Monday Musing -- Dressing a Goalie

Last night was my last time lacing up the goalie pads for another hockey season. I started dressing a goalie twelve years ago, when my aunt and uncle went to Africa and I was responsible for their kids. Little Graham, the baby I rocked to many a Billy Joel song, was in goal for the first time that year. I had no idea what I was doing, so Graham's big brother had to come along and help me out. Who knew that yesterday, we would make a sign and stand out on the road, me and all the kids, and welcome Graham and his returning champion college hockey team back in town with police escort and parade? 

A town welcomes home the hockey heroes

Bryn Athyn College wins the championshipThat cute goalie with the black baseball cap, number 42? That's Graham, all grown up. 

WAY TO GO, LIONS! 

My boys love to watch their big cousin play, in part because they can sympathise with the pressure on the man between the pipes. 

They have told me about the moment of the dreaded breakaway, when it is a one on one match, and the other team's player is skating right at the net, and they are the last line of defense. They describe the look in the eyes of their teammates giving chase, watching, trusting them, to make the save. They say they can see it before the shot even happens, that they know whether or not they will come through. 

Mites on Ice--Hayden at the Flyers, 2009It's nerve wracking for the boys, but not nearly as hard as it is to be the goalie's mom. Every weekend morning means an alarm
 hours before the sun to drive to a rink an hour away where the puck drops at seven a.m. There is much lugging of gear. I have never forgotten the first time when Hayden was a Mite goalie. I remembered to pack the gear bag, the helmet and the bulky leg pads. I remembered snacks and water bottles, coloring books and layers of clothes for the little brother and sister. I remembered directions to the rink forty minutes away and the GPS. And I forgot... the goalie stick. 

Then there is the dressing of the goalie, which I can assure you is ALWAYS better if Dad, or even just another dad, does it. First the cheetah print protective cup under hockey pants, then the loosening and relacing of skates, often still sweat-wet from the last game. Then the pads, with the intricate weaving of the toe ties, and the seven straps and clips each up the back, during which it is nearly impossible to keep wiggly Max lying flat on his stomach on the locker room floor.

Next, he's up for the chest protector and jersey, the blocker and glove, and the helmet. I always estimate it should take me about ten minutes to dress Max, and I am always wrong. I forget to factor in for the posturing and trash talk, the tape ball throwing and the flexing, the, "Hit me as hard as you can, right here! Kick me in the shins! Harder! I didn't even feel that!" 

And then comes the game.

You want them to see shots, so you didn't drag them out of their warm bed and drive all this way and haul all this stuff and dress them for a blowout where they fall asleep in net, elbows resting on their thighs. But you also don't want your boy to get completely shelled. You want their defense not to leave them standing there alone like they're waiting for a date to the dance on a sniper breakaway. You want their offense to light up the scoreboard, but not too much, so you don't start feeling bad for the other team's goalie, and his mom. She's not hard to spot in the sea of moms clutching Dunkin Donuts coffee cups and wrapped in Flyers print fleece blankets grabbed off the foot of her son's bed on the way to the game--she's the one calling out, "Hang in there, buddy!" so earnestly after every one of your team's goals. 

Hayden as goalie Mite of the Night with a kicksaveWith Hayden, I didn't worry as much. He had the perfect personality to play in goal. His sense of self is rock solid, and he never takes anything home with him. He didn't care when the announcers at the Wachovia Center made a crack about his size, that he didn't even reach the top of the pipes standing upright on skates. He could lose or win, eat some donuts on the car ride home, and move on to the next game.

I'll admit there was some relief for me though when he played out for a season and got a taste of goal-scoring fever. He hasn't put on the pads since.

(Huge thanks to Robin Trautmann for capturing this great photo of Hayden's first hat trick this past weekend.)

Hayden's first hat trick!

My respite as a goalie mom was short-lived; half a season. Last year, Max decided he wanted to follow in his brother's path between the pipes. I worried. If Hayden's sense of self is titanium, Max's is more tin foil, prone to creasing and wavering in the lightest breeze. 

But maybe hockey is changing all of that. I have seen Max flash the leather for a sweet glove save, and then spike the puck to the ice. I have seen him moonwalk gleefully in a little backwards celebratory circle in the crease after a kicksave. I have seen him dance during the intermissions, and I've seen him smiling at the bottom of the puppy pile at the end of a great game. 

Max's goal tending debut, 2011Last night, I laced up the goalie pads for the last time this season. Max was playing up a division for the Squirt team and they had a great offensive game. He had his first shut-out, 11-0, and a sweet little glove save where I thought he might break into a juggling routine. He looked right at me as he tossed the puck to the ref and his expression said, "Did you see that?"

Max came off the ice ruddy cheeked and beaming. In the car ride on the way home, I could feel the joy radiating off him. He was singing along to Swedish House Mafia, a little smile on the corners of his lips.

For this, I will drive to New Jersey in the icy dark. I will down gross coffee and dry donuts. I will lace skates and pads with numb fingers. I will watch endless games with a tiny pit of anxiety, and cheer him on after saves or shots made, because last night, when we were sitting at a red light, he said softly, "Now I know what it is like to feel important." 

* *** * 

the Mighty Max

Still a believer

Max, (middle) downing today's 2 cups of green veggiesLast night, Max (8) crawled into my bed and asked me to hold his hand. In the dark he whispered, 

"Mom, are YOU Santa?"

He's too old and clever to lie to, so I turned the question back on him.

"What do you think?"

There was a long pause. 

"Nah," he said, somewhat shakily. "I mean, there's no way you and Dad could afford to buy all those presents, and the ones under the tree too."

I was a little taken aback by this, because while J and I try to instill the value of a dollar in the boys (and those who know about Max and money are aware this is not lost on the middle son) we don't want them to think we can't stuff a few stockings. 

In the dark, I weighed my options. Hayden learned the truth about Santa from a classmate four years ago and has worked hard to preserve the notion for his little brother and sister. As he told me this year, "You know how I felt when I found out? My stomach went like this," and he made a fist and squeezed it until it trembled. We've talked often about how short the years are when you get to be on the believing side of the magic, instead of the making side. While I welcome Hay's help keeping our Elf on the Shelf on the move and even let him sneak out on Christmas eve to help with a few tasks, he has told me sometimes he wishes he didn't know. 

So I said to Max, "Honey, there are all kinds of miracles and magic that happen around Christmastime."

"That's what I thought," he said drowsily, and rolled over and fell asleep.  

* *** *

La Vida Tranquila -- Night Run

Tonight, as the sun slid down over the casuarinas and the boats made steady progress in front of our house, home from a Saturday at the Cays or back from Town, I was reluctant to run. It had been a full day-- we passed on going to the Independence Day parade in Town and kids yoga on the dock to stay home. We made a stack of thick coconut pancakes and Toledo bacon for breakfast, followed by a family boat trip along the dive sites of the South Shore. We dropped in and out of the water, snorkeled the cave at Big Rock and searched for J's kiteboarding leash in the shallows. We didn't find his leash, abandoned during a dicey shore landing last week, but we did meet a bad-tempered spotted moray. 

Amigo is always up for a runA sunny day on the water takes it out of you, and after editing for the rest of the afternoon, I was ready to sit out and drink a glass of wine at sunset, but Amigo insisted we go. I'm not much of a distance or a speed runner but I am doggedly devoted to logging some miles at the end of the day. (I talk about my relationship with running in this essay.)

After weeks of flip flops, my sneakers feel like stones, like 80's aerobics ankle weights. Tonight I saw fingers of lightning on the mainland, and heard the rustle of wind in the sea grapes. Rain would be good news for our cistern, which ran dry again this week, but bad for my iPod. I went anyway. In spite of the heat, I layered up against mosquitoes and bad weather, sprayed myself with bug juice, called my perro and set out.

The first part of our run is along a narrow trail through a tangle of sea grapes, palm and almond trees, ten yards above the shorebreak. I had my headphones on, so I didn't hear them rustling in the dried leaves and underbrush. Amigo was in a feisty mood, nipping at my side, and when we hit the open beach, he leapt and twisted in the air beside me, demanding attention and some training, so I didn't notice them at first. When I finally looked down, they were everywhere. Dozens of land crabs on the white sand, dukes up, boxer dancing in their side-stepping sashay from the bush to the water.

We had just arrived on Utila when this happened before, a month ago, walking home from the marina after a boat ride home from dinner. One of them managed to find her way up inside my bootleg jeans; I screamed like a gringa. It is breeding season for the Cardisoma guanhumi, or Blue Land Crab. After mating, the females carry their eggs, as many as 700,000 under their armored bellies for two weeks, before they bring them down to wash them and deposit them in the shallows. This happens most often around full moons in the nights from July to November. 

I jogged in the soft sand past the soon-to-be-opened restaurant, west, where it is wilder, where rutted Polaris tracks covered in island pine needles mark the trail along the beach, and everywhere, skittering out of my way, confusing Amigo, there were crabs. I made noise and watched my step, until I came to a point where I simply couldn't go anymore. From the water to the treeline, the ground was a carpet of crabs.

I realized the kids would love to see this and Amigo and I raced the mile home. We abandoned music and came back with Hayden and headlamps as the light was nothing more than a watery gray by then. We ran, clapping and laughing, as more and more came out under the cover of darkness. 

Hayden among the 'Cardisoma Guanhumi'

Generous, Hayden suggested we go back for his brother and sister, so they wouldn't miss this incredible experience. Another sprint back, the ground crawling with them, and now it was truly dark. A cloudy sky, night bird sounds, the increasing wind, the hum and slap of the unlit boats making their way on the ocean, we brought Piper and Max out to the beach. Running was impossible this time. They crawled over our feet, danced out of our way, their eyes glinting. Our lights picked up glowing underneath the crabs, covering the sand and sparkling like diamonds, too far up the beach to be bioluminescence and first I wondered if they were lost eggs, but it was greenish blue gleam of tiny spider's eyes. 

On the way home, we laughed and dodged and made noise, feeling them pass over our feet, marveling at their size, their numbers, hundreds, thousands, "Infinity!" Piper suggested. Amigo darted between us, highstepping like a nervous show pony. We stayed out until the raindrops chased us home. 

* *** *

Destination: Utila

It has been a quiet few weeks on the blog front and I can only promise more of the same as we gear up for our coming adventure. Next month, we are dropping Sampson (of the Dog Blog) off to live with sister Mercy, handing over the keys to our house to friends, and moving to Utila, (pop: 2,500) a remote island off the coast off Honduras. 

Why Utila? 

For the past few months, J has been involved in developing Coral Beach, a luxury eco village on the South Shore of Utila, a destination that attracts international SCUBA divers to its gorgeous, pristine waters. Via Skype, he showed me sprawling, untouched sand beaches and wild mangroves. He emailed photos of sea horses and live coral reefs, of majestic speckled whale sharks. It's like Cayman was thirty years ago, he promised. He has been flying there for several weeks each month, and I see a little bit of the boy I fell in love with flickering back to life under his corporate exterior: the kite boarder, the diver, the water lover, the adventurer. 

Our relationship has island roots--we met as vacationing pre-teens on Seven Mile Beach and fell in love after moving to Grand Cayman permanently after college. J worked as a dive master with a marine biologist, and I cooked the breakfast shift at a hospital in George Town and trained horses for a beach riding organization in the afternoons. In the years before we moved back to the States, we windsurfed and swam and rode horses and drank Red Stripe; I wrote really bad magnetic poetry and an even lousier first attempt at a novel.

Why now? 

Fast-forward sixteen years, multiple jobs, degrees, pets and three kids later. I've always dreamed of living abroad as a family, showing my children the world. I had assumed it would be Tarifa, Spain, when the kids were in their early teens. I imagined them bilingual, learning to windsurf among the levante and poniente winds as I did, reveling in the thirteenth century architecture, and eating crepes at midnight.

Our oldest, Hayden, is ten. When we proposed the idea of moving to Utila, of homeschooling and dropping off the map into this adventure, he threw his fists in the air. He had his first taste of SCUBA diving on our annual trip back to Grand Cayman this year and is hooked. The most social of our three, I was worried about his response. If we waited to live abroad in another few years, friends and sports could be more important than the promise of new experience. We are on the cusp of the years when J and I appropriately fade in importance and social life becomes everything. 

Max, my middle man is a homebody--he begged to go home from Disneyland!--but he too gave it the thumbs up, though he wants to come home for ice hockey season. We had him try out for his travel soccer team, but let his coach know we wouldn't be here this fall. He promised Max would have a spot on the team next year, or whenever we came back. This, and the promise that each boy may bring 5 lbs of Legos and all of the Big Nate books, and the assurance that the iPad is coming, made the difference for Max.

And sweet Piper is endlessly game. In 2010-11, when I homeschooled the boys so we could all go on book tour,  I enrolled three-year-old Piper in preschool whenever we were home. Since then has been yearning for her own homeschool experience. As she said the other day, "It doesn't matter where, I just want to learn to read and do art."

On my part, it feels a little crazy to pack up our life, board a tiny prop plane and move to a place I have never seen. We have debated this often over the past three months: Should we just continue with our American suburban life, our commuter marriage? This would mean soccer, hockey, violin, that I would enroll all the kids in school again. This would be the first year with everyone going five days a week--think of all the writing I could get done, all the running time I could log! Think how clean our house would be!

Or should we take a chance on an adventure, a complete reality shift, an opportunity that may never come along again? The answer seemed obvious.

view from Coral Beach

The Doctors Give Their Blessing

Still, there was a roadblock. Hayden was born with a craniofacial birth defect that affected our lives significantly when he was younger, but not as much now. We see a battery of specialists annually at his team evaluation, and an ortho specialist monthly at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. This doctor had projected two new upcoming surgeries, including a brutal jaw distraction, where the bones of the lower jaw are broken and set with a bar and crank we turn at regular intervals.

Last month, at his annual evaluation, we asked each specialist if they saw any reason that Hayden couldn't travel to Utila for a year. Everyone said fine, but then ENT found a mass in his sinus. The doctor warned me gravely, "A mass could be anything. Do you understand what I am saying?"

In my imagination, our dreams of Caribbean adventure took a sharp, dark turn. Thankfully, an emergency CAT scan showed this to be likely just another aspect of his unique anatomy.

Hayden was also reassigned to a new ortho specialist who saw no immediate need for the projected surgeries or the monthly schedule we have been on. She is a lovely woman who was raised on a converted tugboat-- the only doctor who had heard of Utila. She devised a treatment plan where we could see her right before we leave, and come back in six months. At the end of the day, we saw the final doctor, Hayden's plastic surgeon, the head of the team. He listened and examined and read the reports of the other specialists. He gave Hayden an uncharacteristic handshake/hug and we left the hospital grinning; the final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. I called J and told him: we can go!

The Plan

J has assured me that while Utila is rustico, I will fall in love with the natural beauty and charm. 

I've seenUtila Cays photos of our little  house, Casa Tranquila--a thatch roof, Swiss Family Robinson type lofted abode just steps from the turquoise ocean. There are two rescue dogs that belong to the development--Amigo and Lobster. J has introduced us via Skype; it will help ease the sting of leaving Sampson behind.

Last week, he texted me two things that sealed the deal: One was a photo of him at a restaurant in Utila Town with a pizza in front of him. The kids won't starve! And the other was that he had met a family, with kids. They are on the complete other side of the island--this means a boat trip through the mangrove waterways into Town, and then a fifteen minute golf cart ride on the sand roads. And I thought, though most of their playdates here are local, I regularly drive them at least this far around northeast Philly to their hockey games, and the scenery is more Dunkin Donuts/traffic/strip malls than Caribbean paradise. Pizza and potential playmates--we're in. 

This month, I will be packing and purging, shuttling everyone to dentists and doctors for shots and last check- ups. I will be writing and submitting our home learning objectives for the State of Pennsylvania and trying to cram everything I think we will need into a handful of suitcases. On August 1, we will drive Sampson to his foster home--I have no doubt there will be tears. 

I will be posting regular dispatches from our adventure--Casa Tranquila--here, and with Lisa Belkin's Parentlode column at the Huffington Post. Please stay tuned for more! 

It's TIME to talk about breasts (and attachment parenting)

Warning: you are going to see some breasts.*

*If you are a man, this means Warning: open this magazine or you will miss some foxy side-boob.

That's what TIME magazine really meant by putting this photo on the cover in a photo shoot and article about attachment parenting, and Dr. Sears. 

I saw this cover and I want to stay quiet, to let TIME magazine and the mommies and the bloggers have it out, but I can't. It makes me want to stand up on the stool they put the little boy on to reach his mom's breast in an artificial, impractical and purposefully-provocative pose and say, BACK OFF! Let people parent in the way that works best for them! Leave breasts for their original purpose: to feed babies. Don't use them to stir up controversy between women by playing to the extremes, by throwing the gauntlet of 'good enough motherhood'. Don't use your big red letters to pit us against each other. Don't propose the ideal that one way of parenthood is better than another, especially not when there are a host of other issues in politics where we women need to stand beside each other; attachment parents, bottle feeders, co-sleepers and cry-it-outers. 

BAPTISM BY FIRE 

Before our first son Hayden was born with PRS, a craniofacial condition that included an undeveloped lower jaw, a cleft palate and a tongue that covered his esophagus and trachea, preventing him from breathing or feeding without machines, J and I had some ideas about the kind of parents we would be. We were adamant that parenthood would not change us. We'd read a book that encouraged us not to change our lifestyle for our baby, but to 'invite him to join ours'. We intended to get him sleeping through the night in his $800 Pottery Barn crib as soon as possible. I imagined I would try breastfeeding but supplement with formula so J could be involved and we could have the convenience of our travel-filled, sporty lifestyle. 

We were so committed to showing everyone parenthood would not slow us down that we booked a trip to the Bahamas to go windsurfing for two weeks after my due date. We figured one of us could hold the baby on the beach while the other surfed, and then we'd switch. On the day that plane took off, we were sitting beside our son in the NICU, praying for his life.

I remember before he was born, walking with my aunt, a mother of six, and telling her how I had read that you never nurse the baby to sleep or he learns to fall asleep at the breast, preventing the lifestyle acronym we had read about, E.A.S.Y. (Eat, Awake, Sleep, You Time!) and I remember my aunt just looked at me and said gently, "Wait and see when he gets here."

Hayden at CHOPWhen he got here, everything changed. (You can read Hayden's story here) He was born with an Apgar of zero, whisked away from us, intubated and transported to a childrens hospital downtown. We were told he would need many surgeries, months in the hospital, years of therapies. We were told he would never, ever be normal. 

But I digress. This post isn't about Hayden or my transition to motherhood; it's about BREASTS, and who TIME magazine deems "mom enough".

Back to breasts. Shortly after Hayden was taken away, I hooked mine up to a mint green hoovering pump in the hospital for two days, while I waited to be discharged. I'd had an emergency C-section and had to recover before I could be driven to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia to meet my son. When Hayden was six days old, doctors botched his first operation and he developed an infection. They took us into a small closet away from the other parents and told us he would either make it to the end of the week, or he wouldn't. We were no longer allowed to hold him. In a fog, I pumped. It felt like the only thing I could do.  Our son hung in there. When a doctor credited my expressed breast milk with helping Hayden to fight the infection, I pumped with new commitment. Every three hours, I hooked myself up to the machine in a converted cleaning closet next to the NICU. My breastmilk went into Hayden through an NG tube, and several months later, when he graduated from that, a Haberman feeder.

A baby with a cleft palate cannot make suction; a baby with a severely recessed lower jaw cannot make his mouth meet to latch; a baby who is failure to thrive cannot afford the calories it takes to try; and a baby whose tonuge has been stretched and surgically attached to the inside of his bottom lip to free up his airway cannot breastfeed. 

As we had imagined with bottles prenatally, J was able to be more than 'involved'. When Hayden finally came home from the hospital, I pumped around the clock and J hung the 90cc bottle on a coat hanger rigged above our bed that connected to Hayden's feeding tube. As predicted, this offered convenience! One night, when I was exhausted, I hooked Hayden up to his monitors, nestled him in his boppy in the middle of our master bed and pinned a note to him that said, "Hi Daddy! Mom doesn't want to see either of us until 8am. There are three bottles in the fridge. Love, Hayden." And I went and slept for eight interrupted hours in our unused nursery.

Hayden gets his mama milk

But at five months, Hayden weighed barely nine pounds and my milk supply dropped severely. My body would no longer be tricked. I took fenugreek and prescription meds. Other mothers offered to pump for me. I upped my regimen. I pumped on airplanes and in restaurant bathrooms. I pumped to bolster my son's immune system when he contracted RSV and pneumonia. I pumped because he had severe reflux and the feeding team was afraid he wouldn't tolerate formula. I pumped to get him through his first three surgeries. I pumped exclusively for eight months, and then my breasts shut down. There was relief, and there was fear--had I gone long enough? Had I done everything I could? Had I been mom enough?

Feeding MaxBREASTFEEDING SUCCESS

When my second son was born healthy, I took him to my breast immediately. I had waited three years for this moment. My nurse was old school, pissy, and horrified. An hour after Max was born, he was still latched on, and she huffed that she had never seen someone nursing while in the stirrups, and not to let him 'loll at the breast, or I'd end up being his human pacifier.' I told her I had nowhere else I'd rather be. I was Max's 'human pacifier' for almost a year. 

When our daughter Piper came along,  I breastfed for over two years. When she was three months old, we were rear ended at an intersection and the safety belt crushed my right breast. I went through unspeakable medical procedures and pain in the months following the accident, but I continued to breastfeed Piper on the left side until her second birthday. By then, she had developed an aria that she sang, "Nurse you me, now, nurse you me now, nurse you me nooooooooowwwww!" with a lot of vibrato and increasing insistence and volume and warbling on the high notes. One of the last times was on an overbooked flight that was delayed, with Piper on my lap and a twoPiper's courtside snack-hundred-pound skinhead with swastikas tattooed on his neck on my right as she belted out her snack time theme song: "NURSE YOU ME NOW!!!" I tried to distract her, but the aria continued. Staring straight ahead, my seat companion said through his teeth in a tight, Eastern European accent, "Is not problem for me if her feet are HERE!" and he plunked Piper's big twenty-two-month-old feet in his lap so she could lie down and nurse herself to blissfull sleep. 

PARENTING BY INSTINCT/Attachment Parenting

My point is this is the story of my breasts, and how they fed my children in a wide variety of ways and for different lenghths of time through their early years. It is also about how Hayden's difficult arrival, our baptism by fire into parenthood, shaped the parents we are today. 

When Hayden first came home, after weeks of not being allowed to hold him and fear of crying exacerbating his swollen airway, (he had narrowly avoided a tracheotomy), we wanted to carry him all the time, keeping him peaceful. Although he was only 7 lbs, after a day my arms ached. He hadn't reached the weight minimum and lacked the head control for the Bjorn, so I dug out that ‘hippie sling’ I had top-shelved after my baby shower. It was the beginning of the era of the Paisley Womb. 

Hayden in the paisley womb

We took our son everywhere in his sling. It helped with his reflux and kept him calm. We also slept with him between us in our bed to manage all the false alarms on his apnea and pulse-ox monitors, to change his feeding tube, to cuddle him and relish every gurgling snore.   

Led by Hayden, we stumbled into what we called Parenting by Instinct, only to discover that thousands of people were doing the same thing and calling it Attachment Parenting. We read Dr. Sears and it resonated. This felt right. 

We continue to practice this method, though it looks different as they grow. My breasts aren't a part of it anymore, but for years, they were. Attachment Parenting for us meant creating connection between us as a family. All three of our children were worn, carried in our arms or on our backs or in slings. All three of them slept (and some of them still!) sleep in our bed. Or we sleep in theirs. Or they sleep curled up with each other. Or with the dog. We move around. This works for us.

Parenting Across the Spectrum

This is not the only way to parent. We have fed formula. I saved the lid of the first can of Nutramigen we bought for Hayden, where my husband wrote YOU ARE AN INCREDIBLE MOTHER on the lid. I have many friends whose children sleep in cribs and beds. I hold dear to me women who have been able to let their children cry it out, because it worked best for their family. I applaud those who try breastfeeding, but know that it is not the only way to raise a healthy baby. I have friends and family whose children go to boarding school, who have nannies, who cannot fathom that we regularly wake up with several of our children nestled in bed around us. And I embrace the ideal that good parenting wears a lot of faces. 

So I take exception, I cannot let it go, when a national magazine tries to stir up controversy and sales by throwing gasoline on the fires of the mommy wars. Shame on you, TIME, for being sensationalist, for holding up the extremes as the example of something that works for so many. The above was the story of my breasts and of our unique introduction to the style of parenting that has worked for our family for ten years. What's your story?