sometimes do. I really hope that's what happened. I had always thought that if there was any place that Jake and Elle should die -- a good death -- it would be on Brian's parents farm.

No, I am more concerned that he became scared and disoriented in the woods -- which stretch forever -- and that he is there now starving and thirsty. Or that some backwoods maniac is using him for target practice, which has happened. So despite doing everything I know to do, there is no Jake with us in KC. Between us Brian and I have spent hours in the woods calling for a dog that has never come. I have put up signs, put out notices, and searched that god-forbidden place -- the Springfield Animal Shelter, with its five day "limit" -- twice in person and about a million times on email. Oh, the animal shelter.....that awful place where dogs with empty bellies and scared eyes go, and most often never leave. This was my first time visiting one of these -- an actual "pound" -- and I left crying after both visits; the smell, the hopelessness was all too much.

It didn't help anything that after my "lost dog" post on Craig's List, one day later a Dalmatian actually showed up at the shelter. I've received 15 or so emails from CL's readers who've been kind enough to pass on that information. The picture on the shelter's website looked absolutely nothing like Jake, not to mention the fact that that dog was a female. But still I had to return to make sure that there wasn't any chance that this was my Dalmatian; I couldn't leave Springfield with the sliver of a chance alive that the picture was just off or that they had inadvertently typed "F" when they meant "M". And the animal control people were very kind to me as I stood there and cried, looking at what was either a very young or very malnourished female Dalmatian with matted hair and wild eyes. Every dog there looked like a victim. And none of them was Jake.

So here we are, with dog bowls everywhere and table scraps with no one to eat them. I have put the dog bed in the garage. I don't want to get rid of that stuff yet. I just can't. Most of all, I'm so selfishly overwhelmed by the fact that I wasn't the best mother to him that I could have been; after our human kids arrived he admittedly took some neglect. My guilt over this is, of course, now a little too much to bear. But wherever he is, if he is still with us, I hope that he knew that we loved him. Pure and simple.