Test results.

For those of you consumed by the question Yes, but how is Quinn’s dog doing?, he sends his regards and wants you to know that he’s very happy. This beastie, found running down the street nine months ago, is the best dog I’ve ever had.

[The dog we had when I was growing up was better, what with being the dog I had growing up and all, but since she belonged to my parents and not me, my current dog squeaks by on a technicality.]

We finished Canine Good Citizenship training, and then we took our test. I’m not developing boundary issues with the dog; it was truly our test. Sure, he had to sit and not throw tantrums when left with a stranger for three minutes, but I had to leave the room and cross my fingers really hard for those three minutes. I had to create a new walking pace, just below a sprint, which made him appear to be in a heel position all the time. He had to be checked to for cleanliness, but did he feel the sting of being told his ears were filthy? No, he did not; he smiled and thumped his tailed pleasantly as a Canine Good Citizenship Judge lectured me for several minutes on the topic of Ear Cleaning. To hear this judge, I was feeding the dog things I found under park benches and setting his tail on fire for fun. When she tired herself out on the subject of my failures as a dog-parent, I whispered “So, we failed…?”

She answered grudgingly, “No, they are within the acceptable limits. But they really should be cleaner.”

Sweeping generalization: Some people are animal people because they lack any interpersonal skills whatsoever.

We got to Test Seven: Meeting a Strange Dog. Since the first day, I had known this was his and, by extension my, Achilles dewclaw. The dog cannot simply let another dog exist unmolested within smelling distance. They must be befriended, or eaten, or played with, or terrified into urination. Therefore, we trained, albeit in a desultory way. We walked only when we assumed we wouldn’t meet other dogs, so that any dog-meets had the casual spontaneity of a G-8 summit. If we did see a dog on our walk, we’d hide in a driveway behind trash cans until the threat passed. We arranged to have a rehearsal of the test with an Australian Shepherd, because the rumor was that the test dog was an Australian Shepherd.

We were very, very geeky.

Test Seven came, and we and our irredeemably dirty ears got in a “Sit” position. The judge went into the other room and walked back in with an Australian Shepherd at her side. She walked up to me and we shook hands, the dogs on the outside of each one of us. My sweet boy, sensing my nerves, had been bouncy and borderline sassy for the previous six tests, but somehow managed to calm himself for the meet n'greet. The judge and I shook hands and he stared off into space. I breathed out. The judge turned to leave and we – who had been in a perfect “Sit” – stood up to look more closely at the dog that was now leaving.

We failed. And we still had to do the final two tests, on the off chance that if we wanted to retake the test at some point in the future we’d get credit for those parts we did pass. On everything else, we were flawless. The judge released us, our teacher hugged us compassionately, and we were back in the car. I called Consort, home with Daughter awaiting the results, as I had determined we might be distracted by family members.

“Hello?”

“We aren’t Good Citizens,” I said glumly and to my acute embarrassment, felt myself choking up. Quinn, get some perspective. We weren’t refugees in Darfur; our house wasn’t in foreclosure; I was getting emotional over our inability to not sniff another dog’s butt? But the fact remained, we might have failed, but I dropped the ball. Had I carved out a little more time for training, he might have kept his head about him for another ten seconds. Ten seconds! Argh!

I composed myself as Consort told Daughter who sniffed a bit in disappointment herself. Consort got back on the phone.

“I’m sorry he didn’t pass,” Consort began kindly, “but if you don’t mind my saying, I’m kind of glad. Had he passed, you wanted to take him to visit children at hospitals, and I never did understand where you thought you would find the time to do it.”

“There’s that,” I mumbled, opening the bag of Gummy Bears I had bought myself as a post-test reward.

“You would have crammed it in to your schedule and you would have gotten tense and frantic-“

I was grateful he didn’t say “More tense and more frantic.”

“And you would have taken even less time for yourself.”

I chewed and shrugged. Since Consort couldn’t hear shrugging, I swallowed and said grudgingly, “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Oh, definitely,” Consort said, “We have a much better-behaved dog than before. He may not be a Canine Good Citizen, but he’s our good dog.”

I looked over at the dog curled up in the passenger seat, the celebratory rawhide gripped between his front paws. The post-test exhaustion was such that he was worrying the chew-toy in his sleep. I patted his bottom. He was our very good dog.

“We’ll see you in a few minutes,” I said, preparing to drive us home.

Rewrite here. Rewrite now.

You know what’s nice about rewriting a manuscript?

(Silence.)

Oh, come on, there has to be something nice about rewriting a manuscript. It…puts a gunshot wound into perspective? It allows you to tap into feelings of self-loathing and paralyzing self-consciousness you haven’t felt since eighth grade? It means you’re one step closer to publishing, at which point everyone can know you wrote the worst book in the world?

People are kind enough to ask me how the book is going. Frequently, they say things like “Is it out yet?”, because it seems as if I have been working on the book since before the advent of movable type. But no, it isn’t out yet. It will be out February 1, 2009. Publishing has its own pace and it is a measured pace. There is plenty of time booked in for taking the notes your editor has given you and incorporating them into your work. Days on end can be dedicated to polishing a paragraph your editor has noted is awkward and lacks a transition. More days can be booked in for deciding your entire writing style is awkward and lacking in transitions. Nights can be given over to obsessing about how your entire life is awkward and lacks transition. Fixating over your overuse of adverbs is a nice palate-cleanser.

And then the person who has so kindly asked if the book is done yet and has been rewarded by me looking pained and rubbing the bridge of my nose tries to atone by asking a perfectly reasonable question: “What did you decide on for the title?” They are rewarded with me putting my head down on the nearest horizontal surface and crying long hopeless sobs.

I still lack a title. I have come up with a few but Marketing at the publishing house hasn’t felt that special mix of humor, accessibility and shocking profit-margin they like in a title, so I keep getting sent back to the mines. Not only do I have to have a title, I have to have a wacky, appealing and even more audience-pleasing subtitle. My online friend Jen Lancaster is deliciously gifted at both. It now appears I am gifted at neither. Let others decry how bad the American school system is; how our students think the three branches of government are Kevin Jonas, Nick Jonas and Joe Jonas. I am only interested in decrying that a "Title Creation" class isn't a prerequisite for graduation.

So of course I am focusing deeply on anything but the book and its missing title. For instance, I am fascinated by the contents of our shower caddy. There are three human beings living in this house. None of us are hair models. Our follicles are not insured by Lloyds of London. So why do three people have eight bottles of shampoo? At the very worst, shouldn’t there be something like…three?

Let’s examine this mystery more closely. First, there is Consort. Consort likes this particular shampoo which makes my hair look like seaweed, so he has his own bottle. But Consort also has a habit of seeing the bottle of shampoo get below the half-full mark, thinking “I’m almost out of shampoo!”, buying another bottle and starting to use that one, while leaving the first bottle alone because it’s half-full, so in his mind it’s empty. He then works the new bottle halfway down and thinks “Zoinks! I’m almost out of shampoo!”

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

And then there are my shampoos. There is the organic shampoo which promised me shine and body but actually gave me new cowlicks and a peculiar smell. I keep it in there because I spent good money on it and I can use it on Daughter, but only periodically, because the smell draws possums. I also have the cheap shampoo which works well, but only on me, and then I have another bottle of that shampoo, because what I thought was conditioner turned out to be shampoo. I then have a shampoo which describes itself as “Color-Enhancing” which actually means “Hair-Dye”, and I only use it if I remember to wear surgical gloves to shower, because it will leave my nails and palms sort of a coral-rust color for a day. Also, it tints my ears. Mostly, I don’t use it, but still it stays and why?

I spent good money on it.

And then there’s Daughter's shampoo, which is organic and sweetly scented and not tested on animals and more expensive than anything which removes poster-paint should be. It sits in the shower caddy, but slightly apart, as befits its stratospheric price; it’s lobbying for its own caddy, with a plasma-screen TV and a publicist. And what is this next to Daughter's shampoo? Why, that’s the dog’s shampoo. I wash the dog about once a month, and damp trial-and-error has taught me that it’s just easier to put on a bathing suit and wash him in the shower.

I’d store his shampoo and only bring it in when I’m washing him, but then I run the risk of again getting both of us in the shower and only then noticing I’d forgotten the shampoo. At which point, I slipped out of the shower to get the shampoo, but the dog followed me and raced around the house in fragrant wet-dog delight at having escaped. He then raced outside, tap-danced in the dirt, and flew back in. Twenty minutes later, when I finally caught him, the only places in the house without muddy footprints were the crawlspace and a few square inches behind the fridge.

Yeah, his shampoo stays in the caddy.

The next mystery is the teapot. Correction: the next mystery is the last three teapots I’ve owned. Not a complicated bit of engineering, teapots: they boil water; they make a noise when the water boils; they have a hole through which you pour out the boiling water. I’m not exactly sure how the noise is created from steam but since I’ve never seen Microsoft enter into the teapot marketplace I’m guessing it’s pretty straightforward. So why is it that I cannot buy a teapot which works? Two teapots prior to this current one, I had a model I called “The Strangler” because the sound which indicated my water had boiled wasn’t a whistle as much as the sound a chicken would make if someone were cutting off its air, slowly. It’s not fun to have a kitchen device which makes guests think you’re making money on the side dressing poultry. Still, I kept that stupid teapot for years because beyond that hellish death-rattle there was nothing wrong with it and…

Right. I spent good money on it.

Eventually, it developed a leak and I could discard it with a clear conscience. I decided the reason the teapot made that awful noise was because I bought the cheapest one I could find. So I went up-market and bought a slightly better one. I brought it home. I boiled water. It peeped sweetly at me. Gladdened by how my extra money was well-spent, I threw away the receipt. The teapot, sensing it was now home forever, never spoke again. Whenever I boiled water I would have to hang around the kitchen like a stove stalker because the only indication this teapot gave that water was boiling was an intermittent, asthmatic wheeze. We had gone from the poultry slaughterhouse to the ICU. In any living thing, this sound would have been a reason to summon a priest but this teapot beetled along, gasping and boiling, for years.

When I could finally justify the length of time I had owned the wheezer (Consort once accused me of "amortization fever"), I bought my freedom from the kitchen by getting a new teapot. This most recent one is an evolutionary step forward in some parallel universe because not only does it not make a whistle, -- preferring instead to make a sound I have dubbed “the whispering retch”whenever I use it -- it slops hot steaming water all over my hand, the tabletop and generous lashings onto my legs. Where it doesn’t pour water is in the cup. Nevertheless, I’m keeping this one, and not because I spent good money on it but because these things seem to be learning and I know the next one will go for my eyes.

My most troubling mystery, however, is Ken. The name Ken is in the top twenty of 20th century’s most popular names for boys, but just barely. James is the most popular, and Consort knows two of them. John is the second most popular and, again, Consort knows two of them. Robert, Michael, William, David…they are all represented in our social circle in reasonable sprinklings. However, if Consort says “I’m going to see Ken this afternoon…”, I am instantly at a loss. The man knows at least nine men named Ken. None of them go by Kenneth. If any of them have a nickname they’re keeping it quiet. It doesn’t help that Consort, seemingly forgetting that we’re surrounded by a clutch of Kens, dives into anecdotes without illuminating which Ken he’s talking about:

CONSORT: Ken brought his new girlfriend to the office today.

QUINN: Oh my god, when did he break up with his wife?

CONSORT: He was married?

QUINN: We had dinner at their house. Her name was Sheryl. They seemed so…wait. You’re not talking Work Ken, are you?

CONSORT: Sure I am. Wait, you mean Other Work Ken. This is New Work Ken.

QUINN: I met New Work Ken. I'm, frankly, a little shocked that he has a girlfriend.

CONSORT: No, that's Gay New Work Ken. This is another guy.

(Silence.)

QUINN: Did none of their mothers have imaginations?

I’ll let you in on a secret: sometimes, when Consort is talking about something and my mind drifts, I cover myself by asking “So, what did Ken think about all this?” Works every time.

And with that, I have to go back to title-birthing, a process only slightly less taxing and unsanitary as the regular kind of birthing. As with the regular kind, I have to assume it’s all going to come out right. February 1st, 2009, head into your local bookstore and glance at the “New Books” table:

A THOUSAND MEN NAMED KEN AND ME: A life of crowded showers and empty teacups

In Sickness and in Health.

A few weeks ago, Daughter began to look unwell, with a low-grade fever and various body aches and the glazed expression I used to get in childhood which my mother referred to as “Sick Eyes”. By Saturday morning she was officially sick. But even officially sick, I was still puzzled, because everything was “Kind-of”; she was kind-of feverish, kind-of achy, kind-of nauseated.

A quick trip to the doctor’s office on Saturday morning diagnosed strep throat with an underlying viral infection, which solved the mystery; I knew about this virus, it had been galloping through her friends. The doctor confirmed what I had already heard from the other mothers; keep her quiet and make her eat and drink.

The keeping her quiet was easy about a third of the time, when she was exhausted. Otherwise, I constantly had to clarify that “Rest of the couch” did not mean “Work on your back walk-over on the couch”. But resting was as nothing next to eating and drinking. She wasn’t hungry and she did not want to eat or drink.

She didn’t want to eat or drink on Friday.

She didn’t want to eat or drink on Saturday.

She didn’t want to eat or drink on Sunday.

Both the doctor and the other mothers who had gone through this had been clear; the child will have no appetite, but if they don’t eat or drink, they will stay sick for a very long time and might even develop complications, especially if they aren’t drinking enough. It doesn’t matter what they ingest, but they must ingest. She doesn’t have the kind of build which laughs off hunger strikes; she was getting thinner every day. The tablespoon of garbanzo beans and quarter-cup of water she called dinner wasn’t cutting it. The nearly hundred-degree heat outside wasn’t exciting her appetite any, either.

Sunday afternoon, I took her to the grocery store with me. Sagging against me, she declared that everything smelled weird. Throwing quality-parenting to the wind, I pointed out every food which is usually either a “No” or a “Maybe, if you do your vocabulary pages…”. I offered her cinnamon rolls; I offered her popsicles; I offered her gum-drops, but I was politely declined.

I looked at her, her thin little face and her shadowy eyes, her bony fingers hiking up her now-loose shorts and all I could think was “How can I cram the densest calories per-square-inch into this little person?”. I worked backwards from what every diet book ever told me not to eat and I had a flash. Cheese! “How would you…” I said in my best Aren’t we a lucky girl? Voice, “…like to go to the gourmet cheese store?”

She shrugged and said, “Okay.”

This isn’t as NPR-ish and culturally elite as a might appear. Readers, here was my logic. Fatty, soft, mild European cheeses, eaten correctly, can cause a person to outgrow a pair of jeans in a single meal. I’d buy her bottled water in a pretty European container and when she finished the contents, I could refill it with Eau D’Arrowhead. Maybe a shaft of sunlight would bounce off the glass tureen of olives and excite some interest in her. Or, she’d shun everything edible and I’d get a bottle of decent red wine to fortify Consort and me for the battle of getting her to eat.

The cheese-store was full of the kind of people who say to one another “Jasper, after we leave the Modern Art Museum let’s pick up some delightful raw-milk sheep’s cheese for snacking on tonight while we listen to bootleg live Maria Callas reel-to-reels” and “I’ve finally finished the third-act of my operatic adaptation of ‘Where’s Waldo’; let’s celebrate with a light Riesling and Iberian ham.”

And plopped down amongst the lovely and the literate was Daughter and me, freshly exhausted from the one-block walk from the car in the hundred-degree heat. At least she wasn’t completely out of place, being as she was now the weight all of these people long to achieve. I was merely her sweaty, suburban driver. She drooped. I dripped. When I wasn’t blotting sweat off my purse, I was extolling the virtues of every fatty food I saw. She declined them all. The walk having tired her, she moaned, “Can’t we just go home?”

“No,” I snapped, my good humor worn about by three days of her swearing that a sesame seed counted as an entrée, “We are not leaving until you pick out two cheeses that you will eat.”

Either there had been a lull in the generally artsy conversation, or my voice naturally carries above people who write blank verse in their spare time, but several people looked over to see who was the maniac with control issues over cheese. I waved and blotted at my forehead. A saleswoman asked me if I needed help.

“Yes,” I began, “I need to get some cheese.”

“What do you like?”

“Oh,” I said, distracted by the tattoo of Alice B. Toklas on the customer next to me, “it’s not for me. It’s for my kid.”

The saleswoman stared at Daughter, who didn’t appear to be the kind of fine, discerning customer who usually quizzed the staff about upon which mountaintop the milk-giving cows had grazed. She appeared instead to be the kind of customer who could be tempted by cheese with holographic properties or a built-in DVD player. Daughter wilted against the counter and looked disinterested. I tried to care for both of us.

“See,” I said, in a slightly more confidential tone, “she needs to put on a little weight. She’s not eating.”

AUGH! I had just suggested my daughter was anorexic! Strangers would judge! I sweated faster and clarified.

“I mean,” I stammered, “she’s just not hungry. She thinks she looks fine. I think she looks fine. Actually, I think she looks thin, which is why we’re here.”

“I’M VERY SICK,” Daughter announced in another one of those conversational lulls. The few people who hadn’t inched away from us when I was insisting she pick cheese now got closer to other, presumably less-lethal, people. The saleswoman and I stared at one another. I whispered, “It’s just a bug...”

She said, quickly, “Sure, sure", while covertly placing a tarp over the cheeses closest to us.

I continued, “...but if she doesn’t eat, there could be complications and I...“

“Of course, of course,” she said, straightening up a pyramid of Welsh cheddars and moving them away from us.

“Well, you know, nothing’s fattier than good cheese!” I finished brightly, adding a high-pitched yip of a laugh which had been meant to indicated a certain casual good-humor but instead made me sound as if I had been given a drive-by mammogram. The saleswoman, suddenly very eager to move us on to some other store, hastily made suggestions, gave me samples. I chose the ones which had the least flavor with which Daughter could take offense.

Daughter, in the meanwhile, had recovered from the heat and was quietly agitating to be allowed to do jumping-jacks next to the ricotta. I whispered to her that she could do calisthenics at home, after she had some food. She frowned and whispered back that she wasn’t hungry. I suddenly got very tired in a way that had nothing to do with a virus. I grabbed something from the cabinet next to me and handed it to the saleswoman.

“And add this bottle of red to my tab.”

Daughter recovered, without ever eating the cheese. The cheese did, however, go beautifully with the wine.

The Scales of Justice.

My existential dilemma began, as so many do, in PetCo.

Actually, the first hint of this dilemma began at a school fair. With Daughter currently home-schooling, I’m an ideal candidate for being talked into attending the school fairs of others; there’s nothing like several months of not having to attend fund-raising committee meetings to make a person enthusiastic about a fair. Metaphorically, this was the sausage made by others which I could enjoy in sweet ignorance.

And it was a fine fair. The weather was bright and pleasant, the booths numerous, the food copious and fried. We easily located Daughter’s friend and her mother and I sent Daughter off with a twenty-dollar bill and a warning that the money would not be replaced by more money when she and her friend used up her scrip, so plan wisely. Daughter, confronted with the equally novel experiences of being allowed to walk around a fair with only her (older and far more reasonable) friend and a crisp Andrew Jackson crumpled in her hand, dashed away. I settled in to my portion of the day, which was to hang out with the mother of Daughter’s friend — a lovely woman in her own right — while she served time as the monitor of the Silent Auction. This mostly involved dissuading people from opening the sealed paper around the donated cookbooks. Every twenty minutes or so, Daughter and her friend would come flying in, brandishing some new fair-triumph.

“We made a candy necklace!” Daughter announced, half of the necklace hanging from her mouth reminding me of the time I found our cat, Lulabelle, eating a lizard. I waggled my fingers in support, shouted “Great!”, and went back to watching no one bid on the trip to Hearst Castle.

They came back a while later and Daughter hiked her sleeve up her arm to reveal an electric blue flower.

“Tattoo!” she sang out in delight, flexing her bicep.

“Lovely!” I caroled back, “And it goes so well with the jelly-bean stuck to your hair!”

Daughter, nearly giddy now at this new mother who didn’t seem to actually do any parenting, dashed off. I toyed with bidding on a day-trip to the Santa Anita race track, but then remembered I’m wildly allergic to horses and losing money. By this point, I had entered that best of all states of perfect boredom where all thoughts have equal weight and nothing seems impossible and nothing seems worth moving from wherever it is you are standing. Time passed.

Daughter sped in, carrying something. She thrust said something into my hands: a small bag. I looked down.

“I won us a goldfish!” she shrieked.

“Oh…”, I said dumbly. And then, thinking I could improve upon it, I added, “Look.”

She grabbed back the little container and said, indicating her patient friend, “I’ll put it with Annabel’s stuff, on her desk”, she squealed breathlessly and raced off towards the classrooms. I sighed and stomped over to my friend, who was separating another mom from a sealed cookbook. “It now seems we own a goldfish.” I said bleakly. “A school-fair goldfish. Well at least it won’t last long.”

I knew of which I spoke. I had won a few of these in my childhood, the thrill of winning only eclipsed by the gray sensation of scooping a stiff, twisted fish-corpse out of the tank with a tea-strainer. One magical morning, I stepped barefoot on a pinky-sized corpse after the fish decided to escape its prison and walk home. No fair-fish ever lasted longer than a week.

“Don’t be so sure,” my friend said darkly. “We’ve had Pizza for two and a half years.”

I hoped she was bragging about how rarely she cleaned out her fridge, but no, it seems they have a school-fair goldfish that is one month away from joining the AARF. I sighed and glanced at a hot bidding war for a mother who would bake your classroom snacks for a year, but the responsibility-free feeling was gone. Daughter raced back in, carrying a small box. She held it up in triumph.

“I won us another fish, so they can be friends! And a holder, so we don’t have to worry about getting them a tank!”

Some combination of overwhelming love for this sweet kid and the good time she was having and a certain dull resignation that we were now in the fish business kept me from screaming, “Oh dear God, enough with the fish!” I did suggest that respected goldfish-behaviorists recommended that two was the ideal population, which she accepted, before going off to move both fish into their new digs. New digs which, while slightly more spacious than a plastic bag, were created of some unholy mixture of Saran Wrap and Kleenex and leaked water from several seams. I mentally erased Drive in a leisurely manner home from school fair and relax into couch from my afternoon plans and wrote in Drive like maniac while blotting water from car seat, leave fish and child at home and go to PetCo to upgrade housing. Somewhere in the back of my brain, a voice said firmly, “And then we get a margarita”. I know better than to argue with her.

Which brings us around to where we first found me, standing in the fish department of PetCo, contemplating the peculiar responsibility of goldfish-ownership. I knew I needed a bowl big enough to keep two goldfish comfortable, but what does that mean? When your entire life is dedicated to eating and aimless wandering, how much room do you need? Believe me, I’m not slighting eating and aimless wandering; I could also call those two activities “Quinn: 1997”, but was I slighting the fish by not giving them enough room to unroll a yoga mat?

I found a bowl which seemed about the right size for under ten dollars, but put it back because it lacked a lid and without a lid on the tank, the cat was going to view this as nothing more than a to-go cup. A lid meant a water-filter, which now put us into the fifteen-dollar camp. The water purifier and the food brought us in at twenty-four dollars. I held the can of goldfish food in my hand; it was about six inches high. There was no smaller size of food. The instructions said to feed each fish no more than about two flakes of food per feeding, twice a day. This food would serve us until, conservatively, the earth spun into the sun. The fishes would probably be dead before I remembered where I put the back-up house keys.

I wondered. Did the very brevity of their lives give them meaning, causing us to contemplate our own short-lived span upon this earth? Did the fact that I’d probably be trying to pull their carcasses out of the water-filter before “So You Think You Can Dance?” is over render their—and, by extension, our—lives meaningless? More likely, I am just making sure I'm prepared the next time someone requests a donation for a fund-raising garage sale. A full fish-tank set-up should net about fifty cents. I’ll throw in the lifetime food supply for free.

I shrugged and said “Oh, well” out loud, startling a woman standing next to me comparing prices on plastic deep-sea divers. I grabbed a bag of festive blue gravel and headed home. The big questions needed to be contemplated, but first I needed to purify some water, move a couple of fish, and mix myself a drink.

Please hold; Your call is very important to us.

Sorry, all. The week has been hectic. I promise to have something up in the next day or so.

In the meanwhile, I'm just reminding you that the Humane Society could certainly use any and all help right now.

http://www.hsus.org/

See you before Friday-

Quinn

It Ain't Me, Babe.

I hate disagreeing with well-meaning strangers but when someone says, “Your daughter looks exactly like you!” I am forced to say “No, she doesn’t.” In my defense, I try to say it softly. But then the other person insists, “No, really. She’s the spitting image of you”, at which point I say something conciliatory like “You know, now that you mention it…sure. Okay.”

But she doesn’t resemble me one bit. I say this with only the slightest eye-raising to Heaven, thanking whoever answered my prayers. What she does have are my facial expressions, my muscles under her face so to speak. I don’t own the building but the infrastructure is mine. Sometimes, watching her talk is like watching a very familiar movie with an entirely different cast. It is that combination of the familiar and the alien which is endlessly fascinating to me. Lately, the familiar has been all but overrun by the alien.

Take eggs. Please take them. With respect to eggs, I’m like a child, incapable of eating them if there is any discernible movement of either white or yolk. Any egg I eat must have the consistency of a manhole cover. If another person at the table is having a soft-cooked egg, I have to give myself little pep talks to not run screaming from the room clawing at my eyes. So, of course, I now have a daughter who is experiencing another growth spurt and requires an extra eighty grams of protein a day, She will eat three sunny-side-up eggs for a snack. She breaks the yolk open and lazily dips toast into the horrifying gooey yellowness while I stare intently at my cuticles. She eats the egg, luxuriating in whatever pleasures her sort of people derive from eating food which is still quivering. I closely examine a freckle on my wrist. A fork slides between me and my wrist, holding a bit of white limpness dotted with yellow slime.

“Want some?” she asks innocently, “It’s really good.”

I restrain myself from screaming and say through gritted teeth, “I’m…full. But thanks.”

I look up just in time to see her pop an entire egg yolk into her mouth.

“You’re sweating”, she notes.

“Yeah, I…excuse me” I say, racing from the room clawing at my eyes.


And then there’s Bob Dylan. I understand on an intellectual level that he is one of the great songwriters of the modern age and the reigning poet of his generation. I’ve read some of those lyrics and realize he’s said many important things about love and human existence, more then I ever will. For example, I don’t think he ever ranted about eggs. And how can I not appreciate someone who gave the world “The Mighty Quinn”?

[Actually, I could have done without that.]

But writing is one thing, singing is another. The first time I heard him sing was on Live-Aid. He was among the last performers of the world-wide extravaganza and it was generally understood that we were all to be very excited that Bob Dylan was going to sing for us. I sat at home, full to the eyebrows on Doritos and as keyed-up as a four year-old at Chuck E. Cheese after watching many slender British men being sensitive. And now, DYLAN! I was going to watch BOB DYLAN! And then I was going to UNDERSTAND! And then I would be COOLER! After great fanfare, they cut to what seemed to be a pile of paint-rags. The paint-rags had on a guitar and a harmonica. The paint-rags said something not entirely intelligible and then someone commenced to opening a squeaky door. Slowly. After a minute or so, I understood the paint-rags were, in fact, Bob Dylan and the squeaky door was his singing voice. I was crestfallen but illuminated. Dylan fell into the same category as Bergman films and soccer. I could respect the artistry of Bob Dylan without enjoying Bob Dylan. And barring a few painful weeks when Consort decided I’d like Dylan more if I heard more Dylan, there it was left for nearly two decades.

A few weeks ago, Daughter was avoiding handwriting practice by claiming to need background music. I don’t know why that particular CD drew her attention but the next thing I knew, “Blowing in the Wind” was blowing through my house and the squeaky door which is Bob Dylan has attained hegemony on my daughter's playlist ever since. I’m not exactly complaining, especially since the other option was the Zac Efron oeuvre, but there is something unsettling about such a small girl crooning over the soul-crushing despair of her last breakup. On the other hand maybe anomie, like measles, is less dangerous if contracted early. I do know that Consort, who is right about a great many things, was wrong about this: constant exposire to Dylan is not making me any fonder of Dylan.


Then there are the bookshelves. Rather, there is a lack of bookshelves. When our house was built, people didn’t own anything besides a pair of shoes, a towel and a copy of the Bible. At least, I assume this is true, what with our impressive absence of closet, shelf and book-space. Daughter gets new books but rarely wants to give up any old books and Daughter has the room with the absolute least amount of any kind of storage space. This has led to multiple book-ziggaruts dotting her floor. Some are small enough to step over, some tall enough to create a kind of end-table, upon which yet more books are piled . Fearing the Harry Potter-based landslide which would follow even a minor earthquake, Consort has decided to build floor-to-ceiling bookshelves running the length of one wall, complete with a built-in desk. This involved, among other things, dredging out old issues of Joinery Monthly, American Miter and similar magazines whose covers tempt you with “Seven Ways to Avoid Kerfing” and “What I Did for a Panel Saw”.

I did what I always do when Consort is thinking about using the tools which live in our garage, I said supportive things like “Look at you, touching sharp things and making a lot of noise!” and “Don't forget your protective eyewear.” It never occurred to me that Daughter would want to participate because my people don’t willingly interact with lumber. We either hire people to interact with lumber or we do without the object, creating some stand-in out of rain-soaked paperbacks and hardened cheese. But one of the goals for this spring had been to have father and daughter spend real quantity-time together and what says bonding quite like breaking a drill-bit and having to go to the hardware store for the third time in a single morning? And how else is she going to learn the more arcane obscenities?

As it turns out, she’s not just in it for the Daddy-time and forbidden vocabulary. Daughter loves working with Consort on projects. Measure twice, cut once? Yes, please! Daughter complains heartily when she is denied the chance to use the tool which has another name but I call the Finger-Eater. Daughter has taken to asking about whether there is a kids-camp for contractors. Once again, I am reminded that we are different people. Saturday, when I walked into the kitchen, the plans for the bookshelves were all over the table. Daughter was in her chair, up on her knees, stretched across the table, studying the drawings. She said happily, “I just love building things.” I nodded in a way I hoped indicated that I appreciated her passions without understanding them in the slightest.

Then I noticed what she was eating. Painfully slowly, she lifted a bit of moist egg to her mouth. Rapt in examining the blueprints, she let the fork dangle there in space, her lunch making a moist mockery of me. I needed to stop seeing it.

“Don’t you want to…” I began in a plangent tone and gulped heavily before I could finish, “…eat that?”

Distracted, she popped the shivery yellow glob in her mouth. Somewhere in the house, Bob Dylan complained about something. Daughter glanced away from the plans and smiled at me. Her expression was mine, but the brain behind it was totally hers.

.

Sweet Sole Music

Saturday morning. I walked into the living room and announced, “I am going to the gym. I’ll be back in an hour.”

I was not expecting a catered bon-voyage party but I was humbled by the collective vacuum of indifference. The cat continued to dig something out from between her toes. Consort’s eyes never left the business section of the paper. He didn’t even give his customary moo of “I hear that you just said something; I pray to God that you don’t quiz me later”. Daughter, knee-deep in a book involving ancient curses, a cat and a girl her age, was barely breathing let alone acknowledging her non ancient-curse-hurling mother. Even the dog, who hopes that someday we will go steady and I will wear his letter jacket, continued to snore into his own lap. I waited a second and then, shrugging, headed towards the door. I assumed I’d get a call in about forty five minutes asking where I was.

As my hand touched the doorknob, Daughter’s attention drifted off the page and towards me. “You’re going out?” she asked in confusion.

“Yes,” I said patiently, jiggling slightly from foot to foot in my eagerness to walk in place while reading InStyle magazine.

“Where?”

I said with slightly less patience, “Play back the tape in your head of what I just told you.”

She thought a moment, then asked “Are you sure you said it out loud?”

“Yes.”

She thought some more. Consort continued to be enthralled with the Wagnerian opera that is any article about digital rights management. The cat, having finally snagged whatever was between her toes, ate it. The dog snored. Finally, Daughter shrugged.

“I didn’t hear what you…Wait! You’re going to the gym!” she said in relief.

“See how much easier life becomes if you listen to me?” I asked, preparing to give a quick-yet-dreary lecture on listening which, of course, would give her no incentive to ever listen to me again. She shook her head.

“No. I still didn’t hear what you said. I just heard your shoes.”

It’s not bad enough that I took step classes in the 90’s, and that my grapevine up-and-over was the talk of West Hollywood. I had to go and hurt myself in step class in such a way that I will carry the injury for the rest of my life. Yes, readers, I have a step-class war wound. This is like getting a disfiguring scar from a guinea pig named Mr. Squeakers. It doesn’t help that my injured body part (the meniscus) sounds like the kind of flat fish nice restaurants can’t sell until someone re-names it Costa Rican Velvet Salmon.

The good news was that I didn’t tear my knee enough to require surgery. The bad news was that I didn’t tear my knee enough to require surgery. Instead, I was sent into the limbo realm of physical therapy. I spent lots of time with someone named Tammy doing exercises designed to provoke hilarity in the viewer but provide no appreciable improvement to my joint. A few months later the doctor declared me “cured”, which could also be pronounced “we’ve used up your insurance payout”. He told me to get specially-made orthotics to keep this from happening again. I was handed the card of a trained professional whose great calling in life was crafting shoe inserts.

This was not a terribly interesting time in my life and I can’t recall tons of it, but the trip to the podiatrist was memorable in several ways. First, I had to pay five hundred dollars in cash. Cash-only transactions are understandable when you are buying a Vuitton purse on a New York sidewalk but they do give a person pause when dealing with someone who went to medical school and, theoretically, doesn’t have an antagonistic relationship with the authorities. Second, I could read the entire thesaurus and never come up with a better word to describe sticking your feet into buckets of warm plaster than “weird”. Third, I could read the entire thesaurus and never come up with a better word to describe this particular podiatrist than “weird”. Something told me touching feet wasn’t just a job for this guy.

Three weeks later, I was handed blue plastic shoe inserts to be worn every single time I worked out, unless I wanted Tammy-time again. I heeded this warning far more closely than I’ve heeded other equally insistent caveats, at least partially because every time I’d decide to go orthotics-free to the gym, within a week I’d be dragging my leg behind me and doing a kind of tuck-and-roll to get out of the car. It appeared the odd little man’s appliances and I are going through life together and I have no problem with that, just so long as I never had to watch him fondle my instep again.

So of course, about two years ago the designers got together and changed some basic element of the sports-shoe architecture. I don’t know what it is. The shoes feel identical to me but I know something changed because now every time I remove the cheap factory-made insert and put in my orthotics, I turn my shoes into a wind instrument. Every time I step down, I get a small but very distinct “WHHHEEEEeeeee!”.


Step.
(WHHHEEEEeeeee!)

Step.
(WHHHEEEEeeeee!)

Step.
(WHHHEEEEeeeee!)

I’ve had six different brands of shoes and they’ve all had something to say. I keep thinking I’ll learn to tune it out but in the meanwhile I entertain myself at the gym by pacing my steps to the song:

"Hey now…"
(WHHHEEEEeeeee!)

. "…You’re all all-star…"
(WHHHEEEEeeeee!)

. "…Get your game on…"
(WHHHEEEEeeeee!)

. "…Go play!..."

It also works if I can arrange my workout for the same time as the guy with Tourette’s Syndrome. His throat-clearing provides a nice bass note to the soprano lilt of my insoles, and he’s the only other member of the gym who doesn’t start taking great care to not look at my musical feet.


Standing at the door, I stared at Daughter who was clearly enjoying her deductive skills. I shifted my weight and the shoe wheezed in response. Imperceptibly, I shifted my balance to my toes, away from the orchestra. Kissing her good-bye, I flew off through the yard, my tiny syncopated cheerleaders celebrating each step towards health, and away from dignity.

“WHHHEEEEeeeee!” “WHHHEEEEeeeee!” “WHHHEEEEeeeee!”

Modem Operandi.

I blame myself.

I’ve read books on the proper raising of both children and dogs, sometimes finding identical sentences in both. I know that I will get more out of my child and my pet if I “Catch them doing good”; this is to say commend them on doing the right thing rather than constantly harping on the things they get wrong. Praise Daughter to the skies for getting her jeans in the hamper, then casually mention how she might want to use this newly acquired skill on Mount Dirty-Sock looming at the end of her bed. Coo and croon to the dog when he manages to stay in something resembling “Heel” for a minute at a time, but not haranguing him about the other twenty minutes of the walk where he is a handsome speedboat and I am a hapless water-skier. I like to think we are all happier when we’re caught being our best.

It never occurred to me that the computer longed for positive feedback as well.

All these years, I should have stopped typing mid-sentence, gazed down fondly at the zip-drive and purred something like “Look at you, saving! What a wonderful saver you are!” I should have brought the keyboard little scented hand-towels to bathe its abused keys, especially the “A”, “S” and “E” keys, all the while commending its work ethic. And, as it turns out, I should have taken the modem out for lunch, someplace a little fancy, just to say “Thank you” for all its hard work. Just because I don’t completely understand what it does, doesn’t mean I can’t say thanks. But, as with children and pets, electronics -—if not given positive attention -– will arrange to get themselves some negative attention. And they will usually wait for a three-day weekend.

The family got home from dinner on Sunday and I drifted in to the office to check email. I noted the last message had come in three hours before, which seemed a little odd. We’re not Prom King and Queen, mind you, but three hours is an awfully long time to go without some form of incoming missive, even if it’s only an offer for cheap diet pills or a chance to date lonely Russian ladies. It’s a strange world indeed when one is alarmed by a lack of spam. I tried refreshing the email and got the dreaded red X across the "checking Messages" line. We were not connecting. I switched off the computer and switched it back on again but the mailbox still snubbed me.

“E-mail’s down!” I shouted to Consort, who was supervising teeth-brushing.

Over the sound of a small girl explaining why no one else her age had to brush their teeth every single day, he shouted back. “Try re-booting it!”

“I did that!” I said, faintly aggrieved that he’d even ask. Consort knows that switching something off and on and hitting the side of it with my palm are my only electronic repair tools. I thunked the side of the computer. Twice. The email remained mute.

“Check if we can get online!”

I opened the browser and was rewarded with an unlovely message telling me that either the page I wanted was unavailable or we weren’t online. Since I’m guessing that Google hadn’t taken the weekend off, it stood to reason that we were down across the board. I felt the first twinge of panic in my lower spine. I like checking e-mail. It’s peaceful and costs me nothing. If an e-mail leads to unpeaceful thoughts or indicates bad news or is some sort of a bill I simply click down to the next email, which is usually from my mother and includes a picture of a cat wearing a tam. Consort came in the office and turned the computer on and off again a few times. He prodded at various intimate bits of the computer. He pointed to a light which was yellow.

“See that light? Means the network is down,” he pronounced.

I squinted at the light, trying to remember if I had ever looked at it before in my life. “Isn’t it always yellow?” I finally asked.

“Yeah, but it shouldn't be blinking.”

Sometimes, I think he just makes things up to ensure his job security.

I went off to play with Daughter, Galicia and the dog while Consort settled in with a glass of wine and a speaker-phone for the inevitable call to Tech Support. I asked him to give India my regards. An hour later, our daughter and our foster-kitten were in their beds, the dog was exhausted from entertaining them both, and I sidled in to the office to hear what Consort had learned from Rajit. The wine-glass was drained. Consort was huddled under the desk poking at wires. He stuck his head out.

“Apparently the connection is fine to the pole. Neither laptop is working in here so the problem comes from inside the house." He was using the same voice you'd use to tell the babysitter the maniac’s call was coming from the kid’s room. Then he added, “The modem might need replacing.”

We both stared at the modem, which appeared to be working. Only now I understood this was only a simulacrum of a working modem, its blinking yellow light a mockery of the robust digital health we had all taken for granted.

“Um. How long will it take to replace?” I asked hopefully, irrationally convinced that a DSL modem might be one of those items Consort insists on stocking in multiples, like Murphy’s Oil soap and capers.

He blew out a contemplative breath, the same breath my mechanic blows out before he explains that the car needs a liver transplant. “If it’s the modem, and we won’t know for another day or so, I’ll have to order a new one.”

A silence permeated the office. I said slowly, “So, for the foreseeable future, we are going to live like it’s…1995?”

“Yep.”

I found the bottle of wine and got another glass. I poured each of us a restorative volume of something red and contemplated my fate. Consort was only mildly inconvenienced. He had a Blackberry and the computer at work. I, however, was Helen Keller. I needed to let people know I’d be unreachable by email for the unforeseeable future. I started with my mother because we’re one of those modern families who discuss the news of the world through email. “News of the world”, of course, mostly means “Pictures of cats in tams”, but on the off chance the most recent hatted-cat photo also included a message along the lines of “...By the way, I’m typing this from the ground, having fallen down two days ago...”, it behooved me to let her know I was off-line.

To my book editor, I left an email message through my phone. The phone is very old, as far as cell-phones go, and was never purchased with an eye towards texting. The keys are small and ungainly and the only way to put in punctuation tends to make me call voice-mail. I was planning to write:

Dear Brenda,
My computer’s modem is broken. Until such time as it is either fixed or replaced, you can reach me at this email. Barring that, you can always reach me on the phone.

Seventeen attempts later -- three of which accidentally led to me checking my voice mail -- I decided I was okay with this:

B Puter daed finD me hereor call/ q

This left me with the rest of the world. Did I need to tell anyone else I wasn’t getting email? I doubted the Russian mail-order brides or Viagra-vendors would be too concerned but I had a bunch of people who had kindly offered to help with the book. Some were reading it to give me constructive criticism. Some were reading it to help move the almighty blurb process forward. Both were necessary and much appreciated. If anyone wrote to me with either comments or a suggestion about who they might know who could blurb, I wanted to answer them in respectable haste. Otherwise, I’d look ungrateful. If the comments they gave were anything but “WHAT A MARVELOUS BOOK! DON’T CHANGE A THING!”, any silence on my side might be construed as pouting. While I have been known to pout, I wanted to make damn sure I’m not getting tarred with the pouting brush when I’m just a victim of a temperamental modem. I called one of the readers:

(Ring. Ring. Sounds of humans at play in the background.)

READER: Hello?


QUINN: Hi, it’s Quinn. Am I interrupting something?


READER: No, we're all hanging out in the back yard enjoying the long weekend. What’s up?


QUINN: I just wanted you to know that my modem is down for at least a couple of days. So I can’t get email.

READER: Oh. Okay.


(Silence, as we both listened to children flinging water balloons at each other.)


QUINN: You know, in case you had read the book or anything. Had some notes. Didn’t want you think I was pout...


READER: It’s right next to my bed. This last week was a real bitch, but I’ll start it tonight..


QUINN: No, no. Don’t worry. Whenever.


(Silence.)


QUINN: It’s just that the modem isn’t blinking. Or is, or something. Really, no rush on those notes.


READER: Sure. Hey, why don’t I get the manuscript right now, start skimming through it while the coals heat up.


QUINN: No, please. It’s Memorial Day, for God’s sake.


(Silence.)


QUINN: My modem really is broken.


(SILENCE.)


READER: I know.


His goodbye to me had a sympathetic tone I didn’t like.


Consort called me from the office. The light which had been blinking was now not blinking. Whatever the problem, it had fixed itself for the time being. Consort clicked the Inbox and dozens of emails flew in, nearly all of them promising me relief from my problem with erectile dysfunction. Arrowhead water wanted to be paid. There were some petitions to sign. There were no notes or offers of blurbs. I noticed one email which required my immediate attention. Alertly, I opened it and was rewarded with a story of a King Charles Cavalier spaniel that is fostering three baby bunnies in England.

I’m finally back in the real world.

Guest Quarters.

I have to do rewrites on the book. I have to try to educate my daughter or, as we all call it around here, “Prove my idiocy daily”. I still sell a Hiphugger or two. I really should get to the gym. So, of course, I decided to take in a house-guest with indifferent personal habits and a hearty appetite.

Two weeks ago, I was at the cat-rescue place where I volunteer. The head of the group, Kate, was there, administering worming medication to all sorts of adorable tiny kittens before handing them back to their mothers. We chatted as she squirted. With her chin, she motioned to the cage we reserve for new cats whose health is unknown to us.

“Look what I found this morning. Someone left her outside in a box.”

I looked in the cage. Something stared back at me. I thought and said, “She’s…”

Now, a side note. I once read an article about some photographer who has made, it seemed, a good living for his entire career of almost three decades photographing cats. The reporter asked him whether in all that time, he had ever seen an ugly kitten. In the article, he was quoted as pausing meaningfully and then saying in weighted tones “Just once.”

I looked at this kitten. She was orange, where there was fur. Mostly, she was pinkish skin. She had a large nose with a scab on it, small beady eyes, a long hairless tail and a body which shape suggested less being born than being extruded from the sausage attachment on a Mixmaster. I started again, “She’s…are you sure she isn’t a rat?”

“No, it’s a kitten. She’s just pretty undernourished. I’m amazed she made it through the night in that box. I’m going to try to find someone to take her home, feed her on demand and pay some attention to her.”

I know this woman well; nowhere in there had she said, or even intimated, “Quinn, I now hand the baton of responsibility to you. And the baton of responsibility resembles a rat wearing an orange wig.”

I stared at her some more. I noted her eyes were slightly crossed: nice touch. I asked fearfully, “Not bottle-fed, right?”. Because after last spring, I’m not wiping butts and waiting for Death’s scythe, but Kate said, “No, she’s eating on her own. Not nearly enough, but she’s eating.” As if on cue, the cat-rat opened her mouth and delivered a silent mew; she had three teeth, all of which were crooked. I heard myself say, “I’ll keep her until she’s…”

I thought, what? Attractive? Hairy? Strong enough to star in a remake of Willard?

“…ready for adoption.” I finished. Because somewhere out there, someone is saying to their friends “What I really want is a house-pet who makes people flinch.” Kate gave her worming medication and a small amount of IV fluid to strengthen her enough to, as it turned out, scream for the entire trip home. Gazing at her face at stop lights, I decided that the vigor she was showing her temper tantrum boded well for her living through to an adoptable age. She needed a pretty name, I decided, for incentive if nothing else. I free-associated; what hair she had was orange….oranges…Navel? No. Oranges remind me of Spain…Madrid? Navarre? Valencia? Why do I know all this? Oh, right; crossword puzzles. Why doesn’t Daughter’s education want my crossword puzzle facts? Would it kill them to ask her what you call an eagle’s nest or a sewing kit?

I made a left turn, causing the cat-carrier to jostle, increasing her irritation, which helped me focus.

Galicia…Asturia…The Canary Islands…wait, back up. Galicia. That’s not bad.

I stuck my fingers in the cage and waggled them at her. I crooned “Galicia, pretty girl. You like that? You like the name Galicia?”

Her screaming stopped; I felt her little head rubbing against my fingers, which seemed like an auspicious omen. I peeked in. At some point in the previous few minutes, she had rid herself of what appeared to be three of four days’ worth of bowel movements. Purring in delight at being petted, she curled up in her filth and took a brief nap for the rest of the trip home. I now understood why Kate had sent me home with kitten shampoo.

The next few days were a blur of feeding and screaming and surprisingly copious excretions; this is the kitten we should clone and hand to every teenage girl who romanticizes having a baby. The fact that she threw fits when she couldn’t see me only added to the general noise level. She liked Consort, she enjoyed Daughter, but all six of her brain cells had decided I was Mommy, which when you look like a rat in a cheap orange wig is faint praise indeed. I carried Galicia around nearly constantly, when I wasn’t putting her in the litter box and encouraging her to give it a go, which annoyed her and made her holler. She had a free-spirited notion that if she could see the litter box from where she was standing, no matter how far away, she was in the litter box. When I wasn’t holding her, I was holding a bottle of bleach. Daughter alternated between “Awww…” and “Ew.”

And where were the pets during all of this? Well, if she was the new infant in the house, they were the older siblings. Lulabelle, the cat, has taken the attitude of “That thing which is very ratlike and is shouting is not in my house. Because if it were in my house, I would have to deal with it, which would probably mean eating it, and I think you would get irrationally emotional about it. So, I’m going to ignore on a world-class level. If I have the misfortune to see her, I will indicate my displeasure by gurgling in rage for a few minutes and then vomiting. You might want to just put the bottle of bleach on some kind of tool-belt around your waist.” The dog, on the other hand, was ecstatic from the first moment he saw her in the cat carrier while I set up her first de-fouling bath. Some combination of a cat that, unlike his regular one, didn’t seem to want to slap him and the way she smelled like partially-digested cat food was the culmination of a dream for him. Every time I would take her someplace contained for her daily “Stagger around and shout” time, the dog would insist on joining us and then proceed to play tag with her. He’s not a large dog, but he was large enough so that she got knocked over every single time they played, and he would somehow end up sitting on her, grinning in joy. I would separate them, banishing him from the room but they would shout and cry for each other from the other sides of the door. Lulabelle is her contemptuous older sister, and the dog is her affectionately abusive older brother. And I’m the mother shouting “Oh, would you three just go watch television or something!”

Somehow, along the way, her hair grew in. The scab fell off her nose, which stayed the same size, while her face and her eyes grew. She became cute. Consort, who would take her out of the cage in the evening for a friendly game of “AUGH! BITE YOUR FINGER!”, said things like “She’s really sweet. She can stay, if you want.” This was an incredibly kind statement, considering that I was dosing him with Benadryl twice a day just so he didn’t fall down in an anaphylactic seizure. I assured him that no, I was enjoying her very much but that didn’t mean I needed to add another litter box permanently to the household. Daughter enjoyed her thoroughly, but also had enough experience with foster-kittens that she wasn’t putting too much of her emotional life into this one fuzzy little body.

This weekend, we’ll take her into the rescue, where she will stay until Sunday night, so that people looking for a kitten can meet her. Then, we’ll bring her home during the week. I imagine someone will put in an application for my loud little friend and the home-check will be done within days. We’ll have another week with her, but probably not another two weeks. She’ll go to be someone’s cat, and she’ll have another name, and with any luck another cat-worshipping dog. We’ll have memories of a kitten I would vote the Most Improved Player.

Galicia

Someone asked if she was actually female, because he had heard that orange cats can only be male. Yes, the orange coloration is on the X chromosone, so if you have a solidly-orange cat, no other color, that's male. But you will notice she's got some white in there as well; she's a Creamsicle.

Taught to the Tune of a Hick'ry Stick.

Home-schooling one’s child is so educational, and in such unexpected places. I always assumed Daughter would learn a few things here and there, accrue some new facts and generally become the sort of person her mother could rely on to remember trivial details while doing a crossword puzzle and getting stuck on the four-letter word for trickster god of Norse mythology.

(Loki.)

And, to her credit, Daughter is continuing to become that person. She is also learning other facts, and nearly all of them have to do with Who My Mother Really Is. This alarms me. For example, after a week at home, she knew that “Please give me some quiet time, I’m working on the book” really means “I want to read brain-damaging gossip websites while eating foods from my hidden cache of snacks”. Two weeks into home-schooling she had determined the location of the hidden snacks, but more painful than my rapidly-diminishing pile of Gummy Bears is the fact that Daughter now knows I am an idiot. We haven’t left the grade-school curriculum yet and she already views me as the one who gets the scissors with the rounded edges.

I was never anyone’s idea of a great student. Owing to an adorably misguided notion I had a a youth -- specifically that most of the work I was assigned was boring and repetitive -- I was convinced I should make a political statement by throwing pencils at the heads of my classmates. By the time I was attending an academically-rigorous prep school where the work stopped being boring and repetitive I was well beyond the mental state necessary to reevaluate my view of school as being anything but a holding pen. Ergo, like many people out there – perhaps some even reading this blog right now—what I like, I know pretty well; what I don’t like, I usually hire someone to do for me. Or palm off on Consort. This system has worked remarkably well.

Until the beginning of this year, when I was horrified to find out that trains still leave stations in word problems.

Daughter, working on an online math program, called me for help. Ambling in, I was confronted with a word problem. It seemed there were two trains. We, the problem-solver, were taking a train from Woods Hollow into Lake Field and, having arrived, getting on another train for Port Side but, like so many things in life, it wasn’t that easy. One train took an hour to get to the station and arrived every two hours. The other took two hours to arrive and left every three hours. All we were given to work with was their first departure of the day, from which we could extrapolate out this insanely-complex schedule. Our job, whether we chose to accept it or not, was to determine the best departure time so as to spend the least amount of time in Lake Field waiting for our connection, and to give the length of time we would spend in Lake Field. The problem added in passing that the trains were going at a constant rate of speed, as if this would somehow make this hellish bouillabaisse more digestible.

Daughter looked at me expectantly. I felt the blood rush to my feet, far away from the head which was somehow going to be conscripted to address this hideous challenge. This wasn’t algebra. I couldn’t inwardly start my rant about no one needs such skills in the real world. In fact, this was the kind of irritating and relevant task I was asked to do all the time, and I never do well. Consort learned a long time ago not to let me arrange airport connections because I generally end up with six minutes between flights, or two days. To properly appreciate my travel-planning skills, you'd need to pack either rocket-propelled shoes or a cot. Staring at the screen, I stalled.

“Have you...” I breathed in, trying to think of something productive. “Made a chart?”

Oh, that’s good. Either the chart will illuminate the Stygian depths of this puzzle or simply drawing it will waste enough time until Consort returns home.

Daughter sighed. I frequently suggested charts when confronted with math or diagramming sentences.

“I can just wait until Daddy gets home, if you want,” she said, patting my hand. And with that, with the unspoken understanding that Mommy is the kid who eats paste, I was mortified and motivated into helping her solve this word problem. I pulled up a chair and a clean sheet of paper. I stared at the screen and carefully wrote down every single number on that stupid screen. I then stared down at them on the page.

“Well,” I said, and stopped. We both stared at the page. Daughter’s hand came out and patted mine again, softly. Sympathetically. I started again.

“Well,” I said, slightly less definitively and gazed at my pencil. I noticed the lead wasn’t completely pointed and yelped happily, “Ooh, this needs sharpening!”

I dashed off to find a pencil-sharpener, ignoring the one inches from the chair. When I returned several minutes later, Daughter was staring at the screen again. She turned to me and said, “I think I take the 1:15 train.”

I gaped, not the least of which because when I had run away--I mean, gone off to improve my work tools—there hadn’t been a 1:15 train. I looked at the page; she had roughed out the schedule. Reading it, it appeared that yes, the 1:15 from Woods Hollow would leave us with no more than about a half-hour to kill in the Lake Field train station. True, we wouldn’t get to see much of the city of Lake Field, but that was a problem to solve another time. She typed in the answer and answer lit up green, indicating it was right. It seemed a little anticlimactic for a problem of such complexity. Had I done this by myself, I would have expected Gummy Bears shooting from the CD-ROM drive directly into my mouth. The screen went dark for a moment then reactivated, indicating she was entering a new level of complexity.

Daughter said joyfully “Geometry! YEAH!”

My mouth went dry. In that moment, I couldn’t have told you if it was from fear or having eaten paste.

How to win friends and influence people.

According to my mother, who would know such things, I started talking when I was nine months old. I’ll save you the math; this means I have been talking for a very, very long time. If you do something for a very long time, aren’t you supposed to get good at it? At least once a week, I end up making such an ass out of myself conversationally that the only thing I can hope is that the listener, upon leaving my side and shaking their head in dismay at my total lack of conversational graces tripped and fell, doing no great harm but causing them to forget the previous three minutes of their life. If this were so, I promise I wouldn’t ask for anything for my birthday or Christmas.

About two weeks ago, Daughter and I went to cheer on friends who were competing in gymnastics. One of the girls competing at an advanced level caught my attention by being very good and considerably younger than the other girls. Upon closer scrutiny, I realized she wasn’t as young as I thought she was, but was a dwarf. Whatever challenges this put in her way, she was an exceptional athlete, strong and airborne and cleanly defined in all of her movements. All of us watching applauded a little louder as she did the ending salute to the judges.

Last week, I took Daughter to her art class and as I was walking out, I saw a mother standing outside, watching her younger daughter play. We had talked before, but we had never discussed the fact that she is a dwarf, as is one of her children, at least partially because I suspect she already knows. For reasons known only to the god of chaos who rules my brain, I felt compelled to walk over and tell her about the gymnast I had seen compete. About two sentences in to my sports analysis, something which I like to think is the teeny, weeny, socially-adroit quadrant of my brain spoke up.

“Quinn,” it said calmly, “just because she is a dwarf doesn’t mean she has any interest in other people who are dwarves. That’s like assuming you would want to hear about other people with mostly-green eyes. Or, perhaps more accurately, people who start stupid and slightly offensive conversations. And, by the way, I think calling them a dwarf is rude.”

The other 99.98% of my brain screamed in terror, “Augh! You’re right! Then what is the less-offensive term?”

The other part sneered, “I’m sure I have no idea. I think how one handles it is not to bring it up at all. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to try to burrow my way out of your head through your ear and live in a less-humiliating brain.”

The mother had patiently waited through my blatherings, and then we reached silence. Anyone with sense would have slithered away, claiming a colonoscopy appointment. But not me, because I cannot leave a conversation when the last words made me look like an idiot; I have to cleanse the palate of the listener with something banal. Luckily, I had the dog with me, who was being petted by her daughter.

“Oh, there you are!” I bent down and said to the dog, as if he had not been leashed to me, but off on a bicycling tour of the Pyrenees. He thumped his tail, and then looked over my shoulder and barked fiercely, a sound I have only heard once before. I turned and saw a woman standing in the middle of the sidewalk, mumbling to herself. Turning back, I comforted the dog and said to the other woman, “She must be mentally ill. He gets upset by the mentally ill.” He barked again, and I turned to see her walking towards us, no longer talking to herself but dragging one leg behind her. I said cheerily, “Or she’s just disabled. We haven’t had him that long; maybe he finds the disabled upsetting as well.”

We all bathed in the uncomfortable silence, broken only by the sound of her foot sliding along the ground, her soft mumbling and the dog growling threateningly. The woman with whom I was speaking glanced around for someone else to break up this folie a deux.

My socially-adroit brain cells, all six of them, sighed and said, “That was your dignity-saving move? Can’t we just leave and hide under the hedge until the class ends?”

My brain, eager to save the day, swung into action and before I could throw myself on the lawn and hope to muffle the sound, I blurted out, “It could be worse, I guess. I had a dog I adopted when he was already an adult and he was always aggressive towards African-Americans. At least there are fewer mentally-ill or disabled people than African-American people.”

We stared at one another in horror. My brain shouted “Wait! I can make her forget all about this! Let’s tell her about the time you accidentally walked into that store which sold accessories for men who liked to dress as babies and be diapered! Tell her about the size 50 ruffled rubber diaper covers! Tell her they were bigger than she was!”

I glanced over into the parking lot and spied a person. Waving frantically, I shouted “Yes, here I am! I’ll be right there!” The gardener, removing his leaf-blower from his truck, waved at me tentatively. I turned and said “I am so sorry, I have got to go.” Both of these were the truth, as I am sure was her response of “Oh, it’s okay. Really. Don’t rush back.”

Training Day.

(Do what you will with this information, but if you don't read the blog right before this one, this blog will make very little sense.)

We arrived on the first day and I was heartened to see that the other dogs weren’t reading Isabel Allende’s latest novel or in any way indicating their insane superiority to my furry beast. In fact, all the dogs seemed a little over-excited and not a single owner was demonstrating control over their dog. There were ten dogs in the class and within minutes I had learned all of their names because we had all used them, in the sibilant whispers of a convention of librarians:

“Buster, down!”

“Andrew, quit it.”

“Lavinia, leave that chair alone. You’re not even male...”

The teacher entered and the dogs instantly fell into some canine version of shame. Instinctively, they knew she was a) The teacher and b) British. Without ever having seen Mary Poppins, all dogs understand that certain British women are to be adored, feared and obeyed. In bell-like tones, we were told what would be expected of our dogs during the Canine Good Citizenship Test. She then told us what was expected of us in the upcoming weeks; bribes. Lots and lots of bribes.

I reached into my purse, hoping this was her forthright way of letting us know that a subtly-placed twenty in her palm would make her forget all about looking for a decent loose-leash walk, but I was looking to bribe the wrong life-form. In the beginning, we were told, every single thing the dog would do would be rewarded with dog treats. Later, as they understood what was being demanded of them, we would dial back on the treats and hope that some combination of habit and pack-mentality would keep them from shouting at squirrels. But for now, she said, shaking a drum of what looked like large scabs, we needed to come up and get a big handful of incentive.

Of course, my dog the Dauphin can’t eat the cheap treats, because it makes him itchy. I raced to the car and huzzah! There was a bag of his favorite dog treats in the trunk!

[I’m not that organized. They slipped out of the bag when I last went to the pet store. They had been drifting aimlessly in there for weeks. But every time I would remember to grab them, I would open the trunk and they would be hiding behind something and I would think “Oh, I must have taken them in.” Days later, I would open the trunk someplace far from home and there would be the bag of treats, smirking at me.]

[And it did occur to me that if I had put them in the passenger seat, I might have remembered to take them in. But it only occurred to me about ninety seconds ago. And if I had thought of it then, I wouldn’t have had them when I needed them, and he would have eaten cheap treats, and then he would have scratched, and then I wouldn’t have slept, so I think we’re all pretty happy I’m as vague as I am.]

I brought the bag back in, ripping it open as I entered the training room. As I have mentioned before, my nose isn’t the model of utility, but I’m guessing from the canine heads snapping around and gazing at the bag and the Schnauzer who tried to become a dangling earring for me that they smelled pretty powerful. I looked down at the bag and found I had brought in dried salmon strips. I looked down at my dog; he was on his hind legs, his eyes locked on mine, his front paws in something unnervingly close to prayer. It seemed if I was looking for a motivational tool, I had a hit.

The process of teaching “Heel” was fairly simple. Get the dog into the position you want, sing out “Heel!” and take off at a slightly slower than usual clip. Right in front of their nose, you have a handful of treats, which keeps them exactly where you want them. If they move out of position, the lovely food bits go away until you place the dog back into position and head off again. You walk with them for no more than a minute or two at a time to start. I placed two strips in my hand, assuming that would hold us for the duration. Thirty-eight seconds later, having inhaled the fishy splendor, my dog lunged off to finally settle some long-running feud with an Afghan he had never met before. On the next walk, I tried four strips, which lasted thirty-four seconds; he might not be learning “Heel” but he was certainly learning “Bolt your food”.

At this rate, he was going to go through two insanely-expensive bag of treats each class, which would be financially taxing. Besides, that much rich fish in a night was going to lead to Quinn finding out if dogs can safely take Pepto-Bismol. Covertly, I started shredding the salmon down into small bits. Another walk, another inhalation; I shredded into even smaller bits. By the fifth attempt at heel, he was starting to get the idea and I had discovered I could, using only two halfway-manicured thumbnails, break down dried fish to the atomic level. The dog didn’t care, as long as the stink kept coming.

However, I began to notice something. Fish strips can be taken neatly and politely by even the most enthusiastic dog. Fish particles can only be eaten by sticking your tongue into the palm and licking out all those delectable morsels. My hands were now covered in a bumpy paste of dried salmon and dog saliva which dried quickly, leaving a paste not until stucco. Each practice would add a little more to my hand; I now appeared to have been potting plants before class. Although, had I been potting plants, I would have smelled, at worst, pleasingly of the earth. My smell was beginning to count as a distraction to the other dogs.

Finally, we were done. I breathed a sigh of relief; whatever we did next, we still had half a bag of salmony goodness and it couldn’t be any worse than the mitten of salmon I had created. The teacher spoke.

“Now, we’re going to work on meeting a stranger without reacting. Put your dog in a sit, and wait. Our volunteers will come around, ask to pet your dog, pet the dog, and then shake your hand.”

Aghast, I stared down at my hand. A few flakes of salmon fell off on the floor. I tried rubbing my hand on my jeans, but it only seemed to annoy the salmon particules and reawaken the fragrance. Several dogs around me grew distracted. Grimly, I put the dog into sit and awaited my Gentleman Caller. He walked up, asked to pet the dog, and then petted the dog. The dog, stupefied on salmon, ignored the man brilliantly. He then went to shake my hand. I put it out while indicating with my eyes that I didn’t actually know this hand, we just carpooled. Upon sight of my hand, he first daintily tried shaking only the fingertips. Having found dried fish there as well, he manfully squared his shoulders and shook my hand. He then asked the teacher for a bathroom break. Four volunteers and four bathroom breaks later, the class mercifully ended. The teacher sent us home with homework. I dashed for the door, eager to drive home with all four windows open and a car-deodorizer hanging from my neck but I heard her final words.

“Remember; keep using food motivation during practice this week. If what you used worked, keep using it.”

Every day for a week, I would grab the salmon-bag from the odor-proof box in which I hid it and, holding it at arms’ length, I would say bleakly, “We meet again”. The dog would prance and the salmon would smirk.

Two weeks have passed. I now bring dried chicken strips, which are slightly less effective motivation but are considerably less pungent. I’m not as popular with the other dogs, but at least the other owners don’t vote to put me next to the open window and the neighborhood colony of feral cats has stopped trying to mug me.

We're all learning.

With Highest Praise.

In the last two weeks I have been described as looking: 1) Tired, 2) Exhausted, 3) Cranky, 4) Weary, 5) Tired again and – worryingly – 6) Better than I had been looking. And these comments are from women who appear to like me and are saying this to my face. The mind reels as to what is being said behind my back. There is no response to someone telling you that you appear to have walked across the San Fernando Valley pulling a cart laden with your worldly goods. No response, that is, unless you’re me. If you are me, you can say glumly, “Could be worse. At least right now I don’t smell like salmon.”

This began, as so many smelly things in life do, in good intentions. Our dog, as I have noted, is relentlessly congenial, with a genuine affection for all living beings and a overwhelming need to be useful. There is a Four Seasons Hotel somewhere that would love to hire him as a concierge, but until he learns how to really work a phone we’ll have to go with his back-up career: therapy dog.

He would be delighted to be taken to a hospital on a regular basis and allowed to visit sick people. There is only one thing standing between him and him lying on a hospital bed making doe-eyes at the post-operative: the Canine Good Citizenship test. For those of you who have never considered such things, the CGC is a test designed by the American Kennel Club to encourage dog-owners to work towards creating dogs that remain relaxed, alert and social in every environment. Upon passing the test, I could contact one of the groups which arrange for dogs to visit hospitals.

Two months ago, I found a website which listed the requirements he (and I) would have to learn:


Test 1: Accepting a friendly stranger

Well, no problems there, I thought. A dog which tries to worm his way under my legs to visit the table of firefighters next to me on the restaurant patio probably isn’t too anxious about unknown people. I could tell you about some friends from my single years who would have had the same impulse toward a table packed with firefighters, but I won’t.

Test 2: Sitting politely for petting.

Again, cake. We’ll just bring that natural enthusiasm and yearning to do everyone’s hair down a notch and we’ll be golden.

Test 3: Appearance and grooming.

He’s being judged on whether he’s attractive? Is this a part of the test specific to Los Angeles? Upon further reading, I discover it only means the dog should be somewhere near normal weight, clean and alert. Oddly enough, these have become my standards for myself as well.

Test 4: Out for a walk (Loose lead). This test demonstrates that the handler is in control of the dog. The dog may be on either side of the handler. The dog's position should leave no doubt that the dog is attentive to the handler and is responding to the handler's movements and changes of direction.

Oh, there it is. I knew this was going too easily. Marvelous dog. Simply wonderful beast. Couldn’t ask for a better companion. But leash manners? Not in any traditional definition. In fact, his behavior on a leash is more like someone who, upon having tossed the grenade, is racing frantically to get behind something solid before it goes off. A dog whose pulling can re-inflame my old rotator-cuff injury cannot be said to be under my control.

Test 5: Walking through a crowd.

Unless any of them are wearing suits made of ham, fine.

Test 6: Sit and down on command and staying in place.

Easy, unless the ham-suit guy walks by and makes a display of himself.

Test 7: Coming when called.

Please. I’m his BFF. Try to make him not come to me when I call him. I could even call him bad words and as long as I said it while waggling my hands, he’d come flying. I've never said it’s a healthy relationship.

Test 8: Reaction to another dog.

That should be easy. You want a reaction? Oh, sister, my dog will give you all the reactions you...

...This test demonstrates that the dog can behave politely around other dogs. Two handlers and their dogs approach each other from a distance of about 20 feet, stop, shake hands and exchange pleasantries, and continue on for about 10 feet. The dogs should show no more than casual interest in each other. Neither dog should go to the other dog or its handler.

Oh. That kind of reaction; the “lack-of-a-reaction” reaction. Well isn’t that a barking and whining dog of a different color. So far, my most pressing question had been whether it was more embarrassing when he would trash-talk the Doberman who was twice his size and could use him as a loofah or when he’d get all butch with a Maltese, causing the smaller dog to urinate in fear. It was possible we had some work to do in this area.

Test 9: Reaction to distraction.
This test demonstrates that the dog is confident at all times when faced with common distracting situations. The evaluator will select and present two distractions. Examples of distractions include dropping a chair, rolling a crate dolly past the dog, having a jogger run in front of the dog, or dropping a crutch or cane. The dog may express natural interest and curiosity and/or may appear slightly startled but should not panic, try to run away, show aggressiveness, or bark.

As luck would have it, if you live in our house, you have some sense of what your dog does when a chair is dropped, or a child does a handspring across the couch and lands right in front of the dog’s nose, or a cat darts across the house for the express purpose of slapping said dog. To be a dog and live in our house is to quickly lose your fear of the new and the loud, but gain a fear of mammals with retractable claws.

Test 10: Supervised separation.

The dog was going to be held by a stranger while I left the room for three minutes. He could move around a bit, but was not allowed to moan or whine or start plucking out his eyebrows or in any way indicate he lacked faith in my ability to come back. A dog that is happiest inhaling the air I exhale had to watch me leave a room and find his inner Zen master.

I read further. To get the Canine Good Citizen certificate, he had to pass all ten tests. In any other world, even in this age of grade inflation, 90% would have been a perfectly acceptable score. In this class, it meant failure. The training would be rigorous, and both the dog and I are lazy. On the other hand, even if he did fail, he'd still be a better-mannered dog than he had been before. And I'm all about my offspring, biped and quadriped, being a fine example of the breed.

I signed up for class.

(Next; we go to class. And the salmon I mentioned before finally arrives.)

Shouting Across the Divide.

Daughter’s dance studio has an adjacent parking lot. For several hours a day, this lot is an embarrassment of riches, space-wise. If one wasn’t raised right, one might even park across a few parking places. I am never there during these glorious, spacious hours. I am there when the children’s dance classes actually occur, when you’d no sooner find a parking space with your name on it than a square-cut diamond with your name on it.

For five minutes at the top of every hour there is a frantic movement of women hustling their leotarded girls out of classes and into cars, using their stained Starbucks napkins as semaphore flags to indicate that they will be more than happy to surrender their parking space as soon as they find their sunglasses, adjust their seat belt and pop in a DVD for the kids. Otherwise, we all drive up to the front door, eject a child, and wander off into the neighborhood to trawl for a parking space. Sometimes after fifty futile minutes spent driving around the block we just drive back to the front entrance and pick the kid up. I don’t understand why more mothers aren't diagnosed with vehicular bedsores.

I was in the line to drop Daughter off. I glanced in the mirror. Her hand was sneaking up towards her bun.

“Don’t interfere with your hair, honey.”

The hand slid back down again.

“Now,” I said, sliding deftly into a drop-off spot only four centimeters longer than a chinchilla, “do you have your dance bag?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“And everything is in it?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“YES.”

“All right. All right. I’ll meet you inside, unless...“

But she had already flung herself from the car, found a friend and was heading up the steps chatting about something. I opened the passenger window. Her dance bag looked suspiciously flat and her fingers had inserted themselves into her bun and removed at least two hairpins.

“UNLESS,” I trumpeted after her. “I CAN’T FIND A PARKING SPACE. IF I’M NOT OUTSIDE CLASS, COME DOWN AND LOOK FOR ME…”

She was long gone through the door, giving no indication of hearing anything I'd said.

A mere twenty minutes later I was the proud possessor of a parking space. I turned to grab my purse from the back seat and saw her ballet shoes, her tap dance shoes, her ballet skirt, one leg-warmer, her water bottle and snack. This answered the question of why the bag looked so empty but raised the more puzzling question: since nearly everything she needed was here, what was in the bag?

[As it turned out, a single leg warmer, a Nancy Drew mystery, and the dog’s chew toy.]

As I walked up to school, another car pulled up and expelled two children who raced inside. The mother opened the window and hollered, “MAKE SURE YOUR SISTER GETS INTO CLASS. YOU HAVE TO SIGN HER IN. YOU HEAR ME…?” Maybe she heard her mother, maybe she didn’t. The girls raced past me and skipped up the stairs two at a time. I watched another mother drive up, and then another. In each case, there was one last urgent thing the mother needed to tell her charges, shouted over the noise of downtown traffic and the haze of pre-adolescence:

REMEMBER, YOUR FATHER WILL BE HERE IN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES.

TELL YOUR TEACHER YOU NEED NEW REEDS.

POINT YOUR TOES AND TRY NOT TO DO THAT THING WITH YOUR NECK.

LOVE YOU. PLEASE DON’T TAKE OUR YOUR RETAINER.

I don’t know a single mother who, upon the sight of their child’s back, doesn’t suddenly have one more piece of advice, or chore, or warning. I can’t speak for other parents, but I even do it in the house. If Daughter is heading away from me towards her bedroom I automatically carol “…and make your bed!” I fear that I will watch my daughter walk down the aisle as a radiant bride and the sight of her back will force me to challenge her about the state of her bed. She’s just not going to put me into the nice rest-home after that.

As I walked into the school, my phone rang. I saw that it was Veronica. I snapped it open and said without preamble, “...And wasn’t that dreadful.”

“Yeah,” Veronica sighed, “I’ve been depressed all day.”

That morning, we had joined a friend of ours, Emily, for tea. This was at Emily’s request. She needed support. Veronica and I have known Emily and her family for years. Veronica’s son is good friends with Emily’s younger boy. The older boy is a smart, gorgeous lad with charm to burn and real talents. He also inherited the fuzzy end of the lollipop on a few behavior-related issues, which were diagnosed early. Knowing this, and knowing that the hormonal swirl of adolescence wasn’t going to help matters, Emily spent more time and money than I care to think about to give her first-born child all the emotional and intellectual tools he would need. You’re just going to have to take my word for this. Emily did it all, and it seemed to have worked.

When I last saw the boy he was twelve and he seemed no more or less nutty than any other kid his age. His parents knew who he was, he knew who he was, and he knew when and how to ask for help. There was no way I would have predicted sitting with Emily only two years later and hearing about how drastically and ruinously her son had gone off the rails. The hurt he’s ladling out to his family was etched on Emily’s face. She spent a decade trying to give him the tools to thrive, and right now he’s running away from her as fast as he can, giving no indication that he heard anything she's ever said to him.

Every time we let our children walk away from us, we’re practicing for the time they do it for keeps. And every time we let them go out into the world, even for a short time, some part of our brain thinks “No! Not yet! There’s no way she knows enough. I know for certain I haven’t taught him enough. Did I teach her the eyeball-gouging trick if someone tries to kidnap her? Did I get him to tolerate citrus fru