LIFE WITH KIDDOS

I have been in a funk. I’m not sure if it’s seasonal blues, or if it’s just the weight of the world bearing down. There’s plenty of heartache and hurt in my family and friends circle at the moment, and instead of using that proximity as a caliper of measuring how frankly lucky and blessed we are, it’s mostly just dropped one wet blanket of disaffection after another on top of me. I’d gotten stuck.

Things kind of came to a head yesterday when Kel and I took the kids to try and come up with a Christmas card picture.

To begin with, we didn’t have the vision for the picture. We were starting off behind. We’ve both been busy as of late, and the ideas we’d tossed around for a Christmas card picture–because, you know, these things are supposed to be meaningful pictures, the kind you hang on your fridge for goodness sakes–well, those ideas weren’t working out. They were too complicated or required more planning than we had time for.

We had a hunch about shooting pictures downtown, so we dressed up everybody in Christmas Best Clothes and trotted into town, Red Rider wagon and reindeer stuffed animals in tow. I carefully parallel parked in front of Statesville’s historic courthouse, greened up with fir wreaths and lights.

It kind of went downhill from there.

I had this ridiculously planned picture in mind in which sister and brother embrace in the kind of miraculous moment TV holiday specials are steeped in. This, I thought, would be the card that stays on the fridge year round.

Thomas, however, thought otherwise. He broke into sobs as soon as Kelly sat him down on the sidewalk next to Jules. Julia, on the other hand, gave Thomas a look as if to say, dude, double-you-tee-eff.

Eventually we comforted Thomas with the stuffed reindeer, abandoned embracing as a photographic concept, and wrangled Thomas into the little wagon. New concept: Big Sister pulls Little Brother, stuffed animals, Christmas ornaments, oh how adorable.

Julia labored to tug the heavy wagon across the plaza in front of the courthouse, breathless after each tow as if she were in the toddler equivalent of a tractor pull. Meanwhile, I dodged about, snapping away and cursing as stuffed reindeer antlers blocked the better shots.

I’ve come to believe that capturing two children under the age of four who are smiling at the same time is like seeing a double rainbow.

There we were, out in public for Pete’s sakes, one child crying relentlessly, the other looking disgustedly at her brother, while Kelly and I aped about in a fruitless attempt to inspire smiles and giggles. People passing by on the sidewalk stopped to stare at the spectacle: two tired adults trying desperately to capture the PORTRAIT OF THE YEAR, trying to portray that OF COURSE WE’RE HAPPY, WE’RE A FAMILY, CAN’T YOU SEE HOW HAPPY WE ARE? amid the wailing of our progeny.

I didn’t say a word as we drove home, both children by now in tears.

I’m not an angry person, though, and rare is the fury that doesn’t quickly melt. By lunch, we were better, and soon it was nap time, and later it was night time.

Yesterday afternoon we’d heard that a young toddler not much older than Julia, a little girl named Pearce, was nearing the end of her life. She was born with a rare disorder called anencephaly, a kind of developmental disorder that means her brain never fully formed in the womb. Pearce’s mother was counseled about terminating her pregnancy when her doctors discovered her situation, especially since few babies born with such limited brain development survive more than a few hours.

But Pearce’s mother believed and prayed for her unborn daughter, and soon Pearce arrived, and instead of dying right away she lived, defying nearly every medical statistic on record.

All of us, though, no matter how sweet or innocent or young, have a finite number of days upon this earth, and Pearce’s are drawing to a close. Her undeveloped brain cannot keep pace with her growing body, which requires more cerebral horsepower to vitally function than she is capable of producing. Her liver is failing, and her life is fading.

While I wrestled our children into a Christmas card pose, Pearce’s family gathered and prayed for peace. They gave thanks, I’m sure, and they said grace over this little girl whose very life was a force of willpower.

Last night, well past eleven, Kelly and I were making the best of our portrait session and begging TinyPrints.com to do something magical with the meager offering of pictures we’d made it out with, when the dogs began barking and barking and barking.

I pulled on the pair of old shoes I keep in the basement and waged out into the cold night, the ground soft from Friday’s rain. I heard an urgent mewing from somewhere in the dark, so I dialed up my cell phone flashlight and soon found a pair of eyes glowing back at me.

Glowing back, that is, from twenty feet up in a tree.

The kitten was stuck. I decided she needed down, or at least, she needed to be helped down by someone who could mitigate the two barking dogs presently joining me out in the dark.

I came up with a parade of poorly-thought ideas: first, the small ladder, which wasn’t long enough; then the small ladder with a two-by-four timber on top, which I imagined the kitten could scurry down (I was wrong); then, a bucket attached to my pruning saw pole, which functioned like a make-shift firetruck ladder (she ignored it); and then, finally the big ladder, which I’d dug into the leafy forest floor as best I could and leaned against the tree trunk.

Here, try this, I offered, aware of the absurdity of a man talking looking up at a tree in the middle of the night, talking to it.

The stranded feline scratched over to the top rung, then curled up on it and started mewing once more.

So I climbed up, one rung at a time, not really sure what I was doing. It was dark and cold and windy, and I was alone in the yard, and I don’t like heights or ladders or climbing them with slippery old tennis shoes while aiming a cell phone flashlight. I imagined any manner of fateful outcomes: the ladder sliding off the tree, the kitten pouncing on my face, claws extended, Kelly explaining to Julia and Thomas that the reason Daddy can’t walk anymore is because he fell out of a tree trying to rescue a cat.

But I reached the little mottled furball, and I scratched her head, and she purred, and she let me clasp the nape of her neck, and down we went, two cold souls in the dark night, each of us coming unstuck. I helped her over to the safe side of the fence, and off she went into the woods.

When I’d put up both ladders and the pole saw and bucket and two-by-four, and when I’d pulled off my muddy shoes and come upstairs, my body pulsed with adrenaline. I laid down to bed, struggling to sleep.

I hate climbing ladders, and I’m not fond of cats, but yesterday something compelled me to overcome both attitudes and scale up into the frigid night to ferry back a stray kitten, and it was like the ice flows had dislodged, and suddenly I felt alive for the first time in a while.