Road Trip

For the second time in my life, I embarked on a road trip all by myself to meet Joe on one of his business trips.  He always thinks this is a good idea, and I always agree until I'm right there doing it.  Then I remember I'm a princess who is very used to people helping her with everything, that I have absolutely no sense of direction, and I'm afraid of lots of things.  Unusually so.

The first road trip was to Cleveland and I'm pretty sure it was before we were married (don't tell my dad). I left straight from work on a Friday feeling empowered and all Independent Woman.  I was particularly pleased by myself when I stopped at an exit in Erie to get Burger King and found my way back to the 90. When I hit Cleveland, I was overwhelmed by the highway widening to six lanes and by the bazillion exits.  I panicked, got off at the wrong exit, and ended up at the end of a deserted pier in the dark on my cell phone yelling at Joe that I was going to be murdered and it was all his fault.  Because I'm really good under pressure.

This past weekend I drove down to Pittsburgh.  My mom had the boys (SCORE!) and this time I had my new car complete with OnStar.  I really, really liked using OnStar in this case.  The friendly operator plugged in the address of the hotel in Pittsburgh, and then sent the directions to my car.  A female computer voice (which doesn't really make sense, but there you have it) then assisted me turn-by-turn all the way down to my destination.  I named her Stella.  GET IT?? (hoot! knee slap!)

Driving into Pittsburgh taught me some new lessons.  First of all, I don't like the topography of Pittsburgh.  It's too up-and-down and in-between.  It freaked me out.  It's twisty and turny and wild and all the Pennsylvanians are accustomed to it and fly past you at 100 mph.  If I were a cartoon, I'd have been left swirling like a top on the shoulder of the road.

Second, they don't use salt on icy roads in Pennsylvania.  A plow chugged by me, and I cringed in wait for the spatters of road salt to attack my windows, and...nothing.  No salt.  And Pennsylvania is apparently a land of many bridges.  Each one is begun with a highway sign that reads something like: Bridge May Be Icy, or: Bridge Becomes Icy Before Road.  At one point, I seriously considered posting a sign that said, "Heard Of Salt?"  Sorry, but it's pretty terrifying to come careening down the curvy side of a mountain toward a massive bridge with giant signs that really should say: Watch Out, You Might Die.

Last, business trips aren't cool and glamorous.  Whenever Joe is away for work these days, I feel annoyed and resentful because I'm at home in Buffalo taking care of the boys without him.  Joey, Noah, and I miss our fella fiercely for days while he's off staying in a fancy hotel and eating room service.  (I have a real Thing with room service; I totally think it's the greatest.)

But as I entered the hotel room on Friday, I realized Joe had been here all alone.  He wasn't sight-seeing, he was working.  He was leaving early and coming back late, and there's no Joey giggles or Noah snuggles to greet him.  The room seemed empty and sterile and then, I saw Joe's face as he saw me.

When you really, really love someone...love a person the way marriage is SUPPOSED to be, and not like all these wild modern relationships that last thirty seconds and then people just expect their next do-over or try-again...when you love someone in the Forever way, there is so much in just one facial expression.  When Joe saw me, his face went from looking tired and a bit sad to...relieved.  Awake.  Thrilled.  And for the first time in days, my heart felt like it was beating in sync again.  Like maybe, it had been missing a beat or two every few seconds.  I felt relieved, and I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.  I think I'd been holding it since the last time I'd said goodbye to Joe.

And he said the same thing he says to me every single time we've been apart, for as long as I can remember.  Even in high school.  He said, "Hey there, Beautiful."

As much as I hate math, life is a basic math problem.  It's not searching for and finding one right thing, or one right person.  It's the million things that all add up: the kids, the weather, the DVR, the cooking or the going out, the fights, taking out the garbage, organizing the mail, sharing the inside jokes.  They are part of the equation that includes the horrible days, the crazy days, and...the moments like this one.  Where my Joe looks at me and...I am myself again.

Merry Christmas, Joe.  All we want for Christmas is you.

Memory Lane: Episode 1.2

Want to hear something funny?  When my in-laws call my house, and I see their phone number pop up on the caller ID, I get a little shiver of excitement.  Because years ago, seeing that phone number pop up on the tiny little screen meant Joe was calling me.  It was also a phone number I had memorized within twenty-four hours of meeting Joe when I was fourteen, and I was never brave enough to dial it.  Sometimes, I dialed and hung up.  I wrote a lot of very bad rhyming poetry about the whole traumatic situation.  "I'm sitting here/all alone/I telephoned/he wasn't home."

This period of telephone trepidation lasted about a month before I gave up on Joe altogether (I turned fifteen and decided to grow up).  But the existence--and longevity--of our relationship fascinates me.  Even to people who don't believe in Fate (and I do), there's just too many coincidences and points of return to ignore.  It's like our song says: "After all the stops and starts, we keep coming back to these two hearts..."

So obviously I've spent a great deal of time reflecting on the whole thing, and I think it all comes down to that first month.  That first month of lying on my canopy bed that had no canopy, a phone with a twisted, knotted cord laying before me, NOT RINGING.  A period of time where the name "Joe Bielecki" weighed on me with a magnitude that only a silly fourteen-year-old girl could create within herself, because she wanted so much to fall in love with a boy who only seemed perfect.

He became a part of me.

Of course, what happened seven months later really sealed it.  I had packed Joe's name away in the back of my mind, labeled "Boy I Once Irrationally Loved," and moved forward.  I'd moved forward all the way to a crisp, damp April night when my friends and I decided to meet at a Timon Dance.  Timon is the all-boys' school is South Buffalo, whereas Joe attended Canisius in North Buffalo.  But as Joe had been pushed from my mind AGES ago, I certainly wasn't going to miss out on any opportunity Timon might afford me.  In fact, I kind of had my sights set on a different guy.  A Timon guy.  Timon guys had luster and enthusiasm.  They wore their baseball hats backwards and had big shoulders and were loud and fun.  Their varsity jackets had yellow sleeves.

I was fifteen years old, and I stood in the Bishop Timon High School gymnorium/auditasium.  I wore a midriff-revealing shirt because I was absolutely scandalous (no I wasn't--I was so small it covered my midriff anyway).  I stood in a circle of Mercy girls, with my good friend Alice at my side.  My stomach had butterflies and my heart felt like it was skipping beats because it was Friday night and the gym was dark and somewhere was the boy I liked.

Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  All my friends were around me...who could THAT be?  I felt so sure it had to be that special Timon guy--we'll call him Fernando for identity protection purposes--I felt so sure it was Fernando, having learned that this scandalous girl was waiting on a slow dance with him.

My friends looked over my shoulder as I turned my head slowly and confidently, so sure of who I would see standing there on the incline amidst the plastic auditorium seats.  I was completely surprised that the person there was no Timon guy I'd ever seen before (and somehow every Mercy girl seemed to know all the Timon guys at least by sight).  It was a tallish, blondish, very nervous-looking boy, whose twinkling blue eyes met mine and said, "Are you Mary Pat?"

He was definitely good-looking and it was nice to be approached, but I was so obtuse at age fifteen that my cloudy head was thinking, "Is this Fernando's friend doing the talking for him?  How lame.  Where is Fernando?"  So I said, "Yes, I'm Mary Pat.  Who are you?"

"I'm Joe.  Joe Bielecki."

Maybe you don't know much about the Catholic high school circuit in Western New York, but when a Canisius guy randomly shows up at a Timon dance and remembers you after seven months when you only met one time (even though you might not remember him...or at least what he looked like), well, I'm sorry, but...that's gotta be Fate (and it only took us eight more years to fall in love).

The next afternoon, the phone in our kitchen rang.  It was the only phone in the house with that newfangled caller ID thing, and what number do you suppose I saw there for the very first time?

The number of my future in-laws, of course.   :)

My Joey

I've been spending so much energy on everything Noah lately, and this morning Joey made me laugh really hard, and I realized...he needs a shout-out, too.

Joey is probably the greatest six-year-old kid I've ever met.  He reminds me a lot of one of my favorite people ever, my "baby" cousin John Conor (who is now 22 and lives on his own in Washington DC) because he is sensitive, good-hearted, and loves rules.  He reminds my sister of Hermy the Elf from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who said, "But I don't want to make toys.  I want to be a dentist."  Joey doesn't want to be a dentist, but he's not too concerned about what other people think he SHOULD BE doing.  He wants to be, and I quote, "A scientist with NO GIRLFRIEND."  My dad said that shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.

Joey is also a clone of my some of my more idiosyncratic traits.  Namely: Hypochondria.  Here are just a few the more hilarious examples.

This morning, brushing his teeth: "Mom, every time I hiccup my butt squeezes and it hurts!"

Yesterday at my mom's...

Joey: "Oh my God!! I just sat on poisonous berries! Now there's poison on my pants!"
Judy: "Joey, those berries are plastic.  They're fake.  They fell off of something."
Joey (pressing his hands to his eyes): "Oh, THANK GOD.  WHEW."

As I wipe his mouth when he's a mess...

Joey: "Is there poison on your hands???"
I know he's asking if I just used Clorox, and I would never put Clorox on my child, but I can't help but say, "Yes.  I'm covered in poison and now you are, too."

Driving home from school: "Mom, I was reading my DEAR book, and there was this picture of a man with a rash, and can I GET the rash from touching the book????"

Out in the yard, there was a question of whether my husband touched poison ivy (he didn't).  This one was a little my fault, since I kind of freaked out, too.  But for days, Joey ran away from his dad, crying, "Don't touch me with your poison hand!!!"

Aside from becoming a scientist, specifically, a "potion maker," Joey has other great aspirations.  In no particular order, they include:
1) learning to do "the worm"
2) being on a the Disney Channel show
3) getting his haircut like Wolverine
4) becoming a spy
5) becoming a wizard
6) inventing useful household "contraptions"
7) inventing NOT useful household "contraptions"
8) telling a funny joke
9) learning karate
10) learning to play the guitar
11) saving the world from certain doom
12) owning a robot

Probably Joey's best quality is that he loves me more than anyone.  He thinks I'm beautiful and smart and really funny.  I know he lives in fear of ever letting me down, but he's so great, I live in fear of ever letting him down, too.

And you know what gives me hope?  When Joey was three, he broke things, yelled, refused naps, screamed and/or sang all night long, and did everything I asked him NOT to do.  So while I go crazy with Noah, at least this time I have Joey to keep me sane.

"Don't worry, Mom.  You're doing a great job.  You're the best mom."  And I like it best when he adds, "REALLY."

A Little Sticky

"Noah, do you smell bad?"

"No."

"I think you smell pretty bad.  Should we go potty?"

"I think we should.  And you know, my pants are a little wet."

"They're wet???  Where??"

"Right here."  Noah pats his bottom.  "And a little icky on my right leg."

Grab him by the armpits, run him to the bathroom.

One tiny pellet drops out his pant leg.

Yank off his pants, searching frantically for more.  Place him on the potty.

Still searching for the rest of the poop.

"I'm pretty sure it's there, Mom.  Check the right leg."

Inside the pants is total darkness.  Shaking the pants with fervor.  Can't believe it, but must get a flashlight.

Can't believe it, the only working flashlight in the house is his mini Buzz Lightyear one.

Shining Buzz Lightyear into Noah's pants to find missing poop.

Step out of kitchen, see two more brown pellets.

Start to grab Clorox wipes, when yelling ensues.  "MO-OM! I GOED!"

Run into bathroom, Clorox wipes in hand, knocked over by odor.  Must get different sort of wipes.

Decide to just clean everyone and everything.

"Mommy?  Why are you Mommy Pat?  Why are you not just Mommy?  Why do you have a Pat, too?  Other people don't have a Pat."

"Because that's what my parents named me."

"Oh.  Hmm.  Can you get me new undies?  These ones are a little sticky."

Early Riser

My bedtime until I was about fifteen was ridiculously early--like, 7:30 pm early.  I was always terribly embarrassed both by the early bedtime and by the powerful hold my parents had over me.  How did other kids manage to be so willful and in control at home?  My parents had perfected the art of The Look, and any time one of those was shot my way I was putty in their hands.  So unfair.

I do try to be so scary to my own children.  Totally works on Joey.  Nothing on Noah.

The early bedtime had its advantages, though.  For one thing, it trained me to have the ability to go to bed in any degree of light.  Those July nights when the neighbors were still running free outside my open windows, shrieking and enjoying TWO MORE HOURS OF SUNSHINE, really conditioned me to sleep through anything.

It also led to me being a naturally early riser.  Don't confuse this with being a Morning Person, because they're not the same thing.  My sister Jane is a Morning Person.  This was a major problem when we shared a bedroom and she'd hum and sing and turn on every lamp in the room to add to her horrible cheeriness.  I prefer dim lighting, total silence, and staring.

My brother and sister never suffered through the Insanely Early Bedtime.  I have no idea why this is.  As long as I can remember, they stayed up late watching TV with my parents.  They would all even PLAN their evening in front of me at the dinner table.  "What's on tonight?"  "Oh, that show WE ALL LOVE!" "I can't wait!  It'll be so great!"  Once, they ordered pizza.  That might be the one and only time I busted out of my room and rioted.  (My mom found me peeking around the corner into the family room, waiting to be noticed and invited.)

Because Janie and Pauly never had to had to go to bed early, it did follow that they didn't wake as early as I did, either.  When I was six years old, I was allowed to go downstairs by myself when I woke up.  It was usually just before six o'clock, and my guess is that it was easier on everyone if I was sent as far away from the sleepers as possible.

I still vividly remember my routine.  I'd wake up, and go down the stairs as quietly as possible.  It wasn't because I worried about waking anybody.  I was far more concerned about potential intruders/robbers/kidnappers/murderers lurking below.  At the bottom of the stairs, I'd round the corner into the total darkness of the dining room.  The darkness terrified me, so I'd give myself up.  I flipped on the lights, and called out, "If there's anyone there, please come out now!" because I imagined our burglars would be decent and gracious and would definitely step out before me, hands in the air, saying, "Okay, okay.  You got me, little girl.  I'll go home now."

Then I'd turn up the thermostat, something my dad had taught me to do when he realized the advantage of having someone downstairs at least two hours before him.  I warmed up the house for him (apparently, my smile wasn't enough).

But here is the best part.  I'd end up in the family room.  I'd turn on no lights at all, and the entire house was silent but for the ticking of my father's mantel clock (I've grown so accustomed to this clock I no longer hear it, even when it's noon and it dings twelve times).  I'd seat myself in front of the best thing in my whole house, something most kids my age didn't even have.  The computer.

It was an Apple II C.  It was tan, and unlike many of the school computers I'd used, it didn't have a green screen.  In fact, when I put in my floppy disk to start up my favorite program, the screen went pitch black, and then lit up with white letters:  AppleWorks.

At age six, I'd taught myself how to use our word processor so I could write stories at 6 am.  Yes.  It's true.  I've always been a dork.

At first, my stories were pretty basic, quite short, and my vocabulary was limited because I was six and couldn't spell too many words.  But the more I did this--and it became regular pretty fast--the more words I was able to spell.  Sometimes, I would wait for my dad to come downstairs at 8, and he would go through and help me fix my spelling.  And unlike the children of today, I actually remembered how to spell those words the next time I used them.

By the time I was ten, I was typing over 65 words per minute.  I know because we had a program that told us.  I didn't--and still can't--use the proper keys with the proper fingers, but my mind knew where every letter was and my hands flew over the keyboard, clickety-clacketing the unfolding stories in my imagination.  I was stranded on an island.  I was on a discovered pirate ship.  I was rich.  I was poor.  I was an orphan.  Once, I was even Julia Roberts' niece.

With the entire room dark around me and the screen background inky black, the white words that appeared before me glowed beautifully.  It was complete magic to have all my dreams and wishes float in front of me that way in the silence of my house, without my brother teasing me or my sister and mom talking loudly in the kitchen.  Without my dad turning the volume up on the TV ALL THE WAY (seriously, who does that??).  It was just me, my tapping fingers, and my words.



The other night I was at my mom's for dinner.  Just before my mom set the food on the table, my dad looked up from his perusal of the daily mail and said, "Where's Joey?"

"In here, Grandpa!" he called from the next room.

"What're you doing in there?" my dad asked.

Joey rolled into the doorway on my mom's computer chair and said, "I'm writing a story.  Wanna see?"

I'm In For Good

It's official.  I'm staying in until May.  The time of year has arrived when I would rather do nothing but snuggle under a blanket, drink what I call a Cozy Beverage, and never, ever leave my house.  The temperatures have dropped below freezing, the ground is covered with crunchiness, and the air zaps right through my several layers of warm clothing, through my skin and muscle, and invades my bones.  I expect to feel this way steadily for the next five months.  This is Western New York.

Many people loves this.  It invigorates them.  They get all trilly and tittery about the pretty snowfalls and the rockin' good winter sports.  I like the warm blankets and the Cozy Drinks, but here is what I most definitely do NOT like.

Everywhere you go, someone is ickily sick.  Phlegmy coughs and drippy noses and germs everywhere.  And because it's Western New York, there's no expectation that the weather will improve or that one's cold/flu will improve any time soon, so people go out like this.  They man-handle the carts at Target and they sneeze on the fruit at Wegmans and use the community credit card pens at every kiosk.  

My children get sick.  

Snow gets inside your socks and boots.  Your socks get wet and your feet stay cold.

My bones are cold and rattly.  I know I already mentioned it, but it's just so darn awful I had to say it again.

The sky is either miserably gray (90% of the time) or icy blue with a sunshine that lights up the miserably gray roads.  If the snow is melting, the grass underneath is brown and muddy.  Everything is pretty much the color of the crayons that nobody wants to use.

I can't just run out to my car to grab something.  Since the ground is all sloshy and full of icy puddles, even inside the garage, I have to put shoes on first.  

I can't just toss the kids in the car for a quick jaunt anywhere.  The complexity of preparing them for any outing is exhausting.  Coats, hats, mittens, and the boots--dear God, the boots.  "Push your foot!  PUSH!  PUSH!"  Maybe God intended for me to remember the pain of labor, or to recognize the frustration of super evil labor nurse (I'll never forget you, Barbara--I flipped you off with both fingers and I'd do it again).  

Driving.  The driving is horrible.  I do applaud Western New York's tremendous plow system.  Apparently, other parts of the country don't have monster trucks with monster scoopers and have no understanding of salt's great uses.  Just the same, Western New York drivers of every personality engage in an angry battle any time they take to the road in snowy weather (which is usually--we Buffalonians are generally undeterred by whiteouts, bluster, and zero visibility).  You've got your angry, aggressive drivers who go 80 miles per hour in the left lane regardless of their vehicle type, road conditions, and, worst of all, any other driver on the road.  Then there's the mindless drivers, who meander in their minivans, careening all over the place without regard for the existence of actual lanes.  There's the teenagers and the senior citizens, who are overconfident and have slow reflexes.  The tailgaters, who zoom up on your bumper when you're just trying to be cautious.  The overly cautious, who turn on their hazard lights and ride the shoulder and you're thinking, "But WHERE are you GOING???"  The tractor trailers, who think they know about driving in snow but don't, and end up jack-knifed in a ditch on the side of the highway.  And, of course, the idiots who don't belong in Western New York at all and end up stuck and stranded and IN THE WAY.

But me--I prefer the WNY summers.  Eighty or ninety degrees, the sun gleaming down on our Lake, tank tops and sunscreen, and busting out our pasty white Buffalo legs for some serious vitamin D.  I love our ice cream stands that take the boards off their windows and the hot dog stands with swinging picnic tables and the patio dining just about everywhere these days.  I love the color the leaves turn at twilight in the sun and the fact that I can step onto my back patio in my pajamas and bare feet in the morning and drink my coffee while listening to cicadas and some kind of cooing bird I've never bothered to identify.  I love the sound the leaves make in the light breeze and the fact that Buffalo beaches have the softest sand I've ever felt (and yes, I HAVE left Buffalo).  I love the way our air smells and that my sons' eyes sparkle a little more and their hair gets white blond on the crowns of their heads.  I love that we can all jump in the car with or without shoes, and go anywhere we want without having to spend fifteen minutes GEARING UP for bone-chilling cold and runny noses and phlegmy coughs.

I miss summer.  But I'd also really miss Buffalo if I ever left, because despite everything, it's home like no place else.

My Baby Einstein

As I sat in what I'd hoped was my final urologist appointment waiting for the nurse practitioner to come in and tell me that no, my kidney stones aren't actually ALL gone, the song that came on softly in the background was Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.

I was instantly brought to the morning of my wedding, standing behind the closed doors of the church with my father while guests were settling in.  Three of my oldest friends passed through the vestibule--Alice, Chris, and Kelly--and I looked at my dad and said, "I think I might cry," and he said, "You're not going to cry.  Why would you cry?  You've got everything you ever wanted right here," and so I cried.

But as my heart constricted over this memory, the more startling realization was that I was almost positive it was Baby Einstein xylophone version of Jesu....  Why would the urologist choose that version, of all the versions?

From the time Joey was about two weeks old until he was just past three months, he was extremely colicky.  He also had pretty bad reflux, and still does even now at age six (nothing gets him like strawberries on a hot summer day).  He cried when he was hungry, he cried when he was finished eating, he cried when he was lying down, and he cried hardest of all when he burped.  His burps sounded like a knife cutting through a brick, if that's even possible.  It was awful, and you can imagine then that when I discovered that Baby Einstein made him stop crying, it became a survival need on level with water and Purell in our house.

Sitting in the urologist's office my thoughts jumped from the day of my wedding to a day in the family room of our first house, with its bright yellow walls and dark leather furniture, the sun streaming through the sliding glass doors and me, sitting there wishing we had air conditioning in the heat of the hot, hot Buffalo summer.  Baby Einstein was playing on repeat from the corner of the room, and Joey was in my arms staring into my eyes.

He was a big-time starer.  His eyes always gave him the look of what most people would call "an old soul," although I just always thought of it more as proof that babies are people who think for themselves.  Joey was actually born with a furrowed brow and frowned pretty much until he could sit upright on his own.  I guess if I spit up everything I ate all the time, I'd frown a lot, too.

Mostly in those early months, I felt like a big fat fraud.  I felt like the nurses and the doctors handed me this baby believing I was a mother and I would naturally know what to do, and I absolutely did NOT know what to do.  I lived in fear of doing something terrible to him.  Not like crazy, psycho, abusive mothers do, but like, contracting a deadly virus on my pinky finger and inadvertantly transferring it to Joey via his binky or his bottle.  And when they interviewed me for the six o'clock news they'd say, "How could you possibly not KNOW that viruses are FESTERING on your pinky finger??"

But when Baby Einstein played, Joey wiggled until he was comfy in my arms, and he'd look up into my face with an expression that clearly said, "I think you're pretty great."  His round golden cheeks were so chubby and soft, and the top of his head was warm and fuzzy.  He never had that baby smell you hear women gush on about; he always smelled like spit up, but he was wonderful.

I almost started to cry in the urologist's office when I heard the Baby Einstein song and realized that six and half years have passed since I sat in my cheery yellow family room with my tiny new baby, that now he's such a big boy.  You should see how long his arms and legs are; I can't hold him comfortably on my lap anymore (that could also be because he's totally offended by me wanting to hold him).  He can read and write and dance and loves the song "Moves Like Jagger"(he says it, "Moves Like Jagga") instead of anything Baby Einstein.

This whole experience made me grumpy.  Joey's not a baby anymore, and I'm old, and I STILL have kidney stones.  I think the urologists should change their playlist to something more upbeat.  Something more like "Moves Like Jagger."