punchdrunkmom

Stella

Kai has been talking about getting a new dog for what seems like years.

“Can Elliott have a puppy?” he would ask, a question absurd on so many levels that I didn’t even know where to begin to answer. I mean, aside from the fact that Elliott was a boy, he was also neutered, and how you begin to explain that to a young child with social-communication issues is beyond me.

After Elliott died, his love of dogs began to meander into obsession territory. A new trail opened up by our house and Kai would ask to pet every single dog we’d see on the path. He’d hop off his bike, leaving it smack in the middle of the trail and dart through the onslaught of roller bladers and scooterers and whatever else, ask the owner for permission, hold out his hand for the dog to sniff, chat with him or her about the dog’s name and where the dog liked to be scratched.

“That’s quite the dog lover you have there,” an owner might say to me as I came running up, panting, as Kai offered his sticky, 8-year-old-hand hand for an enormous pit bull to sniff.

Kai asked for a dog several times over the past year-and-change.

Scott was against it, and he had a point. Not having to walk a dog during the last Polar Vortex, or to arrange vacation dog-care, or to vacuum up dog-hair tumbleweeds was admittedly very nice. And nothing will put you off a new dog like losing your old dog to a painful and expensive illness. But as Kai’s requests for a dog took on an increasing urgency, time and distance helped me to warm to the idea. Scott, though, dug in his heels, and, as the last, desperate hedge of a man who knows he’s doomed, offered Kai the hamster of his choice.

:::

Two weeks ago, Kai was up late, restless and uneasy. He lay down on the couch with us, causing Breaking Bad interuptus. As Scott searched for something more suitable to watch, I ran my eyes over my son.

He was laying with his back to me, hunched over, shoulders shaking.

Having once been a teenaged girl, I recognized at once the signs of someone having a good cry.

I curled around him and asked him what was wrong.

Scott stopped channel surfing to listen.

“I just want a dog so much,” he said.

I held him close.

“Why?” Scott asked.

He could have said “I just do,” or “I dunno, I like dogs.” I mean, that’s the answer I would have given at his age. His answer, though, was unexpected.

“Because dogs make me feel calm,” he said.

“How?” Scott asked.

“I like the feel of their fur and the way they smell,” he answered.

“Okay,” I said into the scruff of his neck. “We’ll see about a dog.”

Scott, recognizing defeat, went to the kitchen and came back with a beer.

“Fine, we’ll get a dog,” he said. “Just make sure we get a good one.”

:::

All of Kai’s therapists thought that a dog was a great idea.

I researched dogs for a couple of days. Kai’s social worker had a line on a breeder of Golden Retrievers who sometimes become therapy dogs, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to get a puppy, much less pay big bucks for a pedigreed one. The shelters are, of course, brimming with dogs. I liked a few of them, but a lot of them were not recommended for homes with young children. How could you even begin to choose? And I was under great pressure to choose a “good one.”

I posted on Facebook that since we’d decided to get a dog, I wanted to adopt all of them.

My cousin replied that that very morning, a puppy had followed her husband home two miles through the woods of Tennessee—a brave little mutt that survived a night among the howling coyotes and seemed to really dig belly rubs.

And so, in the end, I didn’t have to decide what kind of dog to get.

The dog had found us.

:::

Scott was not amused.

“Couldn’t you give me some time to get used to the idea before we rush off to get this dog? And why are we driving all the way to Louisville when there are millions of dogs in Chicago?” he asked.

But how do you explain fate? A dog needed a home, a boy needed a dog. And besides, Scott, in the intervening years, seemed to have forgotten how fast a reluctant “yes” resulted in a new family member.

Hi, Daddy!

And so we found ourselves driving to meet my cousin Tamia halfway between her house and ours.

“What should we name the puppy?” I asked.

“Ryan!” Ryan shouted.

Kai was more thoughtful. “Sam,” he said at one point, perhaps channeling the owner of a therapy dog we’d met at Easter Seals. Later he changed his mind. “Something with a K,” he said, prompting Scott and me to unwittingly channel our inner Kardashian. “Kourtney,” Scott suggested.

“Like Kourtney Kardashian?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said. “There’s a Kourtney Kardashian? I guess I just can’t keep up.”

He actually said that, you guys, and without any irony at all.

:::

“We’re here to meet our new puppy,” Kai said to the guy who checked us in to our hotel.

“Oh!” the guy said. “I know exactly who you are. I met your puppy. I almost took her home myself.”

We were, apparently, the talk of the hotel staff.

:::

  

:::

We’d all taken a moment to get acquainted, and then headed to the hotel's patio restaurant for dinner, bringing the puppy with us.

We talked about how she had found her way to my cousin’s house and debated what to name her. I suggested Ellie, a diminutive of Elliott, and there was some energy around that idea until a boy at the next table over came up to us with a suggestion.

“You should name your dog Stella,” he said.

We all looked at each other.

Fate had, once again, intervened.

:::

First night with a new friend.

:::

I took Stella to visit our vet yesterday, a guy who’s been with me through two cats and a dog already. He was the vet who put Elliott down.

He and I hugged each other, and I introduced him to Stella.

He asked me all about her.

“So,” he said, when I was done. “You have no idea where she came from?”

“No,” I said.

My cousin Tamia had taken Stella to the vet in Tennessee, and Dr. Diaz looked through the file.

He sighed heavily.

“Bring me a stool sample as soon as you can,” he said. He reached on a shelf and handed me a vial. In it was a thing that looked like a bean sprout.

“This is a round worm and you can all catch it,” he said.

I looked at the worm and for a brief moment wondered if it would eat my excess calories and considered the benefits.

 “And this spot on her head. This could be mange. Take a picture with your phone so we can monitor it.”

He took out his clippers and began to trim Stella’s nails.

“When she was found, she was covered in ticks,” I said.

Dr. Diaz fixed me with a stern look.

“You’re welcome,” I said to him, grinning.

Dr. Diaz tried valiantly not to smile.

“Here we go again,” he said, disappearing into the belly of the animal hospital.

:::

:::

And so we have a dog. 

 

Please enjoy this picture of Kai NOT roaming the neighborhood in the middle of the night.

Per Scott’s instructions, we got ourselves a good one.

 

 

 

 

 

The Empty Child

Yesterday I asked Kai what he was saying that Shelby heard the other night, what woke her up and prompted her to come outside.

“I was calling your name,” he said.

“Megan?”

“No. I was calling for you, for Mommy.”

I’ve been trying to tease details out of Kai about his little trip outside, to piece together the narrative.

I’ve also been making a point to semi-stalk the approximately 14,685 red brick houses on our block to see if I can find Shelby. I didn’t know why, exactly, I wanted to find her. I just did. I felt like we shared quite a moment the other day on my porch, and the goodbye we said was just so, I don’t know. Lame? Anti-climactic? Inadequate? I’ve hugged strangers for less than returning my son to me. Way less.

So anyway, I saw her today, coming out of a red brick building. She looked different this time—fresh in a cobalt dress, clearly on her way to work.

“Shelby?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“I’m Megan, from the other day,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

I discovered that I still had no idea what to say.

“Uh, thanks again, for, uh, you know,” I stammered.

We stood there awkwardly for a moment.

“Which way are you walking?” she asked, and I gestured to my house. We began to walk that direction. She lives two doors down. I think I mentioned the red bricks.

“So, did you tell, like all your coworkers that you found some kid on the street?” I asked her, because for some reason, I couldn’t help myself.

“Yes,” she said, laughing. “But the funny things is—” she hesitated. “Do you watch Dr. Who?”

“No,” I replied.

“It’s like the X-Files only, well, less—” she searched for words. “Out there, I guess. Anyway, the before we went to bed that night we were watching Dr. Who, and the last episode we watched was about this kid in a gas mask, and he can’t take the mask off and all he does is call for his mommy.”

We stopped walking in front of my house, and Shelby continued.

“So when I heard a child calling, ‘Moommmyyyyyy’ I pretty much freaked out. My husband heard it too and we were like oh my god*.”

I laughed. Leave it to Kai to be the creepy kid from someone’s nightmare. Sometimes he walks silently into our room in the middle of the night and just stands there until we sense his presence and wake up to find him staring at us.

“What if you’d looked outside and he’d been wearing a gas mask?” I asked her.

“Oh, I never would have gone outside.”

Which means, you guys, that we will never buy him a gas mask, because I’m pretty sure the only reason he wasn’t wearing one is because he doesn’t have one.

And believe me, the only thing creepier than Kai staring at you in the middle of the night, would be Kai in a gas mask coming for you in the middle of the night.

 

*The original post had Shelby’s husband not hearing Kai calling out. Apparently he DID, though after watching this video, he may have pretended not to so he didn’t have to go out there…

A breath of fresh air

Scott’s phone rang, and sound began to intertwine with my dreams. When he answered it, Scott’s voice, talking to whoever was on the other line, wound itself into the narrative, and in my dream the caller became one of Scott’s former clients, a guy for whom the word “boundary” was foreign, and who, at least by phone, seemed to accompany us everywhere we went. My dreamself advised Scott to tell the guy not to call so early, or to just not take the call for heaven’s sake.

“You’re outside?” I heard Scott say.

And then I was annoyed enough with this client that I began to surface from my dream. Really? This guy was here? Outside? I looked at my clock. It was 5:30 in the morning.

Scott got out of bed. The light coming in through the cracks in the curtains was the soft gray of dawn.

He stood there for a moment and seemed unsure of what to do.

“What’s going on?” I asked, groggy and confused.

“Kai’s outside,” he replied.

:::

I hesitated for a long second, trying to process what Scott had said through the haze of 5:30 in the morning.

And then I ran downstairs.

Three people stood at the front door, one of whom I recognized as my neighbor, one woman I’d never seen before, and Kai.

I opened the door and Kai walked in like he was just home from camp and plopped on the sofa.

The woman I didn’t know introduced herself as Shelby. She was wearing a nightgown.

“I live in the red house,” she said, pointing in the direction of her home.

I mentally scanned all of the houses west of ours. They were all red.

“I heard a noise,” she said, “and I asked my husband if he heard it too, and he said no, but then I heard it again and I looked out of the window and saw him,” she said.

Which house? I wondered. There were a couple of red brick apartment buildings in a row, and then a kind of gray brick house, and then a red house with a Blackhawks flag on the porch. That one?

When I didn’t speak, Shelby went on. “So I went downstairs and knocked on Sarah’s door and she tried to call you.”

Seriously, there are like six red houses.

“I tried to get him to come in and have a bowl of cereal,” Sarah said, “but he wouldn’t come in.”

We stood there for a long moment, three women in pajamas and rumpled hair.

And finally the weight of what happened hit me.

“Thank you,” I said, a sentiment wholly inadequate to compensate a strange woman for getting out of bed because she heard a child outside her window in the night. I don’t know what he was saying when she heard him. I never asked. I never asked how Sarah got involved, either, since Kai would have led Shelby to my house and not the neighbors’.  In fact, I never said much of anything at all. My brain was a tumble of thoughts, wondering if I should explain about Kai, about how he doesn’t sleep, about how he wanders (though not usually outside in the night), that we’re not bad parents—at least not in the child services sense of the word “bad,” and, of course, all of the horrifying ways the outcome of this might have been different. He had, apparently, been out there a long time.

Sarah and Shelby and I continued to stand on the front porch, not knowing what to say, each of us perhaps lost in our own sense of shock, fear, and disbelief.

:::

I lose Kai all of the time—at the Children’s Museum and at Target and at Rainforest Café. Twice I’ve lost him at parks including one time in which I almost called the police until he finally emerged from the women’s restroom (which I didn’t check because, you know, it was the women’s room) and he heard me screaming for him the whole time. Between his wandering and his nocturnal activities, I’ve always been afraid that one day he would walk out of the house, particularly in the winter. The door to the backyard locks behind you and Kai would have no way to wake us up, much like the way it happened the other night.

After Shelby and Sarah left, Scott and I sat down with Kai on the couch.

“What’s my job?” I asked Kai.

“Keep me safe,” Kai replied.

“That’s right. How can I keep you safe when I don’t know where you are?”
It’s a question I’ve asked him a million times. I used to mean for him to understand that if he wanders away, I can’t protect him. Now, however, I just mean it rhetorically. No amount of begging, threatening, cajoling or punishing has ever changed his behavior.

“You can’t leave the house in the middle of the night,” Scott said.

“But I wanted some fresh air,” Kai protested.

We stared at him.

“Just don’t leave the house,” Scott repeated.

Kai sighed. “Is the talk over now?” he asked.

It was. He put his head down on the couch and fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 11.

:::

All day I couldn’t stop replaying the whole thing in my mind. I wondered if Shelby was doing the same. I figured she’d told all of her coworkers that she found some kid wandering the mean streets of Chicago all by himself. I wondered what their reaction was. I wondered if she had called the cops what would have happened.

Several times I thought about getting her a bottle of wine to say thank you for finding my boy and returning him to me, but I didn’t know which house was hers.

No joke, there are like six red houses, you guys.

:::

Later that afternoon, on the way back from therapy appointments, I asked Kai if he’d been scared outside alone.

“No,” he said.

“I might have been scared,” I offered.

“Not I,” he said.

He was quiet for a little while.

“Next time I need fresh air I’ll just open a window,” he said.

I glanced at him in my rearview mirror. His head was bent over his iPad.

“That’s a good idea,” I said.