Unless you count the eighties (and I think it’s in our collective best interest not to), I have always had good hair. Straight and shiny. Fine, but plentiful. And unless you’re my youngest son finding a stray stand in his bathwater, it’s nice to touch.
 
But life has this way of handing out lessons about vanity, even the smallest and most harmless among them.
 
One morning in the shower, a thick ribbon of wet hair ran down the back of my leg. The sensation made me flinch, and I looked down where a nest was forming in the drain. I panicked and ran my hands down the length of my ponytail. They came away with a tangle of dark strands.
 
By 45, I’d already confronted and accepted some hard truths about my aging form. My two babies had taken the best of my body and my mind and made them…mushier. Breasts that had always sat at attention suddenly hung like tennis balls shoved into the toes of a pair of stretched out tube socks.
 
Middle age took over where childbearing left off. The hair on my chin grew wiry and multiplied, while simultaneously my near vision went to shit. I can’t decide if this was nature doing me a kindness or having a laugh. My face was slowly melting down into jowls. Everything, it seemed, had gotten wider and lower.
 
But this new loss was staggering. Maybe because there was so much of my identity wrapped up in my hair and the unimpeachable goodness of it. Or perhaps there’s only so much staring at a stranger in the mirror that one body can take. It wasn’t long before I avoided brushing, washing it or even touching it. My hair became the texture of my everything. Spilling onto my yoga mat in class, clinging to my clothes, and clogging up my vacuum.
 
The first doctor I saw crossed the room, rubbing sanitizing foam between his palms and said confidently, “I’m happy to take a look. But this is common in women your age.” There was nothing he could do for me.
 
I sat with that indignity in silence and got out of his office as quickly as I could. Outside in my car, I seethed. If I had come in with flaccid man bits, he’d have written a prescription with haste. Bald women, we accept as nature’s will. But not floppy dicks.
 
It took four more months before I saw a specialist. This time, a woman physician in a clinic owned and run by women. She hovered over my head with an iPad, the sound of an artificial shutter clicking away as she documented my scalp. I had lost, by her estimation, 30 to 40 percent of my hair.
 
“My suspicion is that this is autoimmune,” she said. “Treatable, but I’m afraid to say, not fully reversible. I know that’s not what you want to hear. But there are things we can do to get some of it back.”
 
I shrugged. It was something.
 
She said we’d have to confirm with a biopsy, but she’d had a lot of experience with cases like mine. “Often these things are triggered by stress,” she said. Have you had any major life events or illnesses in the last six months or so?”
 
Well, I’d had surgery, I told her. And then was rushed to the emergency room in the dead of night after a hemorrhage. That was pretty scary. A couple months later, I watched my dad die. I didn’t tell her we turned off the machines. That I felt his last breath go out under my hand. But the memory stung my eyes. I blinked back hot tears. Then I’d served as PTA president of our school and spent a year run ragged, being degraded and used by nice white church ladies, something that left a deep, deep scar. My youngest sister, for whom I had… complicated feelings was in liver failure. And as the only viable family option, I had wrestled desperately with being her donor. But I would do it for my mother.
 
I stopped and scanned the doctor’s face. She looked taken aback.
 
“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “I got to ride in an ambulance!”
 
She shook her head, as if to say, there’s no need to people please here. “That’s a lot,” she said, finally. “For anyone.”
 
My shoulders started shaking and tears suddenly spilled down my face. I was mortified. But her kindness had breached the dam.
 
“Is it okay if I touch you?” she asked. I consented and she put her hand on my knee. And I sat there in a stranger’s office and grieved for what was gone forever. And also for my hair.
 

I did really well the first two weeks. Ran a (virtual) 5K at a sub 8-minute mile. Kept the beds made and the rugs vacuumed on the daily. Washed my hair. My ability to cope with the uncertainty of this weird new normal slowly degraded however, and now I’m in this weird place where I only feel… safe (I think that’s the word. Unanxious. Grounded. Okay.) if I’m eating. Or too distracted to think about eating. So let’s get distracted, shall we?

Ask me anything! I’ll answer! Just be nice but not like, too nice because I cry REALLY easily right now.

It has now been a good decade since I watched an episode of the World’s Best TV Series. But from my memory, Walnut Grove had a few good brushes with epidemics, drought, pestilence, and other scary shit. Like bandits, and nitroglycerine. I mean, the prairie is always trying to kill you, so you’ve got to be on your toes. When things get dicey, I always fall back on my Little House education for keeping things together in a time of crisis. Now I’m sharing those time-honored tactics with you.

Get the sod house ready. In other words, get you a PLAN. If Pa got sick, you know he was prepared to sweat it out alone in the sod house to protect his family. We decided that if someone in this house gets sick, they go straight to the sod house (master bedroom) where, only the designated caregiver (me) is allowed to drop food and brief messages of comfort while covered head to toe in garbage bags. If it’s me who gets sick, well, I’m screwed. I’ll have to live off that bottle of Tums on my dresser. Like Ma taking a hot knife to her infected leg, I’ll do what I have to do.

Put some stuff away in the root cellar. When things took a serious turn, I bought one extra of everyday necessities and stuck them in the freezer in the garage. It seems like something Ma would have done. You know, put away some flour in the event the crickets come this spring. Or in our case, a loaf of Mrs. Baird’s, some whole milk, and those no-sugar-added popsicles I like to eat while bingeing Netflix right before bed. I also made extra dinner a few nights in a row and froze the leftovers for when things really get bad. At least I know if I fall ill, my two year old will still be throwing perfectly healthy lentil soup on the floor in a tantrum over god knows what.

Nextdoor.com is the Mrs. Oleson of the Internet. Do not engage with that old bag. Nope, not even to set her straight. You see her coming your way from down the road, you fake an errand at the blacksmith. DO WHAT YOU MUST.

Take care of your neighbors. I’d like to think it doesn’t take a catastrophic event for me to be a good neighbor. But in times like these, it’s just as important that your neighbor has spinach for their smoothies as it is for you to have your morning banana, so before you do that provision run, you might want to check in next door. VIA TEXT. DON’T BE CRAZY.

Dirt and sticks make great toys. This is a great opportunity to teach your kids about gratitude. In the absence of outside entertainment, we’re teaching our kids to make do. You know, with a house full of toys, technology, and endless attention from their parents. Hard knock life, right? I will say I was rather proud when we explained that parks are a no-go right now, my kid, ON HIS OWN, acknowledged that he is lucky to have a playground in his  backyard. He still throws an epic fit when I won’t buy yet another season of Paw Patrol the Plots Just Get Stupider, but we’re getting there.

Brush your hair 100 times before going to bed. Okay, this has nothing to do with our current predicament, but it’s really great for your scalp and let’s be honest, what else are you doing?

“I’ve come to understand that a mother is not a person, but a service,” I said.

Her eyebrows raised slightly, but she said nothing, so I continued to explain how in all of my encounters since Charlie’s birth, I have been stripped of my personhood and re-summed up in a single syllable: Mom. At the store. Our pediatrician’s office. Even my husband now calls me “Mom” in Charlie’s company. In the months since my since my son came into this world, I’ve felt like I was slowly disappearing from it – dissolving day by day, partly because of the isolation of the stay-at-home role and partly from the very real truth that I am no longer the person I used to be.

I spilled my guts, all the while fearing that I was alienating a new friend I’d made at library story hour. Our children were playing together in the backyard splash pad while we gnawed at pretzels under the patio umbrella. My friend was quiet for a moment and I knew I’d done it. We were so different already (she, a pastor’s wife and me, a… well, whatever I am), I feared I’d driven a giant, neurotic wedge between us.

But then she said, “I never thought of it that way. I guess it’s easier sometimes to socialize through our kids – less chance of rejection, maybe. But I am going to try to be better about that.”

There’s this feeling of relief at being understood suddenly, after ages of shouting into the darkness, that’s so overwhelming it actually feels like grief. I do so much of that – screaming inside my own head – and all that ever comes out is a sigh, to which my husband will say, “What can I do for you?” He means well. He loves me. But he doesn’t understand because he can’t. Everything he had before Charlie was born, he has now. The same social structure. The same career. The same face, hair and pelvic floor. He gets to sneeze without peeing and when he leaves for the day, everyone he meets will assume he has a name. And they’ll call him by it.

But she understood, even if only a little. And I wanted to cry when she closed that gap between us.

I wonder sometimes if my expectations are off. I mean, I know our postal carrier’s name. It’s Paul. It has never seemed extraordinary to know that. To say, “Thanks, Paul!” when I see him on the porch. Yet, my own name gets lost so easily in the parental shuffle. I know it’s there on the chart at the pediatrician’s office, right next to Charlie’s name. No one has to memorize my face and put it together with my name in order to make me feel like a human. They just have to read it. And still, every visit begins, “Mom, can you get him undressed to a diaper?” Even when we lived in the hospital for a month, Charlie and I, the nurses, the doctors, the techs, the therapists – they all had names. I knew them. I used them. But I was always Mom.

When Charlie was born, I was so enamored of him and so thrilled to be a mother – his mother – that naturally I didn’t fight it. Instead, I basked in it. Mom. Mom. Mommy. Twenty months later, I feel completely lost in it, struggling for reasons to *not* wipe banana on my pant leg (who’s gonna see? or care?) or even to brush my teeth some days (what’s the point?).

When I finally told my husband I no longer felt like a person anymore, he seemed angry at first, but I think that’s the initial response to anything he can’t fix. We decided that it was time to end my stint as a stay-at-home mom – something I hadn’t felt like I could give myself permission to do. I was miserable. Dying one small death after another. But my son was so happy and clever and thriving that putting him in day care had always seemed unnecessarily punitive. After all, it’s not his fault that it’s not enough for me. That I don’t love this the way so many other women I know seem to. My sisters. The countless mothers on my Facebook feed, who caption photos of their days at home with, “I love my job!” I love my son in such a deep, wonderful, frustrating and all-consuming way. But I do not love being at home. Admitting that last bit has been enormously difficult. But there it is. Out there.

So a few days ago, Charlie and I took a tour of an early education center we’re considering with the end goal that I can re-enter the workforce, and perhaps, reclaim a little of myself before it’s too late. It’s a nice enough place, if perhaps, a little too structured for my liking. We arrived a few minutes late and made our cheerful introductions with the center’s associate director. I was Heather. This was Charlie. She cooed over him appropriately and then we got down to business. Before we began the tour, she offered to put my belongings behind the counter.

“Here, Mom. Let me take your bag for you.”

“My name is Heather.”

She smiled and blinked. Did I make her uncomfortable? If I did, it didn’t register. And I didn’t care. I was taking back my name and I had to start somewhere.

Dear Hal,

I spent the last hour or so carefully cleaning your spot in the laundry room. I threw away your blanket and that heated bed I bought for your old man cat bones, swept up the telltale black hair you’d left behind. Mopped. Not to erase you, but to remove the evidence of the suffering you went through at the end. Two cancers are really more than any one furry little guy should handle. But still, I thought we had more time. When you wouldn’t lift your head for a dish of cream, I knew it was time. I hated that knowledge. It hurt so much.

I tried to stay with you, in that spot where you spent your last night, curled up beneath the cabinet. I stayed as long as I could, but my body is not young anymore. I feel like you’d understand that. I couldn’t stay for the whole procedure at the animal hospital, either, because my heart doesn’t feel as young and strong as it used to. But that, you wouldn’t know much about. You stayed you until the end, until they gave you a shot and let me hold you until you fell into a deep sleep, your pink little tongue poking out between your front teeth and your breathing slow and steady, finally done with the pain. They took you away and I sat in the car and cried until I felt like I would be sick.

My grief at losing you is compounded by guilt, but I think that’s the way with humans. I’m so terribly sorry for being impatient with you. It’s a character flaw that runs pretty deep. You drove me nuts, you know, refusing to drink out of anything but the dripping sink. I’m sorry, too, for that last litter of kittens that caused you so much stress. Like I said, I thought we had more time.

Thank you for being a good friend. You healed a very deep hurt the minute Elana and I brought you home from that shelter in New York. I remember you slept next to me under the covers that night. What a weirdo! You stayed a weirdo, in the very best ways. Thank you for purring this morning when I petted you for one of the last times. It’s such a little thing, but I couldn’t bear the idea that you’d go out remembering only pain.

Telling my son stories about you will be so bitter sweet. I’ll always remember you.

I miss you. I love you. Thank you. And I’m sorry.

Love,

Me

With less than three weeks until the Wee Dictator is due, we’re in a bit of a state of turmoil at our house. A dozen unexplained bug bites over a few nights in the last couple weeks turned into a panicked call to the exterminator and one freaked out mama-to-be.

You cannot bring a baby home to a house with bugs! Those people end up on the news! And not in one of those feel good stories they run after bits about gang violence and terrorism, either.

My first inclination was that we had fleas. Our feral cats have become indoor/outdoor cats over the course of the winter (they’re not dumb) and they love to sleep on our bed (see: not dumb). Although they’re flea-treated, I thought fine, maybe I miscalculated their last dosage. Maybe they could *possibly* have brought something inside. Seemed logical.

My ultimate fear was bed bugs. Horror of horrors! Neither of us travels, though, and there’s nothing new in the house that could have transported them. I mean, that doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility, but the pest control man seemed utterly befuddled, having found zero evidence of any kind of biting pest, flea, bedbug or otherwise. Our stark white mattress is, well, stark white. Same with the bedding. An in-depth investigation yielded only more nothing. Nothing but frustration. The exterminator left without having exterminated anything or rescuing me in any sort of way, except for providing a set of instructions for some proactive measures we could take. And boy, did we take ‘em. I’m having none of this risk taking. I’ve washed every bit of everything in hot water, the Dork Lord has sprayed the room, the mattress has been covered, bug boards laid and blah blah blah.

It’s ultimately a lot of stress that I didn’t need. I think the worst part for me is that I’ve worked so stinking hard to make everything as perfect as possible for Charlie’s arrival and then…this. This thing I cannot control. And if you know me at all, you know that I’m not so good with things I cannot control. They are my nemeses. My Khaaaaaan!

I haven’t cried yet, but let’s not rule it out.

Also, now I just itch all the time. Out of pure suggestion. Meanwhile, the only thing our sticky bug traps have caught is an unfortunate dust bunny. And Midge once. But that was funny.

By way of a Hal update: He’s doing remarkably well. He still seems completely unaware that there is anything wrong with him. His appetite is up and his weight has returned to normal. He sleeps a lot, but, you know, he’s a cat. And that’s sorta their modus operandi. Having grown accustomed to his daily medication routines, Hal even voluntarily jumps up on the counter while I glove up (being pregnant, I’m not allowed to touch any of his meds). I’m guessing that his willingness has little something to do with the treat he gets after. Like his mama, he’s compelled by food. Outside of his daily meds, it’s very easy to pretend there’s nothing wrong with him. So I do.

And a word or several on Charlie: Kid’s head down, ready to go. I’ve asked him to be born a few days early on the 16th (it’s a full moon, after all, and babies love to be born on full moons), and I’ve decided that whether or not he complies will tell me everything I need to know his personality. Come on, Charlie. Do this for mommy. She wants to roll over in bed without her whole skeleton hurting. I’ve also asked him to have a reasonably sized head. Please, oh, please.

Thank you most sincerely for all your good thoughts and well wishes with regard to Hal and Charlie. So far, so good! And uh, if you’d like to direct some of that positivity at the bug situation, well, I would not object.

Scratch, scratch.

The discovery was entirely accidental. I’d taken Hal in on Monday for hairball issues and his ‘senior’ cat follow-up. He’s 10 now, and I’ve been telling myself that’s middle age, no matter what the vet says. Anyway, it was accidental. Happenstance. They happened to have a difficult time getting a urine sample, so they happened to use an ultrasound to guide the procedure and the clinic’s feline internal medicine specialist just happened to be walking through the room when they did.

“Back up,” she said. “Right there in the intestines.”

We came in with hairballs and left with lymphoma — or very likely lymphoma. I declined the through-and-through biopsy for 100% confirmation. It would have required him to be put under and have pieces of his intestines cut out, a trauma that neither of us needed. And for what? I would not be putting him through chemotherapy. He wouldn’t understand and the time it would buy would only be for me and my guilt. Although in the last several days I’ve agonized over that decision plenty.

Without the biopsy, there’s no real prognosis. No window of time. Though my research has turned up a sorry statistic that cats treated on prednisone alone (the route we’ve taken, to make him comfortable) live an average of 45-60 days, I tell myself we have longer; he doesn’t act sick.

Hal and I met when he was five months old in the front window of the SPCA on the Upper East Side. When I had nobody, I had him. Sometimes I am so heartsick, I think I might retch because the hurt just runs so deep. Forty-five to sixty days. Charlie is due in 55 days. You see why I pretend it’s not true. Inaccurate. A stat I can stubborn my way out of, like I usually do. Dying kittens? Pfft! We can beat that. We’ll stay up all night! For days! But cancer? Cancer sees me coming and is not at all impressed with my tenacity. Being awake, being at work feels like a punishment, when all I want to do is curl up with him on the couch and maybe watch some Pretty Little Liars reruns and pretend that this is just not happening.

Well, this is long overdue. But I assume you’ll forgive a lady who is working full time and pregnant full time for having very little extra energy to expend. Just rolling over in bed takes so much damn work these days! See also: being alive. If not all pregnant women start to resent life in general by the end of the process, don’t let on. I’m going to assume this semi-constant state of hate is normal.

Not that there isn’t also a lot to love. It’s just… mama’s tired and sometimes forgets this is a temporary state.

By way of guppy updates, Charlie is a very wiggly young man with a special affinity for the right side of my rib cage. If you see me sitting very still, eyes closed, breathing slowly and deliberately, all is well, my son is just trying to break free via my skeleton. I worry much less about his… viability these days. Mostly because I don’t have to wonder if he’s okay in there. He keeps in touch. Often with my bladder.

It is endlessly delightful (in a Tremors sort of way) to watch him squirm around in there, turning the taught surface of my belly into a map of elbows and knees. Sometimes my coworker Kelsey and I watch the show and make wide eyes at each other like, “This is so weird.” Weird and awesome.

Up there with heartburn, one of the least lovely things about pregnancy are the people, mostly other mothers,who say horrid shit to you. Which is something I’ve still not gotten at all accustomed to. I’ve had people point out how swollen my feet are (because I’m not self conscious enough as it is), compare their current state of weight gain/bloat with my pregnant body (flattering), and declare that the genetic testing we had done was pointless because their friend had the same results and their baby came out with {insert horrible malady here}. Some women just like to tell you how traumatic their labor was, as though you have some say in how this kid eventually makes his way to the outside world. I’ve even been told that bouncing Charlie around in my womb to persuade him out of my rib cage area will adversely affect the shape of his head. Um, yeah, and if that doesn’t, THE BIRTH CANAL WILL FINISH THE JOB.

The heartburn I got a prescription for, but the comments, man, there does not seem to be anything preventative I can do short of declaring, “Seriously, unless you’re going to tell me how radiant I look, do not speak.”

Back in the Things Which are Awesome category, people have also been extraordinarily kind. The owner of a mom n’ pop coffee shop in San Francisco fixed a broken toilet so I wouldn’t have to walk two block to the park to find a restroom. People carry things and hold doors and strangers smile for no other reason than the world loves babies and also, they quite possibly know how totally overwhelmed and awkward I feel.

And Charlie’s nursery. I love going in there. Sometimes I sit in the glider and read and yell at the cat to stop tearing at the rug all while picturing how many times Charlie will pee or puke on me in this very room. Ah, babies.

People also give you the sweetest, softest things for your baby. Which brings me to making some long overdue additions to the Fairy Godmother list:

Teak sent some deliciously soft swaddlers and an organic stuffed bunny and this note that made me a little teary. RzDrms sent a crazy generous package full of clothes and baby mittens and a thermometer that scans the forehead (so neat!). Fellow catlady Barbara E. sent this OMG outfit involving a hoodie with bunny ears. Seriously, I die. And Melanie sent the gift of Sandra Boynton and if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading those out loud to a young ‘un, get on that. Pure silliness.

I hope I have not missed anyone. I am so genuinely touched by the kindness and generosity.

Sixty-three days to go. Please let Charlie treasure punctuality, like his mother does. And also books. And animals. And gender/marriage equality. But I’ll take a love of punctuality to start.

Just a quick note to acknowledge the baby gifts that have arrived – bottles from Sarah S. and a baby bath tub, wash cloths, towel and sleepers from Jennifer. Thank you – you guys are just so awesome! I feel like I’m going to spend a great deal of time telling Charlie about his Internet Aunts one day. You didn’t have to bathe in the roasting pan because of a very nice lady who lives far, far away who didn’t even know you. It will be like his own personal fairy tale.

We were standing in the bathroom the other night, flossing or what have you, when the Dork Lord took a long look at my belly.

“There’s an actual baby in there. It’s going to be born and then we have to take care of it.”

“That’s sorta how this works,  yes.”

“I can barely take care of myself!”

I snickered. “Well, that’s why I’m here, yeah?”

It wasn’t the first minor freak out either of us has had. It’s sure not to be the last. We’re half-way through this pregnancy and it still doesn’t register all that often that it’s real. Our little guppy is a manchild. We’ve known this for weeks and weeks thanks to a relatively new blood test that identifies the baby’s genetic information floating around in my genetic information and BAM! reveals possible chromosomal abnormalities and the baby’s sex. Our 18-week check up was a while back (the Penis Unveiling, the Dork Lord calls it) and everything seems to be just as it should. Ten fingers, ten toes, four heart chambers and discernible stubbornness.

His name is Charlie. You can pretty much call him anything you want as long as that anything you want is not ‘Chuck.’

We’re at the point where I can sense the motion of him wiggling around in there quite a bit, though individual kicks and karate chops are just starting to catch my attention. It’s all very science fiction-y and very distracting. Then sometimes I don’t feel him and that’s even more distracting. So this weekend, I ordered one of those hand-held Doppler jobbies so I could listen to Charlie’s heartbeat at will. It arrived yesterday and is now my favorite battery operated device. It took a while, digging around on my belly, to find that heartbeat, but once I did, it was like getting a report card. A plus, plus, plus!

A few weeks ago, I had my very first full blown, I’m pregnant so I can’t take my meds migraine. It was 26 hours of unmitigated torture. I figure Charlie owes me. He’ll be pretty new to the job for the first Mother’s Day, so I’m gonna give him a year to figure out how best to say Thank You for Not Poisoning Me. I do love sapphires.

Thank you for all the well-wishing! We are so thrilled and terrified. But mostly thrilled.