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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Summer Fever

Posted August 19, 2008
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Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

Something is wrong with the children. All day, they bicker in the abstracted way of a long-married couple - never focusing on the argument at hand, never not arguing. Ben is making refrigerator magnets while offering Birdy unsolicited advice about the Mousetrap game she is trying to set up, and they fight without actually ever looking up from their solitary projects.

"Well I wasn't wrong just because you said you were right."

"No. But I was right and you were wrong."

"That's not true just because you say it's true."

"Well it is true, or at least I'm saying it is, which makes it true for me."

"Fine. But not for me."

"Well, it's true for me that it's true for you."

"No it's not."

"Guys!" I say. "Hey!" For me, they will both look up, and they do. "Come here," I say, and they climb sheepishly into my lap. "Pretend you're having a play date together," I say. "Treat each other like you're friends." This usually works, and today is no exception, except for how it works for approximately 15 seconds.

"Ben, would you please help me with my game?"

"I'd be happy to!"

"Owwwwwww! You stepped on my toe! This toe, my little pinky toe! Waaaaaaaaaaah!"

There is much crying and clutching of feet and expressing of hurt toes and feelings, and I shepherd them upstairs to rest in the cool expanse of the big bed, where it occurs to me - Light bulb glowing over my head! - to take their temperature. And what do you know? They both have fevers of almost 101. "Aha!" I say, and they laugh like the poor, nice, feverish children that they are. Thunder grinds across the sky, which opens up to dump out its relief effort of cooling water, while I feed the children Tylenol and limeade, put on an old Popeye video, which they watch sweatily before falling sweatily to sleep for the night.

Only the next day it's more of the same. I cancel play dates and outings, and there are more fevers, more henpecking. They're stacking colored plastic game chips together, creating patterns and arguing.

"It's not symmetrical."

"Well, it's kind of symmetrical."

"It's either symmetrical or it's not."

"Well, it is a pattern? See how it gets less, less, less?"

"But what about this one?"

"Yes, but I said that one was an orange butter and jelly sandwich."

"But there's no such thing as orange butter."

And:

"Wow, you got a hundred clothespins for four dollars! That's such a good deal!"

"Oh my god that's a great deal!"

"Well, I don't know if it's actually a great deal. It's more like a pretty good deal."

"Well, it's great to me."

I put them back to bed with cold drinks and a Pooh movie, kiss them and coddle them and give them the whole poor-little-sick-children treatment, complete with dispensing of Tylenol and stroking of hair tenderly away from damp foreheads. Only when I'm shaking the thermometer down again to put it away do I notice that Ben and Birdy have now, on two separate occasions, had the exact same fever of 100.7. Hmmm. I pop the thermometer into my own mouth, lie down on the bed with to watch Pooh for a few minutes and, woe is me, I too have a fever of 100.7! A case of the old reverse-placebo effect.

"You guys, I think the thermometer's broken," I say. "I'm thinking maybe you were never sick at all." And, indeed, when the children turn to me, they look strangely, instantly well again. They are hot and grumpy, yes, but seasonally rather than virally. "Oh," Ben says. "That's actually kind of disappointing. Can we just be sick a little longer? Can you just take care of us like we are sick?" And so they are, and I do.

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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.

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