Category: Family

OK, it’s my birthday and I can be forgiven a little conceitedness, can’t I? For today, October 10, has the lovely and blessed 10-10 balance, something I’ve always thought makes me the perfect Libra.

Well, truly I’m not that taken with myself; I just enjoy the symmetry. And I’ve let it be known far and wide that today starts the countdown to THE most perfect of days, 10-10-10, which takes place one year from today. At ten minutes after 10 PM, of course. Well, considering that my partying years are long past, let’s make it 10:10 AM, OK?

We’ve been enduring these little date-celebrations for some time now; September 9 was the latest, August 8 the year before, and so on. Heck, even my husband and I got on the bandwagon; we got married on March 3. He claimed it would help him remember our anniversary forevermore and thus ensuring his Primo Husband status, something he dearly  hopes to maintain. Good man.

Not that I’m overly obsessive about horoscopes — honestly, I rarely pay attention to them — but there’s something magical, in a low-grade way, about being a Libra and having such a symmetrical birthday. Add the year ’10 to that? Nir-vahhhhn-na.

Balance has been in short order this week; Kristoff, as was previously documented, contracted and suffered through a bout of H1N1. And then we all watched and waited to see who would be coming down with it next. “Quarantine” was the Word of the Week as both older children chafed at being relegated to the upstairs as we tried to make sure the un-protected by Tamiflu Trassie stayed far away from predatory germs.

That goal seemed shattered at 2 am Friday morning, when said Trassie awakened with a fever; by morning I was convinced he’d been smote by swine. As quickly as I could, I made an appointment with the pediatrician, a new/old doctor that we already love. (He’d been my pediatrician 16 years ago with my first child; I was forced to leave his practice when my employer mandated use of HMOs and his practice didn’t accept them.)

So we all met Dr. Wilkes again, and are happy about our decision to switch.  It also rather threw aging into sharp relief; as we reconnected, he asked me how long it had been since we’d seen one another. He insisted that he looked just the same; of course I agreed, and said of course I did too. I reminded him that the LAST time he saw me I was in the throes of childbirth; the pediatric practice I had at the time shared on-call duties with his, and when Christopher made his entrance, a pediatrician was needed due to some meconium present in the amniotic fluid.  No, I’m not going into what that means; you know how to Google as well as I do.

He allowed as to how he didn’t precisely remember me on that auspicious event; after all, one woman in labor looks pretty much like the next, from the medical profession’s point of view. I won’t elaborate  on THAT point either.

But back to the reason we were there; Trassie doesn’t have swine flu; Dr. Wilkes pronounced him the possessor of an ear infection. Antibiotics? Check. But when his fever spiked later that day and he was hauled back to the tolerant doctor by Tras (I was at work because of my magazine deadline! arg!) he was found to be N-O on the H1N1 again, though beset with some virus or another. After a rather sweaty night, he’s much better today.

So birthdays, and aging, and the passage of time, have been on my mind this week, as I negotiated the hazardous waters of parenthood, illness, magazine deadlines and the looming of one’s late 40s.

Despite that — and the fact that they tend to be something you avoid dwelling on as the years start zooming by —birthdays are fun nevertheless, and I always enjoy mine. I’ve got a loving family — beset by illness this year though they may be — who like to indulge in mild festivities at any opportunity.

Perhaps I’ll make a loaf of bread this afternoon with my special honey-vanilla butter to thank them for the happiness they bring me.

And since it’s Saturday, there’s laundry to be done, floors to be vaccuumed, bathrooms to be cleaned and a week’s worth of clutter to be swooped up and dealt with before another week gathers strength and decimates whatever tidiness I’ve been able to bring forth.

But I’ve just been informed that a family dinner out is in my future, if everyone proves to be well enough by suppertime.

In the meantime, mark your calendars: Party at my house the next time this most Perfect 10 of days rolls around. Bo Derek ain’t got nuttin on me.

For lots of reasons, the arrival of my youngest child has been a different experience for me. First of all, and let’s get this right out front to begin with, I was old when he was born, nearly 41. Not that this is anything unusual for my family, of course; my mother was pushin’ 40 when my twin sisters were born, and my sister-in-law Donna recently carried on the tradition by bringing Elias into the world right around the 40 mark. And just for fun, we can also mention my dad’s youngest sister, born when I was around 5 years old. So we’ve got that going for us in the Baker family: Extreme Reproduction. I can see it as the latest reality show. Honestly, are there many more obscure niches of human behavior left to exploit?

Probably the most obvious, however, is that Trassie is the child my husband, Tras, and I have together. It’s the first time ’round the parenting block for Tras and he hopped on this particular tricycle at the awe-inspiring age of 51. And, God bless us, it’s been a very, very good thing.

Have you ever seen a look of more pure happiness, I ask you?

On a less dramatic level, operationally speaking, having him around is a lot different than when Claire and Christopher were young. They’re just two and a half years apart, while Claire’s a full decade older than Trassie. So basically I was simultaneously lactating and wrangling middle-schoolers, though of course not at the same time.

So we’ve got being married to someone different, being older and wiser (and achier) — and that rather undefinable factor of being a little more relaxed when your third kid rolls around. Add to that logistics — how your day runs has a lot to do with where your kids have to be and when, and it happens, at least in my case, that you wind up eating at McDonald’s every morning with the Old Codgers Coffee Clatch.

(They look a little surprised, don’t they? I did ask them permission, but they were more interested in asking me if I was an investigative reporter tracking down the latest ACORN scandal. Consequently no one was composed when I started snapping. Ha!)

So anyway, back to logistics, we have about 15 minutes to spare in the morning before we can drop Trassie off to preschool, so we while away some time at the happy place while The Master consumes a Cinnamon Melt, hash brown and a juice box, mostly while we look on hungrily and look forward to the homemade Irish oatmeal I’ve got waiting in the fridge for us at work. I know, it’s hard to compete with sugar, lard and cinnamon, but we do, in fact, like it.

Actually, I’m doing my familial duty by going to McDonald’s this frequently. Growing up, it was practically part of our religion to eat at McDonald’s — at least when we were in Louisville, because Carrollton didn’t get one until I had grown up and moved away. The nerve. But we always ate there, not because my Uncle Bruce owned a McDonald’s in Newport but because, as it gradually dawned on me as I aged, Pappy owned stock in McDonald’s and if we were eating out, by golly, that’s where we ATE.

Not that anyone complained, of course. Back in the innocent ’60s and ’70s, McDonald’s wasn’t nearly the all-consuming marketing force of nature it is today — but it did have that undeniable hamburger-and-fry pull children of all ages find it difficult to resist. And the Hamburgler.

When Christopher was this age, I was commanded to procure a Hershey bar for him from the SuperAmerica every day between kindergarten and daycare. The fact that delicious mocha lattes were also available is beside the point. And when Claire was a wee preschooler, she required a serving of pancakes and juice while she sat in the miniature Boston rocker (the very same rocker upon which I perched at that same age) and consumed her morning helping of Barney & Friends while we chatted and I got ready for work.

Such sweet, fleeting memories. And in just a few months, our morning stop at McDonald’s will also be just such a memory. But like the last forkful of Cinnamon Melt or nibble of hash brown Tras and I sometimes sneak when Trassie proclaims, “I’m full!” — these McDonald’s mornings are experiences we’re savoring. We’re old enough to know they’re memories to last a lifetime.

My brother Mark has a fabulous memory for detail. He’s becoming legendary for his ability to recall the minutia of our shared lives, mostly events from our childhoods.

His ability in this regard was put to the test yesterday, and his reliability is absolutely unquestioned.

A few weeks ago my mom and I were discussing our recent trip to New York. We didn’t do anything so mundane as talk about the Empire State Building or, say, the gasping fish of Chinatown. No, this day it was flying, which meandered into ruminations upon the trip our family took to Washington, D.C., when I was 15 and a high-school sophomore.

I know.

Anyway, at issue: whether our hopscotch flight back from DC took us to Lexington, Louisville or Cincinnati. I maintained Cincinnati. Mom said Lexington. Pshaw, I rejoined. Then Mom had an idea. “Ask Mark! He’ll know!”

So yesterday sometime during lunch Mom turns to me and says, “what were we going to ask Mark?”

“Hm. I don’t know. It was something interesting.”

“Hm.”

“Hm. I do remember we were sitting in my breakfast nook when we were wondering about it though.”

Several minutes pass and suddenly there’s Mom: “Hey! Our trip to Washington!”

Mark promptly responds, without knowing the question was in regards to flights, or what: “1979.”

Yeah, yeah right I remembered WHEN. So after it’s explained to him, he recites all the takeoffs and landings, both ways, and finally hits on the crucial information: “We considered renting a car in Cincinnati, driving home to Carrollton, and then picking up our car the next day in Louisville and leaving the rental car there.”

CASE CLOSED!

Of course the best thing about this story was that I Was Right, which isn’t often in heated battles such as this with my mother. I remembered the whole thing vividly because of the unusual nature of the circumstances: our hopscotching took us to Cincinnati, which is just about the same distance from Carrollton as Louisville is — in fact, it lies right between the two. But, we’d flown out of Louisville, and that’s where our car was. We had a four-hour layover in Cincy to take a 30-minute flight. Hence, the consideration of the car rental.

(From her perspective, it was a victory because she remembered exactly what it was we wanted to ask Mark. OK, touche. A draw.)

In the end, as of course Mark remembered, we sweated it out in the Cincinnati International Airport, which as everyone knows, is located in Northern Kentucky, landed in the Ville and drove home to Carrollton at 3 in the morning. We kids didn’t care (much); we were on vacation and just being in an airport is fairly exciting.

I find it amusing that he’s become such an oracle for these family memories. Let not the little piddling things in life fade into the past! ‘Tis the piddling that’s the glue that holds family together.