The Never Normal

I started working on a new blog.  Here’s a first glimpse.  I’ll be adding actual content, soonish, and I’ll continue to blog here as well.

My mom and I have been switching the days we drive down to visit Boo from Saturday to Sunday, based on Andy’s work schedule, which is fine except it sure doesn’t help me remember what day it is.

This past Saturday we’d planned to celebrate Jonah’s 13th birthday.  I bought him a few little things (flash cards and small fidget toys) and my mom got him big helium balloons and a chocolate cupcake-cake with a singing candle.  We left the cupcakes in the car so Boo wouldn’t go straight for them without eating his lunch.

I was tummysick but pushed through (bad choice of words, Amy) and we arrived unscathed.  We opened the door to see Jonah coming in the room on daddy’s shoulders, piggyback, all smiles in his pajamas.  He’d slept at Andy’s the night before.  I don’t know how Andy accomplishes overnights with Jonah, but he does – and I have to give him a whole ton of credit for it.

Pretty early on in our visit Jonah attacked me, snatching and mangling my glasses, yanking a fistful of hair, clawing at my face — with no warning, for no reason.   It’s been a while since he came at me like that.  Andy managed him in the bedroom while I wrangled my pliable glasses and tangled hair back into shape.

I’m remembering it in shards.  Hard to articulate how it felt, what with me being sick on top of it, and Andy so tired, and my mom trying her best to thread us all together – to patch the pieces.

I remember helping Jonah with his bath, playing our kiss eye? & kiss lips? game gently, even though he had attacked me less than an hour ago.  He’d eaten a cupcake on the side of the tub and there were crumbs in the bath.  He allowed me to hang out while he splashed around in the almost-too-hot-but-that’s-the-way-he-loves-it water.

And when he was all done, I remember he wanted a piggy back ride out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.  Sorry, kiddo.  Mama’s not Wonder Woman.

I remember Jonah wanted my mother on his car ride, no mama, which was okay with me because then I could lie down.  And when they returned my mom went back out to the car to get Boo’s cupcake-cake and candle, and she brought it in to fix it for him, but Andy was keeping him quiet in his room after more aggressions.

Mom stood ready to light the candle, uncertain.  I watched, sick and disappointed — almost disinterested — from the couch.

All done?  All done?  Jonah cried, craning his neck around daddy to see his treats.

After a few minutes Andy let him leave his room, and my mother lit the candle, but she was the only one with heart enough to sing Happy Birthday to 13-year-old Jonah Russell Krebs.  Andy and I just kind of mumbled it.

But my mother always has heart enough to sing for Jonah.