The Biggest Impact

In a self-improvement class I recently failed, we were asked to write about the moment that had the biggest impact on our lives. This is what I wrote.

“Don’t you want to hold him?”

If he asked me that one more time, I would kick him. Even in the compromising and restrained position, I still could have mustered up enough strength to break a leg free and get him in the head.

The nurse had picked up on my frame of mind and offered him instead to his father. And he was panicked - holding him like one would a tray of food, in sort of half-outstretched arms away from his chest, as if to make sure he wasn’t fully committing to the responsibility. (A sign of things to come.)

He kept looking at me disapprovingly, too. I was the mother, after all. I should want to slobber all over him. Of course I would. Any mother would. But I didn’t.

I was given the aftermath treatment while the nurse retrieved him from Dad to wrap him in fresh blankets and top him off with a baby-blue knit hat. Then, she gingerly set him down beside me on the bed. “Why don’t ya’ll just sit by each other for a little bit”, she suggested. He looked like a tiny doll of a person with closed eyes that were more like two slits between red, flaky, wrinkled fleshy cheeks. And it didn’t move. In fact, it seemed barely alive. This was it? All that pain? All those months? For this? I felt nothing.

Then, we were wheeled back to our room and forced into a whir of activity, with nurses from every direction bringing me baby this after baby that, each with long lists and instructions.

Just when I thought it was over, Nurse Evil #8000 came in with feeding supplies. “Okay, here we go!! Baby’s first bottle!!! You ready?”

I raised my eyebrows to question her sanity, and the bitch snickered. I swear she did. She said, “Aw, you two will be just fine. Have fun!” And she left!! Imagine. It’s like she didn’t care one bit about this baby.

We were alone. Dad had gone to make phone calls or watch TV or who knows what. It was just us. (Second sign of the life to come.) And still, I felt nothing. He drank the whole bottle, never moving or opening his eyes. I fell asleep, too, but I must have had the decency to hold onto him, because when someone came to whisk him off to officially be registered with the human race, neither of us had moved. (Not that he could’ve gone far on his own – I just mean that he wasn’t on the floor in a puddle of head injury blood or anything.)

“You’re taking him away?” I asked, trying not to sound excited.

“Yes, dear, but just for a few minutes,” she said.

“Oh, no hurry,” I said on the outside. “Kidnap him. In the name of all that is decent and holy, I’m begging you to kidnap him,” I screamed on the inside.

I was alone. I could breathe. I felt like my normal self again. I wanted to go home. Well, I actually wanted to turn back time, but going home was second best. And just as I began to feel comfortable again, here he came, still wrapped like a big ol’ sausage rolling around in his shiny acrylic cart.

“Back so soon?” I asked.

This nurse just ignored me - didn’t even have the decency to snicker like the other one. He, on the other hand, tilted his head toward me, opened his eyes, smiled, and then laughed. Laughed! The outside world would say this was gas or some other bodily fluke, but, for me, it was just what I needed. I am still convinced that this kid totally got the sarcasm. He was letting me know that he wasn’t any happier about this situation than I was and, had he been born 50 and Don Rickles, would’ve sniped, “Seriously? Her again? I’m going to need to talk to somebody about this.”

In that flicker of a moment, we connected. I was his, and he was suddenly mine. All mine and just mine. He would become the love of my life, and I would become his mom. Whether we liked it or not.

Testing Toy Story / Pixar or Pickax to the Heart?

The Plan:

I've been told too many times that Toy Story is a must-see, so I guess I must see it. I've also heard that it's about Andy going to college. And leaving his mother and giving his toys to a little girl. I don't have high hopes that I'll get through it without a tear or two, but we shall see. I'll report back....

The Result: 

Yes, yet another tearjerker cartoon from Disney/Pixar. Nothing for the kids to cry about, though. Just the adults. Specifically, the mothers. And God bless any post-single mothers watching this movie.

Why do they keep doing this? Why must all their movies be so sad? Remember Lion King? The father dies a brutal stampede death! I will never forget comforting my 4-year-old Spawn during that scene. (He cried and cried."My eyes are leaking, my eyes are leaking!" It was horrible. His crying (not the father's brutal death - I had only been divorced from his father for a year or so at that point and often dreamed of his violent death) made me cry. And that made him cry more. Did I say it was horrible?

Toy Story 3 was about change and separations and endings. I don't understand how that's entertaining for children, but I'm sure it was necessary for the Bonnie empire to come in what will so obviously be Toy Story 4, 5, and 6.

Plus, there was a whole middle part that was fun for the kiddies, I suppose. But the beginning and the end and the entire plotline. Every time Andy was on-screen, I cried. In fact, just his room made me cry. When the mom said, "Oh Andy" looking at his empty room, I cried. But let me say here that no non-cartoon 17-year-old boy would tell his mother, "I'll always be with you." That did NOT make me cry. That just made me want to write the writers.

I cried the hardest after leaving the theater. It was like I had just relived the worst day of PSM, with all the symptoms, including crying at red lights. About two hours after the movie, while running some errands, the Universe blessed me with a flat tire, which ended my PSM funk pretty abruptly. I'm actually grateful for that annoyance.

Would I recommend Toy Story 3 to other PSMers? Nope. I just relived the most emotional time of my life and will now require some recovery time. And, it's a cartoon for God's sake. Andy didn't even have to grow up. What was the point? To be realistic? He's a C-A-R-T-O-O-N. 

What I'll remember most about Toy Story? Laughing at the army men parachuting out the window because they're "the first to go when the trash bags come out". And Big Baby. Dear God, how do you people with girls sleep with those things in the house?

What's this PSMer's final verdict: Pickax. Definitely Pickax. On a scale of 1-10, a Pickax 11.

The Spawning....of a new Website

Nobody understands. People tell me how happy I must be. Spawn’s off to college, and I’m not a single mom anymore. I’m “FREEEE” and must be frolicking in fields of pansies and making exotic reservations with my many, many friends.

I know they mean well, but I am NOT Stella getting her groove back. I never really had a Winston Shakespeare-type groove in the first place, but for the last two decades, the only one I’ve known was the boy I fed, cleaned, clothed, housed, entertained, and loved like the dickens.

It doesn't occur to folks that I could be sad. Or lost. Or stuck. So, I smile politely and muster up the energy to say, "Yes, thank you, it is a new day." Only you and I need to know that I haven't yet figured out how to leave the house.

It does help to write in you, though, Diary. And I have come up with a name. I’m calling it Post-Single Motherhood, PSM for short. It’s clever, don’t you think, because it is a little like PMS, minus the breaks. And fun hormonal tirades.