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6 or a Half Dozen Stitches?

Growling echoed across the house and within my heart like a bad dream on repeat; I knew Chas was on top of the dog somehow and when I ran into the room, there he was, just like I imagined. Three years ago, Ford was in this same position when Seti snapped, scarring his cheek. This time, I whisked Chas off the ailing dog and flew out of the room. And on the way, looking back at Seti, I ran us into the corner of a door.

If you’ve never watched your child’s head bleed, you’ve never experienced that unhinged, piquant surreality of blood everywhere, coming from everywhere on your child’s head at once, struggling to find it’s source in the pulsing flow of it all, onto the floor, soaking your clothes, his hair, his entire face, while trying to find your keys, trying to find your purse, and shoes for each child and a rag and a cellfone and, in my case, my sanity. You don’t understand how it is possible for such a small child to leave such an extensive trail of bloodsplats from corner to corner in the house as you run in circles, looking for all your missing pieces.

But we spent some quality time connecting with other parents in the ER, watching in amazement as Chas threw spinning arcs with an inflatable football across the waiting room to a new friend from Amsterdam. And as he sat still under the tired fluorescent lights in triage while the plastic surgeon stitched his perfectly positioned 2.5 cm glabellar lesion (with special-order blue Proline thread! He was very impressed), I was able to sing with him and smile and nod that this may very well be the first of many such visits, and that this one (despite being of my fault and not his, and given his physical exuberances) was certainly overdue.

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Composting in the Rain

Despite my occasional irritations with way the boys continue to remain so close by my side, there are upsides to their lingering dependence on me. I can still redirect muddles between them by simply leaving the room, a perfect curveball. This morning, I quelled an escalating feud between them in the living room, one I was almost ready to fuel with my own frustration, by halting mid-step, turning round and retreating to the mudroom, where I silently baffled them as I put on my socks and boots and headed out into the yard. They watched me from the stoop as I opened the shed door, near the garage, and began excavating hoes, cultivators and shovels from an ethereal matrix of dusty cobwebs, spreading them like battle artillery, single-file, to rest along a low-lying branch. And within minutes, both were eagerly digging into the understory of a giant oak tree in the front yard, heaving shovelsful of composted peat into random piles around me.

Chas soon began to look for earthworms. Crouching over the dugout, in the space I’d carved beneath the tree, he picked fat glossy creepers between his fingers and carried them around the yard, through the house for a little while, taking them on a helpless tour of distraction before returning to my side. As if he’d forgotten it was still in his hand, Chas would ask to take another bath (perhaps his third?), doe-eyed and head tilted, and I’d look down at his hand to find another gleaming, limp, pinched annelid. “I wanna put him in the bathtub,” he’d say, quite matter-of-factly. And I’d have to disagree, smiling apologetically, as I turned the compost in the drizzling rain.

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Our Third Child

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I read somewhere, ten years ago when we were puppy-surfing, that a Jack Russell Terrier is like having a perpetual three year-old in the house. Well, that’s pretty true. Seti, our dog, is all about the “now” and the “me” and balls and toys. He doesn’t always share; in fact, he’s always hoarded his own ball at the dog park, fending off dumbfounded pit bulls and retrievers five times his size, just by the obnoxious tang in his snarl. And, just like any preschooler, you can distract him off the nasty scent of a dead rat in the backyard just by saying the magic words “where’s your ball?” It’s so easy.

Ball. Ball is life. Well, ball is second to frisbee, but we’re out of frisbees right now. We have two chronically wet tennis balls (you can see why, above) and one racquetball (a far superior choice to all manufactured dog toys for the medium dog set). Seti will carry the ball around the house, right under your feet, hoping you will throw it. When you sit down to talk on the phone, he will drop it at your feet. When you try disapppearning into the bathroom for ten minutes, he’ll unlock the door with his razor sharp Jack Russell perserverence and drop the ball at your feet. And certainly, when you slip into a nice warm bath, ready to erase the day’s grime off your body and soul, Seti will come and drop the dirty ball into the bathwater. Then he’ll sit and stare at you imploringly, his brown eyes now big obsidian orbs, penetrating their voodoo into your weariness, and there’s no way to resist him: you find yourself throwing the ball this way and that, trying to outwit the bastard but damned if he doesn’t catch your every curveball! He’s a machine. He’ll do this all day. And here he is, twisting Chas’ arm in the new bath.