Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Back to Blog Main Page

Worrywart

Posted September 07, 2007
0  | 
I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

If you walked up to Michael with a bullet hole in your forehead -- your brains and blood sloshing out and spilling down your face -- and said, "I've got a wicked-bad headache," what he would likely say is, "Uh huh. Maybe from the red wine we drank." This is the man who once said to me (five minutes before the barfing onset of the stomach flu) "Ooof -- I ate too much popcorn!" about a snack we'd eaten six hours earlier. And so it should come as no surprise that when Ben says, "I've got a kind of sore throat from that gum I was chewing," Michael says, "Oh yeah -- that happens to me too," and does not quite look up from an engrossing newspaper story about Miss USA and Miss Teen USA engaged in a bout of unpageantly off-hours spin-the-bottle behavior.

Ben has chewed precisely one-inch from the yard-long stick of gum he bought himself at a toy store. When he spotted it, he actually said, "Oh my God! That's the awesomest thing I ever saw! I would so get it -- if it weren't, like, twenty dollars, which I'm sure it is." "I bet it's less," I'd said. "Do you want me to ask?" And Ben had said, "Really? Okay! Please do!" When the woman behind the counter says, "One seventy-five," Ben was positive we'd experienced a collective auditory hallucination. "It can't be!" he whispered. "Mama, do you mind asking again -- just to be sure?" And not a minute later, he was skipping out of the store with a three-foot hollow tube of pink gum. And another minute after that he was experiencing his first-grade version of buyer's remorse. "I wonder if I really should have bought this," he said. "I mean, how much gum do I really want to chew?" This is the same kind of question one might ask oneself at Costco about Clif bars. But with Ben, it kind of breaks my heart. "I think it's great!" I said. "When do you ever get a whole yard of gum?!" But now his regret seems to be confirmed by the gum's alleged throat-aggravating properties.

Personally, I'm not convinced. "Are you sure it's the gum?" I ask Ben. He complains about pain or illness approximately once every three years, and I am not inclined to take it lightly. Birdy, however, the same Birdy who suddenly cries, "My throat hurts too! Right here in my neck!" -- well, let's just say that kvetching is not exactly a wild, uncharted frontier for her. This is the girl who cries every night, precisely at bedtime, "My stomach hurts! I have a stomachache and cannot go to bed! I need something for it. Like maybe some jelly beans." This is the girl to whom we recently tried to explain the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," only it seemed so cruel and moral-y that we diluted the whole eating-you-up finale into a kind of really-scared-you scenario. "Birdy," I say now. "Birdy, I'm talking to Ben right now about his throat, but I can talk to you about yours in a minute." "Now," she says with her robotic fierceness. "Talk to me about mine right now."

I sigh in my motherly sighing way, and put my motherly sighing lips to Ben's forehead -- which is nine million degrees. Only later, at the doctor's office, we find out that Birdy's throat is even redder than his. Poor, wrongly accused Birdy. I feel bad not to have believed her. But what I also feel is pissed off at Michael. So pissed off, in fact, that I just accidentally typed "pizzed" twice in a row, as if Michael were some kind of delinquent pepperoni delivery guy. I'm just saying. If anything ever happens to me, God forbid, and you see Michael out with the kids, and they look sweaty and glassy-eyed and are covered with some kind of weird pox and/or boils, will you please just gently prod him to figure out if he's noticed that they're under the weather? Everyone has blind spots, and this is his, in his otherwise wide, clear, and beautiful view of the kids. He's entitled. And the kids are fine: dispatched with stickers and advice to drink plenty of fluids. I just feel overwhelmed sometimes with the responsibility, the high stakes: noticing those hot feet in the night, a particular darkness to their eyelashes, the way a head lolls. I just want to live for a while without worry.

Member Comments On...

Worrywart

Back to Main Blog Page
Search Recipes
300x250

About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

View My Profile View My Guestbook
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
August 2006
300x250
728x90
Please log in ...
Close
You must be logged in to use this feature.
Become a member

Thank You!

Thank you for helping us maintain a friendly, high quality community at Family.com. This comment will be reviewed by a community moderator.

Flag as Not Acceptable?

We review flagged content and enforce our Terms of Use, in which content must never be:

See full Terms of Use.