ever-fixed mark

Over the weekend, Husband and I took an overnight trip to Kennebunkport to have a grown-up dinner at a nice restaurant and sleep late in a nice inn, sans child and dog. It was our second trip to the beach town. Three years ago we spent an extremely frigid President’s Day weekend at another Kennebunkport inn, this one on the beach. We were walking through the courtyard after sunset on our way out to our car when we were arrested by a sight in one of the second-floor windows. A young couple — she naked, he in a dress shirt and boxer shorts — was standing in front of their window, shall we say, embracing. It was dark outside, but the room was brightly lit and the curtains were open — a free show for us and the other guests who were headed out to dinner.

The next morning at breakfast, we were curious as to whether the exhibitionist couple would appear. When the room was almost full, they showed, and it was comical to see the heads swivel and the disapproving expressions as they took their seats. They were very beautiful and very young, college students most likely, wrapped up in one another and seemingly unaware of the stir they had caused. I found myself wondering not so much at their sexual proclivities as their finances. How on earth could such young people afford to rendezvous at that inn? At those prices? One night’s rack rate for that room would have paid two or three months’ rent for me when I was in college.

For this year’s trip, our voyeuristic pleasure was limited to 1. spotting Barbara Bush in a Secret Service van on her way home from church, and 2. watching a few escapees from the Portland Jehovah’s Witnesses convention shop for knick-knacks. Amazing — Jehovah’s Witnesses blow off their sessions just like I do when I’m at a convention! How “godly obedient” is that?

At any rate, vacationing in the summer watering place of our First Family, a virtual stronghold of WASP power, made me reminisce about my “preppie” past. I was in high school when The Preppie Handbook popularized the pink-and-green lifestyle. I wanted desperately to go to boarding school, despite the horrifying scenes chronicled in Good Times, Bad Times, A Separate Peace, and (of course) The Catcher in the Rye. Prep to me meant wealth, tradition, and social acceptance, things I desired and felt I did not have. I tried to cover the ignominy of my public school education by enrolling in a pricey private college (with an excellent financial aid package). I wore Bermuda shorts, an Oxford shirt, and penny loafers to move into the dorms, and if I didn’t blend in perfectly with the real preppies, no one ever went out of their way to make me especially conscious of it. It didn’t really sink in, at the time, that with the number of vowels in my last name I was never going to be a WASP, but by the time I figured it out I was interested in a new, more achievable identity.

Does the preppie world even exist any more? Or have all the old families been infiltrated by ethnic minorities, and all the old enclaves by new money?

During the four years I’ve lived in Port City, I’ve made a number of female friends, most of them via an informal dog play group that sprang up on the beach. A few times a week I’ll meet them for a dog walk or video night, and once or twice a month we’ll plan dinner or a movie together. Some of us are married with children, and our husbands are usually able to cover for us on girls’ night out, because none of them ever has plans for a corresponding boys’ night. In fact, it seems that none of our husbands has made a new friend since he got married.

This might be because they’re geeks who don’t play or watch sports and thus don’t have the usual social outlets that would draw heterosexual men together. Or it may be that they rely on their wives to manage their social calendars and, since it never occurs to us to arrange a play date for our husbands, they go without. So imagine our surprise when three husbands got together, without any wifely prompting, and arranged to see the new Star Wars movie together tonight.

They’re going on a man-date!

We — their wives — are stunned. We’re proud of them for taking the initiative, nervous for them as they confront a new social situation, and hopeful that they’ll like each other. We wonder about the social etiquette involved in a man-date. Will all three of them drive? At the movies, will they sit next to one another or leave a seat between them? Afterwards, if they go out for dinner, who pays?

Then, will there be a second man-date? Are there “rules” for man-dating that govern how much time should pass before one party calls the other, and how much notice they should give each other for dates?

They grow up so fast.

As a monsoon sits over New England, whipping us with relentless 30 mph winds, Hurricane Aitch has moved into full tantrum mode. It’s the perfect storm: a lethal combination of nor’easter and Far Easter.

Now Aitch has decided that there aren’t enough hours in the day for all the fury he has to vent, so he’s been waking up at night to throw fits. It’s like a goddamn Brontë novel around here, with the wind wuthering through the house and a mad relative howling through the night. Like two goddamn Brontë novels, actually.

When Aitch started these midnight fits he was so miserable with a cold and teething that we thought it might be more than garden-variety orneriness, so we (in a moment of weakness) let him come downstairs and sit in front of the TV with us, since that seemed to be the only thing that calmed him down. But it soon became evident that he was waking at 2:00 a.m. with the express purpose of watching infomercials, and then melting down when we didn’t automatically hand him the remote. (Husband interjects, “There’s actually some quality programming on at 2:00 a.m,” but that is not the point.)

So last night, we agreed to re-Ferberize him. The Ferber method prescribes reassuring parental visits to screaming child at intervals of increasing length, but the child is not allowed out of his crib. You would think it would just enrage a captive toddler, but instead it breaks his spirit ever so gently, with less “cry it out” guilt, and usually by the third visit he’s ready to crash.

I was the designated re-Ferberizer. At 11:52, as we heard plaintive cries of “Daddy, daddy” over the monitor, I sprang into action. Visit one: I gave Aitch a little hug, rubbed his back, and talked to him as he yelled, mentally calculating the Fibonacci numbers that determine the length of the intervals between visits. I went back to bed; Aitch continued to scream. Visit two: I put an extra blanket over Aitch, who was still lying down and talked to him soothingly. He continued to moan, “Daddy, daddy.” Visit three: Aitch was sitting up, still crying, but when I repositioned him he quieted and was ready to go to sleep. By 12:30 it was all over.

All over for him, that is. I continued to lie awake, listening to the tree limbs scratching the windows, hearing Aitch’s pitiful, “Daddy, daddy” over and over in my head. Even as I sat there looking at the monitor with its steady baby-is-sleeping light, I could hear his voice, like the ghost of Cathy scaring the crap out of Lockwood as she roamed the moors pining for Heathcliff. Now, I have nothing against the Brontës–I even like poor, neglected Anne–but tonight I hope I wake up in the middle of something a little less Gothic—a nice Mrs. Gaskell or maybe a George Eliot, where neither the children nor the wind is heard.

Yesterday I started a new consulting gig with a client I’ve worked with on and off over the past few years. I’ve been hired so often by one department or another at this company that I’ve come to be something of a fixture there. It’s almost as if I work there, but for multiple departments. I’m like the Forrest Gump of the company, inserting myself (through the magic of CGI) into all the key events of the day: Hey, she’s in the management meeting! Now she’s attending computer training! Now she’s giving a task force presentation!

This time, some particularly efficient admin decided that I should have a badge, probably so she wouldn’t have to escort me every time I went for a cup of coffee. Then she thoughtfully reserved a cube for the length of my tenure, so she wouldn’t have to go begging space for me every day. But this launched an unstoppable Facilities juggernaut. Once my cube was on their radar, then they had to install a phone. (Just what I need: a fifth phone number and voice mail.) Once I had a phone, I was officially a “contractor,” so they awarded me a new laptop. Now I have a log-in to their network, an e-mail account, and one of those little security random number generator cards so I can log in remotely. Help! I’m being assimilated!

All of this happened within SIX HOURS of my walking in the door. I’ve had real jobs where it took weeks to get permanent space, hardware, and accounts.

I should have my 401(k) set up by the end of the week.

Because Aitch is (choose one):

a) teething

b) sick

c) almost two

d) possessed by evil spirits

e) lodging a protest against the 5th rainy weekend in a row

he has been bursting into whiny tantrums at the slightest provocation. He cries and resists all attempts to appease him with a heart-rending, “No, no!” as though demons were shoving Tabasco-covered cuticle sticks under his toenails.

Naturally, whenever we sense a meltdown coming on, we do everything we can to forestall it, because once he’s in the throes our little Chernobyl is inconsolable. Yesterday, for example, we had Aitch out car shopping longer than we intended, way past dinner time, and we were midway through a 45-minute drive home when he began to fuss. I scoured the car for anything edible to tide him over, but came up empty.

“Here,” Husband said, rummaging in his pocket.

“Really? Can we…?”

“Do you want him to freak out again?”

I handed Aitch a dog biscuit. The rumbling from the back seat quieted. Husband and I took a few deep breaths.

“More, please!”

Woof.

About six months ago, I put a task with a due date of today on my Palm to-do list to “Apply to Montessori school.” I had called to get some basic information about the school and see if they had a pre-preschool day care program. They didn’t, but they encourage me to apply for a spot in the pre-school program a year before Aitch became eligible at two years nine months (“2.9” in the base-twelve parlance).

A year in advance? You don’t even apply to Ivy League universities early-decision a year in advance. Obviously, they got me all panicked and I put it on my task list, but I have to wonder how competitive preschool admissions are in this little town. Are there so many people applying so far in advance that a new family moving in would not be able to find a spot for their toddler for an entire year? If the market is that tight, then instead of consulting I should definitely be opening a preschool.

Aitch’s current playschool has a preschool program that I could easily roll him into just by making a phone call to the director and placing him on the list, but for some reason I feel I need to put myself through the ordeal of multiple Montessori school interviews (both parents required! But leave the child at home! Preferably with a trained caregiver guiding him in some Montessori-approved multi-sensory activity!). Although I adore Aitch’s toddler program, I wasn’t so crazy about the early preschool class. It’s held in a basement, cheek by jowl with a bunch of other classrooms, and the kids did not seem terribly active or content on the day I toured the preschool.

But of course my overriding criterion for school selection is proximity. Aitch’s current playschool is a mere five and a half house numbers down from us on the same street (for some reason, the school number is 13 1/2, perhaps because they felt 13 was by itself too unlucky?). Distance as the crow flies: 50 meters. Unfortunately, the school entrance in in the back of the building, so we either have to exit the front of our house, walk three buildings down, and then circle around the back of the complex, or exit the back of our house and circle around the block (more like 75 meters). There is actually a hilly, wooded shortcut between our driveway and the school door (30 meters, tops), but it’s kind of scrubby and not toddler-friendly. The Montessori school is an entire 500 meters away. For the visual learners among us:

Obviously, either distance is walkable, but at minus 20 wind chill every second of exposure is critical. There’s also the “empty stroller factor” — the amount of distance I have to travel back from the school (after dropoff) or to the school (for pickup) wheeling an empty stroller and meeting alarmed glances from passers-by with defiant looks (”No, I am not so high in the middle of the day that I forgot the damn baby!”). If I’m lucky I meet other “empty stroller moms” en route and we give each other sheepish smiles.

Maybe I should shift tactics and look for a preschool that is farther away — far enough to justify a car ride. Then I could forego the arctic-quality outerwear, listen to the radio, and stop by the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through on the way to school.

One minor luxury that comes with business travel is beyond-basic cable. So far, I’ve watched two episodes from the “Law and Order” franchise on the all-day “Law and Order” channel that we don’t get at home. (Not exactly a strong argument for expanding our cable offerings.) I also woke up to this story on CNN this morning: A girl in Oregon was given detention for hugging her boyfriend in a middle school hallway.

Yep, that’s it. Kid gets detention. That’s the whole story, as Carol Costello discovered to her chagrin as she conducted an excruciatingly dull interview with the girl, her mom, and the superintendant. No police were called in, no lawsuit was filed, no violence ensued.

CNN is covering unfair detentions now? What’s next for the venerable news network — Paula Zahn reveals the School Dress Code Infraction of the Week? Ian Anderson investigates the practice of giving wedgies in the locker room? Soledad O’Brien reports the lunch menu?

CNN obviously picked up this story from the AP, which got it from the local paper, which (unless it sends stringers to review school detention lists in search of hot leads) probably got the tip-off from the girl’s mother. This begs the question: When should a parent notify a news outlet about a situation in his or her child’s school?

Parents, it appears that some guidance is desperately needed. As a rule of thumb, let’s agree to alert the media only when your child’s rights have been egregiously violated by the school system. Examples include:

Your five-year-old is handcuffed by police for refusing to sit in her seat.

Your toddler is abandoned in the school bus all day.

A teacher recruits your child to kill her husband.

Note that infringement of First Amendment rights does not necessarily qualify as an egregious violation. Freedom of speech may be the cornerstone of democracy, but it is anathema to an orderly classroom. However, if there is an interesting angle to your First Amendment issue — say, your son has been suspended because he has posted photos of the school principal smoking on school grounds, where smoking is banned — by all means issue that press release.

But if your sweet Ashley is caught passing a note that says, “Do you like me? Check one: Yes/No,” but she REALLY DIDN’T write the note and was only handing it to little Aidan because that skank Madison threw it at her and she didn’t have any other choice and, what was she supposed to do? Because if she had let it drop to the floor that would be LITTERING and there are school rules against THAT, too, and anyway why shouldn’t kids be allowed to pass notes in class? …well, I don’t want to see that on Fox News any time soon.

I am off on another business trip, this time to a nice resort in Florida. Because the lease on my car expired, and I have not gotten around to buying or leasing another car, Husband and Aitch had to drive me to the airport. We decided to leave early and stop for lunch on the way. The menu, which contained a number of food items to which Aitch is allergic, reminded me that we had left Aitch’s EpiPen at home. Husband and I discussed the likelihood of Aitch’s having a reaction on the way to or from the airport. Husband thought it was a pretty remote possibility, but I dreamed up a dire scenario, which is something I do well: What if they cooked Aitch’s chicken fingers in oil that became contaminated by shellfish, and Aitch went into anaphylactic shock while Husband was on the highway, and Husband didn’t know the route to the nearest hospital and didn’t have a cell phone to call an ambulance? As it happened, Husband didn’t have his cell phone, so I won. We drove back to get the EpiPen.

Aitch is allergic to peanuts, among many other things, and we are not yet sure how he will react to shellfish or bee stings, but I’m prepared for the worst. I prepare by imagining the worst that could happen and think about how I will react to it. I have bad dreams about inadvertent peanut exposures, where I hover over Aitch with the epinephrine but hesitate to administer it for some reason. My dream response is contrary to the advice the doctor gave us — when in doubt, give the shot — and I wake up frustrated with my indecision. Consequently, we have EpiPens secreted in every purse and diaper bag. The “trainers” that come with each package are also scattered about the house, and I frequently practice the steps required for activation — remove gray cap, grip pen in fist, jam in thigh, hold. I flew into a panic one day as I realized I had been practicing according to the directions given on the package insert and was likely, in a time of crisis, to jam the pen into my own thigh instead of Aitch’s.

Although this life-threatening allergy is terrifying in the abstract, it is surprisingly benign in the quotidian (despite this article that suggests impaired quality of life for allergic children). Aitch has never had a severe reaction, or anything worse than hives. The allergist told us that Aitch was “highly atopic,” which means not that his thesis statements are poor, but that he is likely to develop asthma. But Aitch continues to enjoy uninterrupted rude health, with nary a cough, wheeze, ear infection, or fever. Because of this, and because he doesn’t have quite the faculty for anticipating tragedy that I do, Husband finds it hard to really “believe” in this allergy. He knows intellectually that Aitch is allergic, but he doesn’t have a healthy (in my opinion — morbid, in his opinion) fear of the consequences.

Inevitably, one of us forgets the EpiPen when we take Aitch out and, unlike today, we don’t discover it until we’re back. When I’m the culprit, I wail, gnash my teeth, prostrate myself, and generally beat myself up for being a bad mother. When Husband forgets it he thinks, well, nothing bad happened, and goes on his way. If he forgets the pen when he takes Aitch, and I find out about it later, I harangue him, painting awful pictures of what might have been. This does not win me any points from Husband, who does not like being scolded, but I always think that if I can instill him with a proper respect for the death-wielding power of the peanut, he will remember next time. I feel it’s worth being a complete bitch if it means Husband remembers an EpiPen when Aitch really needs it. Husband agrees that the EpiPen is vitally important, but doesn’t see the point of dwelling on what is past.

We’ve had this discussion in one form or another throughout our marriage. Husband thinks I am too fearful, and I think Husband is not fearful (and hence not careful) enough. Forget sex drive incompatibility; what we have are out-of-synch anxiety levels.

I’m told that when Aitch reaches school age, we’ll have to deal with all kinds of resentment from kids and parents about the peanut restrictions— “Dost thou think, because thou art allergic, there shall be no more Jif and Reese’s?” and so forth. (Check out the spectacularly insensitive comments here, where more than one person suggested euthanizing the allergic child would be preferable to banning peanut butter in the cafeteria.) I hate to be the Food Nazi, but I don’t understand this attitude. Sure, in this great country we have Freedom of Lunch, but would you really want your kid’s PB&J to kill his best friend right in front of him in the cafeteria? I mean, wouldn’t that be traumatic for all the kids?

It’s horrible, in our society, how people are blamed for their own illnesses. Husband and I are chief among the discriminators. We’re very proud of Aitch’s general good health, for example, and tend to look askance at parents who are always running their kids to the pediatrician. We harbor a secret superiority — our boy never goes to the doctor! We must be doing something right! — the converse of which is that they must be doing something wrong.

Karma is a bitch, of course, and I hate to think that other parents might be blaming us for Aitch’s peanut allergy — because we exposed him to peanuts too early, or okayed some vaccination that we should have delayed, or (this was a good one suggested by our social worker) we kept our house too clean, which somehow deprived him of useful bacteria needed to process peanuts. (She must not have been paying close attention during the homestudy.) But if some disgruntled parent wants to grouse because his little Skippy can’t eat Skippy in school, I’ll be happy to play the Food Nazi. I’m already the EpiPen Nazi.

Today I had to drive into the City for a very important meeting. I won’t bother to explain what I do because no one, not even my closest family members, can remember it five minutes after I’m finished talking. Their eyes begin to glaze over as soon as I say “consultant”; they perk up a bit when they hear “drugs,” but are practically catatonic by “process improvement.” I sometimes regret that I don’t have a “movie job” that would be easier to explain to Aitch when he gets older. A movie job is a career that can be assigned to a character in a film because it is easy for the audience to grasp without a lot of exposition — e.g., teacher, district attorney, call girl.

As I was dressing for the meeting in a freshly-pressed pink suit, I thought, “It’s so great to wear nice clothes. Why don’t I get dressed up more often?” Then I went downstairs and was squarely confronted with “why”: Every available surface, including those belonging to the various inhabitants of my house, is dotted with potential contaminants. I shudder to contemplate the vast heaps of irrelevant evidence that CSI would collect should some heinous crime be perpetrated in my kitchen. “That powder we found? We took it to trace, and it turns out it was the dust of a whole boxful of pulverized graham crackers.” “Hmm, the perp must have been pretty angry to have inflicted that kind of damage. Definitely a crime of passion. The killer knew his victim.”

As I was maneuvering slowly around The Big Dig, I decided to make some phone calls to pass the time. Anyone who’s ever driven in Boston knows what a dicey proposition this is. The roads around the Dig are re-routed weekly, rather like the staircases at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. Anyway, I called the Port City clerk’s office, where I had obtained Aitch’s birth certificate, to find out with which state agency I could file a complaint regarding the missing apostrophes.

As it happens, the birth certificate form is not state-mandated, but is local to Port City, so I was able to complain directly to the City Clerk. I started off politely enough, but then he took the annoying tactic of trying to argue me out of my opinions. I believe that’s when I opined that the birth certificate looked like something an illiterate high school student mocked up on his PC. The clerk kept going on about the security features in document — magnetic stripes, seals, watermarks, and so on. I got a little impatient, because I wasn’t worried about how easy it would be to fake the document, but rather how valid the document appeared to the average person — say, the US or Korean government officials who might review Aitch’s birth certificate in support of our second adoption.

The City Clerk could not promise to correct the certificate form, because there was no money in the budget to have the super-special trained administrator with the secret password to the forms database come in for five minutes to add some apostrophes.

A few hours later, when I was still at the meeting, the City Clerk called our house and spoke to Husband, who was unaware that I had called. The clerk filled Husband in on the controversy — “Your wife yelled at me” — and said that he had taken my concerns into consideration and would correct the form as soon as the money was available. I’ve since found out, though, I can request a birth certificate from the State that will be based on a different template, possibly one that is punctuated correctly. So sorry, Massachusetts, for maligning you earlier. I hope you can come through for me now.

After you finalize your adoption, you may experience “paperchase withdrawal,” a sense of anxiety and depression that you trace to the fact that there are no more forms left to procure, complete, or file. But there’s hope — if you adopt from South Korea and you live in Massachusetts, there’s another lengthy bureacracy tour in store for you. You still have to get your child’s birth certificate, passport, Social Security card, and Certificate of Citizenship. The order outlined above is crucial to the success of this enterprise.

The birth certificate is a US document that gives the vital info on the child’s birth but lists the adoptive parents as the parents of record. You need the birth certificate, plus the adoption decree, to obtain a US passport. Why do you need a passport if you’re not planning on traveling internationally? Although the passport agency accepts the adoption decree as proof of citizenship, because the law provides for citizenship upon adoption, the Social Security agency does not; therefore, you need the passport to obtain the Social Security card, which of course you need to claim the little shaver on your taxes.

Once you have your Social Security card, you can apply for the Certificate of Citizenship. Here’s where the bureacratic waters get a bit murky. The Certificate of Citizenship (eponymously) declares that your child is a citizen. By my logic, the adoption decree should be proof of citzenship as long as the law equates “adopted” with “citizen.” Failing that, the passport serves as proof for all of us native-born folk. But for some reason this expensive, paper-intensive application persists. It seems to be a holdover from the days when children had to be “naturalized” post-adoption. One of the adoptive moms on the Bethany board, who is a Korean adoptee herself, has a horror story about what happened to her because her parents never completed the naturalization process or obtained this certificate (scroll to bottom of the page). It’s hard to imagine that this could happen with the automatic citizenship law, but the general consensus (and recommendation of the adoption agency) is that we should obtain this “just in case.” You can download the form here. There are 8 pages of instructions and 7 pages of documents; submit with $200 (hey, another tax writeoff!) and 7 to 8 supplementary documents, depending on the situation.

Aitch and I are currently halfway through the four-step process. Now, I consider myself something of an expert on negotiating bureaucracy. I once obtained a work permit in an Arab-speaking country from men who thought that single women had no business living alone without male protection, let alone holding jobs. I’ve learned to leave no stone unturned in ascertaining requirements for paperwork. No question is too stupid, no answer too obvious to obtain in advance of hauling your ass all the way out to the next office. But I guess that lesson has faded over the years. We had to make two trips to the Social Security office (a half-hour drive) because it didn’t occur to me that we would need to present Aitch along with all the requisite documents. And when I went to City Hall to get his birth certificate, I assumed that “It should only take a few weeks” meant “We will send it to you in a few weeks,” not “You should pick it up in a few weeks.” Luckily, City Hall is only a few blocks away, so it was easy to rectify once I made the phone call to ask where the form had gone amiss.

When I got to City Hall I looked over the birth certificate to make sure all the information was correct, and I was horrified to see this:

Oh, Commonwealth of Massachusetts! Seat of Harvard, bastion of the humanities! Playground for the great linguists of MIT! Custodian of the public school system to which I have entrusted my children’s academic development! Forsake ye not apostophes, those indicators of possession. This is a simple matter. We’re not talking plural possessives, or possessives of singular nouns that end in S, or possessive nouns whose number is in question. We’ve got one mother and one father, and some personal data belonging to each. Take Strunk and White as your guide; they’ve set it down so simply that a second-grader could understand it — and that is, according to this curriculum summary, the grade where one learns these things.