I told myself that I was going to get a dog “for the children.” I’d grown up with a dog, and I wanted my kids to know that same joy.
After months of online browsing, we settled on a spaniel-shaped mutt from a rescue in a tiny Pennsylvania town. Xena was white with brown ears and completely scruffy, which is how we liked her. The day we got her, she jumped on the adoption paperwork – a direct leap onto the desk from the floor. Xena was always very excited.
The kids were four and seven when we got her, so they don’t remember life without her. Xena was with us for every adventure. We walked, camped, biked, ran, played on playgrounds, sledded down the big hill, and rode pedal boats together, even though Xena sometimes fell into the lake.
I told myself I got the dog “for the children.” But Xena declared me “Alpha” in mere minutes, and I bonded with her as strongly as I bonded with my other babies.
On our first walk with her, I let Xena off the leash in an empty park. She ran and ran, until I called her. She perked up at the sound of her new name, and ran right back to where I was standing. Eventually I realized that she not only came back whenever I called her, but she was always right by my side.
She woke when I woke in the morning, and followed me downstairs. She followed me around the kitchen, down the hallways, upstairs to the laundry room and back downstairs. Once she got stuck in my bedroom closet because she’d followed too closely. She slept at my feet while I was on the computer; she watched me watch television. Xena rode in the passenger seat in the minivan. She even followed me into the bathroom. If I didn’t shut any door completely, she pushed it with her nose and came right in.
For a few weeks after we got her, we couldn’t leave home without Xena tearing apart Ziploc bags from the kids’ board games. We scolded her until Xena determined – incorrectly – that she should never chew on anything while the family is out. We gave her bully sticks to chew while we were gone, thinking it would help. So for ten years, Xena would run to the door when we got home, carrying her untouched bully stick: “See? I didn’t eat anything while you were gone!”
Xena would go off-leash for nearly every walk. She used “the facilities” on command, and would run into the woods so that I didn’t have to clean up her mess. I’ve never met anyone so eager to please. We had a crate for her, which mostly sat unused under the foosball table. But sometimes Xena would put herself in there, if she did something she thought she wasn’t allowed to do. While I rarely saw her in there otherwise, the kids said she slept in her crate whenever I was gone, even when they were home. She was waiting for me.
Six weeks ago, Xena had a mass removed and fully recovered from her surgery. She was jumping and running again like a puppy, even at 12 years old. And then, quite suddenly, she was limping – a fluke, we thought. But the cancer was back, this time with a vengeance, and it killed her in four days. Xena died in my arms, surrounded by her family, which is the only place she ever wanted to be.
Today, I am consumed with pain; I am irrevocably broken. Every day, all day, Xena told me that I was the most wonderful person on the planet, and she asked for absolutely nothing in return. How can I survive in a world without Xena in it?
It started with my toothbrush.
After many years with my rechargeable electric toothbrush, it finally started to die. So I ordered a new toothbrush from Amazon. When the toothbrush arrived, it had a red light on it that wasn’t shown in the picture. So I called Amazon customer service.
“You can return it,” said the not-as-helpful-as-usual customer service rep.
“I need a toothbrush,” I said. “I just want to know what the red light does.”
“I don’t have that information,” said the rep. I hung up, no wiser, and gave up on figuring out why there was a red light on the toothbrush. Later, though, I looked at reviews from other buyers: Not as pictured; This isn’t the toothbrush I ordered; Cheap replica! they said.
I was a little concerned. But for a decade, I’d been buying everything I owned – from diapers and toys to food and electronics – on Amazon. So I just kept on buying.
But I noticed a disturbing trend. I ordered products that I’d ordered before, and they arrived looking … well, just not the same. Then I looked at reviews for the things I’d ordered – even things with thousands of positive reviews – and discovered that, in the past year or two, things weren’t as high quality as they’d been before.
And things weren’t showing up as advertised. I bought a therapy ball and an eye patch for my dad, who’d had eye surgery. But I never got the eye patch, even after repeated emails and calls. I bought dog food in pouches and some pouches had the “real” brand name, while other pouches looked like they’d been made on my home computer.
And buying replacement items, where I could compare quality, was even worse. I bought a shirt that I’d loved in blue, so I got it in purple – but it fell apart after only two washes. I bought a second pair of fleece shorts that I’d loved and they showed up with a huge hole on the seam. I re-bought a set of flashlights that had once felt sturdy and metallic in my hand, and now they felt light and flimsy.
My dog’s “bully bones” used to be thick and lasted for weeks; now they are thin and gone in mere minutes. I got a case of potato chips that were so stale, they were inedible – even though the expiration date said they were fine for another nine months!
Meanwhile, the prices have gone up. And customer service has gone down. Whereas I used to get representatives that would say, “You can send it back!” – now they say, “We can offer you a $5 gift card for your trouble.”
So I started looking at Amazon reviews with much more care. I filtered reviews by “Most Recent” rather than “Top Reviews” (which is the default).
And what I found is that many, many products are being negatively reviewed, especially in the past year – even products that were once infallible. Things are breaking or falling apart almost immediately after they’re received. Or they don’t work at all.
One woman compared the pillowcase she bought ten years ago to the one she re-bought this year – and you can see the difference in thickness in her simple photo.
My “genuine Canon” printer ink is not “genuine” anymore – but the refilled ink canisters are still being sold as genuine.
Amazon just isn’t okay anymore. Prices are up, and customer service is down. And quality is nonexistent.
So things have changed. I won’t buy anything on Amazon now unless I absolutely can’t get it anywhere else.
And I can get everything somewhere else.
In the midst of what feels like a severe case of writer’s block, I logged in today to just try writing a blog post. Without my knowledge or consent, the theme-building program that makes it easy for techno-phobes to write a blog – Word Press – has updated itself.
This means that I have logged in to a page that doesn’t make sense to me. The little boxes have disappeared and now I have a big, blank page. The blank page, of course, makes writing even more challenging.
So now I am just filling up the page with words – which, by the way, are now in a new, larger-but-more-serif-styled font. I am writing just to see what it looks like. And boxes pop up out of the blue as I write. The little symbols are gone, that helped me italicize words. The title box is gone. There are buttons on the side that might be helpful, but I don’t know what they mean.
I am sorry that readers will have to read this. But this is what I am doing with my life today.
So my dog had surgery. Then my husband had surgery. I am playing nurse (not my favorite role) and while it really isn’t that taxing, I do very little parenting these days.
The kids, in fact, are doing beautifully.
Meanwhile, the holidays are upon us. I am cramming in work (teaching) and daily duties, and preparing for two birthdays. I am supposed to be selling toys, but I haven’t even taken photos for the sales posts yet.
I have considered just dropping the blog, but I think that’s unfair to Shane who, for all rights and purposes, is now a true teenager.
But writing is not in my daily routine now. Thinking about parenting is constant. I just don’t have the regular revelations I used to have.
It helps that Dylan has been accepted to college and I can stop worrying so much about him. In fact, I am not worried much about either of them, because I am too busy worrying about daily life.
So while I am not really taking a break, I am apologizing to anyone who is here looking for wisdom – or even stories – about parenting. Hopefully I will acquire more wisdom and stories after the holidays.
After only 15 years, our mailbox broke and we had to replace it.
“I want a cool mailbox,” I said to Bill. “I’ve always wanted a cool mailbox.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “They’re all the same.”
“No, I want something different – like a mailbox that looks like a log cabin or a birdhouse or a truck,” I said. “I’ve always wanted a mailbox that looks like a truck!”
“Fine,” Bill said. “Figure out what you want and let me know.”
I went online and started searching. The “cool” mailboxes weren’t for sale. They were do-it-yourself projects and craft ideas that resembled mailboxes and were occasionally in use for actual mail. If I wanted to buy such a thing, it would cost me a few hundred dollars.
“Can I at least get a big mailbox?” I asked Bill. I was tired of the mailman crumpling our mail to fit it all in. Most of it was junk, but still.
“Sure,” Bill said.
“I want this jumbo mailbox,” I said. The jumbo mailbox was so big, it would hold mail for the entire block. For a month. But at least that mail wouldn’t be crumpled! It had to be ordered online (not available in stores) but it was only $25!
So we ordered our jumbo mailbox from Home Depot, and had it delivered to the store so that we could pick it up whenever Bill visited. Bill is a Home Depot nut, and he’s there every week whether he needs anything or not. Also, a jumbo mailbox requires substantial shipping costs.
Then we waited.
And waited, and waited, and waited.
Two weeks later, I still hadn’t gotten any emails about the mailbox’s arrival at the store.
I called the store. “It’s not here,” Home Depot said. “You have to call HomeDepot.com and find out what happened.”
I called HomeDepot.com. “It says here that it was delivered to the store,” HomeDepot.com said. “It was there before Thanksgiving.”
Oh no, I thought.
I called the store back. “HomeDepot.com says it’s there,” I said.
“It’s definitely not here,” the Home Depot guy said. “I’m in charge of online orders, and I don’t even remember your name!”
“Is it possible that it was accidentally moved to the shelf or something? It has to be somewhere.”
“No,” the guy said. “There’s no way. Tell you what. Why don’t you come into the store, give me your name, and then choose any mailbox we have. Cost doesn’t matter. We can do that for your trouble.”
“But we ordered a really big mailbox.”
“We have some big mailboxes out there,” he said.
“Can you let me know how big, exactly? The one we ordered was huge,” I said.
“Just give me a minute,” he said, walking to the shelves. “Okay, here’s one: jumbo mailbox, it says.”
“Does it give the measurements?” I asked, doubtful that it would be big enough to be “cool.”
I could hear the guy moving stuff around. “Let me see if it’s got the measurements –” he said. “Oh, here. Wait. Wait a minute. You know what?”
“What?”
“This is your mailbox.”
“What do you mean?”
“I turned it over to look at the measurements and there was your name, right on the box,” he said. “I mean this is literally your mailbox!”
“Oh great!” I said. “Can I come and get it now?”
“Sure,” the guy said. “We’re open till nine.”
And that’s how I got my somewhat cool, jumbo mailbox.
Which, quite honestly, is way too big. But I like it.
It finally happened.
For 12 years, I nagged him. Since kindergarten, I hovered. Through two elementary schools, one gifted program, a public middle school, a private middle school, and three years of high school, I begged him to finish his school work.
And now, in the first quarter of his senior year of high school, Dylan has finally gotten straight A’s. Well, almost. He got six A’s and one B. The “low” grade is in his AP class.
Dylan’s report card looks like I always knew it could look, if only he had turned in his work on time. He’s always had the intelligence; that was never in question. But between ADHD and teenager-hood, Dylan has gone down kicking and screaming every quarter – usually with B’s and some C’s.
This year, he has stepped up. He’s finally doing what I always knew he could do: he’s succeeding in school!
This makes me unbelievably proud.
And it’s a good thing he’s taking care of himself now, because Shane got four B’s and three A’s. Shane is missing four assignments and he failed two homework assignments just last week. He isn’t the least bit concerned that he had a solid A in English until the last week of the quarter, when he forgot to turn it in and ended up with a B. And today, he forgot his clothes for track practice.
Somehow, I am not as worried about Shane. Maybe it’s the ADHD, or maybe it’s Shane’s more laid-back attitude. Or maybe I am just too tired from 12 years of nagging to worry anymore.
Regardless, I am also less worried about Dylan. Even though senioritis is bound to kick in, I really believe he’s got this covered.
Finally.
Back when he was in middle school, Shane asked several times if we could watch home videos. We have a gazillion home videos, and I would love to see them.
But we can’t.
When Shane was born, we had a video camera that was the latest, greatest technology. I can’t even identify the format of the video tape. We used it for a few years and, when Shane was still a toddler, we got a new video camera.
The new video camera was even more technologically wonderful, and the video tapes were even smaller. We have dozens, if not hundreds, of those videos. They are all in a box and, while not all labeled or organized, they contain the bulk of the boys’ childhood videos.
Unfortunately, we can’t watch them. In fact, we can barely watch Shane’s infant videos, because it requires a complex set-up on a DVD/VCR combination, with the old video camera plugged in on the side. Only Bill knows how to do this, and he is never home. He’s tried to show me how to set it up, but I can never get it right.
For the past two years, my New Year’s resolution has been to get those videos changed to a DVD format, so that we could all enjoy them as a family.
Even if I have to take them all to Costco and PAY to have it done! I have mentally declared.
But it would cost hundreds of dollars to transfer them all, and I don’t have hundreds of dollars. And it would take weeks, maybe months, to transfer them at home, and I don’t have weeks or months.
So when Shane was in middle school, we didn’t watch very many home videos. And the ones we watched featured Shane as a baby.
This wasn’t exactly what he wanted to see. It was cute, sure, but he wanted to see how our family was, what we did, what the kids looked like as children.
Shane is now in high school. Dylan is about to graduate. And all of my videos are sitting in a box, waiting for me to “get around to” transferring them to a format we can watch.
I want to cry when I think about.
And I think about it every day.
This year, for Thanksgiving, we had a couple of people over – all family – and Bill did most of the cooking. Bill usually does most of the cooking, because I struggle in that area. I will not dwell on my history of historically bad cooking experiences.
But this year, in order to save my own life, I have given up a few things that are huge on the traditional Thanksgiving menu. Stuffing, for example, is my favorite food. But it contains gluten and dairy. I can’t eat gluten or dairy. Or soy, potatoes, corn or sugar.
Sugar, of course, is huge. And no one said I could eat coconut sugar, but for Thanksgiving, I did. In fact, I also ate potatoes.
But I also made a gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, corn-free, potato-free, sugar-free green bean casserole.
You know that delicious green bean casserole with the cream of mushroom soup throughout and fried onions on top? The one that melts in your mouth and after it’s gone, you dream about it for weeks? And you can hardly believe your good fortune that it’s GREEN BEANS, so you know it’s healthy?
That’s the one I was trying to mimic.
I had green beans and onions, so I bought the remaining ingredients and got right to work on Thanksgiving morning. I sliced onions. I sautéed mushrooms and garlic. I sort-of diced onions – meaning I put them into the blender on “food chop” which, it turns out, doesn’t really chop food at all. It just liquifies food. Still, I had onion flavor.
I realized 3/4 of the way through the recipe that I had only printed out the first steps. Having not printed out the last few steps meant that I had no idea what to do with the coconut milk and bone broth, and no idea how long to cook the beans or on what temperature.
And when I looked up the recipe online – the one I had printed only the day before – the server was down and I was stuck. I had no finale for my superstar recipe. In fact, I had no clue what to do.
Bill tried to help while I was freaking out, as did my mother (who was letting me use her oven to bake the beans). And they did help – but mostly I just ran around, befuddled, wishing I hadn’t bothered to even try.
Then, only two hours later, I had created a bowl of mush that resembled porridge with shrubbery growing from it.
I threw some supposedly fried onions on top (which were actually sautéed) and called it “done.” While my mentally challenged sister-in-law thought it was delightful, and my husband admitted that he actually loved those beans, I was not a fan. All I could see were my mistakes.
And I realize, looking back (one day later), that this is the way I treat myself constantly. All I see are my mistakes.
So why does it come as a surprise when I point out all of the kids’ mistakes and don’t remember to compliment them on their successes? If they’d made a green bean casserole, and worked as hard as I did to do it, I would have eaten that thing with vim and vigor.
Which, now that I think about it, is just what my mom did.
On the same road trip where Dylan forgot his music and his license, we were flying down the highway at 70 miles per hour when, quite suddenly, we came to a complete stop.
It had gotten dark, so the road was just a river of brake lights as far as the eye could see.
We pulled into what appeared to be the world’s longest parking lot, and turned off the car. The guy in front of us got out of his car, raised the hood, fiddled with something, and then put the hood down again.
It was very cold outside. I mean, there was snow in the median strip. Traffic was backed up on the other side of the highway so that drivers could stare at the ridiculous sight of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who were not moving anywhere.
We sat there for a long time.
We turned the car on to charge our phones, and Dylan played some music. We sang along.
We turned the car off and stood outside under our red-and-white-striped golf umbrella, gazing at the sparkling red lights.
The eighteen-wheeler next to us was a tanker truck. (I know this from when Dylan was a toddler and he was obsessed with trucks.) It had a ladder running up the side, which was very tempting for us. We both wanted to climb up, sit on top of the truck, and stare at the miles and miles of dead-stopped traffic.
Dylan took a photo of me daring myself to do it, and posted it on Instagram. I took a photo of the traffic, which didn’t do it justice, and posted it on Facebook.
Dylan ran off in his flip flops, in the snow, to find a tree that doubled as a restroom. I called Bill at home a hundred times, talking about our adventure and finding out what Bill discovered online – piece by piece – about our traffic situation. Apparently, there was a trailer tractor blocking both lanes of traffic – somehow, for some reason.
We knew we weren’t going anywhere. We sang along to a few more songs. We talked and laughed and ate snacks. We watched the people in the car in front of us, who tentatively wandered out into the cold and rain – and then got back into their car.
We laughed a lot.
Eventually – about an hour-and-a-half later – the red lights started to blink in the distance. After some struggle, I recognized that the lights were disappearing over the hill.
Traffic was flowing again.
We turned on our car, buckled our seatbelts, and waited for our turn.
And eventually, we were flying down the highway again.
Last week, during a surprise snow “storm,” Dylan and I headed out to visit a college. He was interviewing for a fellowship and auditioning for a music scholarship, as well as having an “academic exploration” day. In other words, he was on his way to do things a mature, responsible adult would do.
It was supposed to be a four-hour drive. Since it had snowed in the morning, schools were closed. I suggested we leave early, around 1:30, to avoid both slushy roads from the morning and the evening rush hour.
At 1:30, Dylan was barefoot, on his phone, and had not yet eaten breakfast.
Fortunately, the roads were still slick, so I didn’t push. At 1:45, after reminding him all day to be ready by 1:30, I reminded him again that I wanted to leave.
“You have eight minutes,” I said. Our bags were packed and in the car. Dylan had packed for himself, and I’d been telling him for three days to have his stuff in the car – at the latest – the night before we left.
At 2:00, Dylan was still barefoot and on his phone.
“C’mon, Dylan,” I urged. “The snow is finally changing to rain. I’d like to get there before it gets dark.”
“OKAY,” he said, clearly irritated by my presence. “I’m almost ready!”
At 2:25, we finally got into the car. We went half a mile before Dylan said, “Turn around. I forgot my music.”
He needed his music for his audition.
“Weren’t you supposed to have that in the car last night?”
“Yeah, but I forgot. Can we go back, please?”
We went back. He got his music. We left again.
On our second try, we went five miles. We were on the highway, merrily rolling along, when Dylan said, “I don’t have my driver’s license.”
That’s when I lost it.
“You don’t have what?!?” I let him have it with both barrels: you didn’t get ready by 1:30, you didn’t get ready by 2:00, it’s going to be dark before we get there, the roads are snowy, you already forgot your music, you were supposed to put your stuff in the car three days ago, and you forgot your license on our last road trip, too! I had to drive for three days!
Dylan learned nothing from my rant, which lasted all the way back home, and for another ten minutes after.
But I learned something.
Again.
“You say a lot of smart stuff,” Dylan told me later. “But when you’re trying to make your point, it’s like you’re trying to land an airplane. Instead of bringing the plane in gently and landing on the landing strip, you’re crashing the plane into the control tower! It’s really hard to see your point if you’re shoving it right into my face.”
He had a very good point.
I don’t know what to do about my communication methodology. I can’t really change who I am, or how I react on a gut level. But I can – maybe – learn to take a moment and pause before flying my plane into the control tower.
I guess I just feel like I’m always making the same point, over and over, and if I don’t keep shoving it into his face, he’ll never see it.
Still, his reasoning is quite valid.
I just don’t know what I can do about it.
