The kids have been busy wringing every last playable moment out of the summer.  This means they’re having lots of quality time with the neighbor kids, but maybe not so much with me. I’m mostly needed for snacks and negotiating treaties. When school begins again, I will relish our after-school snack time together where their need of a snack meets my need of their presence.  But this week, as the kids were tethered to the table writing a thank you note, Ben gave me this:
Another parenting milestone reached here at the Swedberg household:Â lice!
Ben and Lucy had been to a sleepover this weekend and we heard on Tuesday that they might have taken some little buggy friends home with them. I am fascinated by how I take news like that. My mother once said I would make a good drill sergeant and I think she’s right. I can feel the daily carapace of fog in which I usually live dropping away and I am all action. I just love a checklist. Within 5 minutes of that phone call, I had stripped all the beds and thrown all the towels in the laundry. By the end of the day, I had vacuumed all our furniture and gone over each child’s head with the devotion of an orangutan. This may be the only instance in Ben and Lucy’s life where their superfine hair is an advantage. Lucy went first and I found nothing. Ben went next and just as I was pulling the comb through for what I thought was the final time, jackpot! A louse, writhing on the comb, deprived of its cozy bed and breakfast. Shuddering, I found one more and sent Ben and Lucy off to bed to sleep in possibly the cleanest beds they’ve ever slept in.
Karl and I checked our own heads as well and I may have a bald patch or two. My hair might be considered by some a pelt. A real louse Ritz. But we were both clear. I did have lice once, in college if you can believe it. No idea how I got it and no idea how all 3 of my roommates were spared. I remember shampooing in this tarry black shampoo that may account for aforementioned daily fog and not thinking much more about it.
This was only possible because there was no internet at the time. If you Google “lice,” there are 8,300,000 English entries. If you type “lice” into the YouTube search bar, there are over 4,000 videos about lice, including one that had me mesmerized of a louse crawling on a cotton ball. It went on for 5 minutes and I watched the whole thing. My point is, you could really get crazy.  The daily nitpicking is a lousy — I had to — way to spend an hour and can leave you feeling itchier than when you began.  Don’t you feel a little buggy just reading this?  I took this opportunity to teach the kids the word psychosomatic. And I was delighted when Ben said at dinner a few nights ago: “We need a head med! Or some lice advice!” Lice word play!! I am so proud.
We’re four days into what I hear is supposed to be a 10-day experience. To facilitate my children’s tolerance, I’m paying $2 per nitpicking session and you can keep your judgements to yourself. I think I’m getting a great deal. In fact, I probably should have been paying Ben to shampoo his hair all along. He’s quite bribable. I thought this might bring about the Great Haircutting, but I think his shoulder-length tresses will survive, especially since we’ve found no lice or nits since the first inspection.  They watch tv while I’m inspecting each follicle and they’ve got gorgeous, well-brushed hair for the longest stretch of time ever. I may have to start tugging on his hair a bit more by Day 10 or he’ll be asking to share hairbrushes with his friends. He’s got his sights set on a handheld video game and he’s got to pay for it himself.
Whoa. TOTALLY unreliable, I know. Must write more.
I’ve got about 10 posts swirling inside my head, the first of which is a declaration of intent or Why I Post. Too much to make happen with kids banging in and out of the house and SO much cleaning up to do after weeks and weeks of home improvement.
For now, this quip from Ben:
Ben: “Mom, are you going to put a little exercise area in there?”
[he is referring to the newly opened space in the middle of our basement]
After Ben’s recent foray into haiku, my eye caught a book at the library called Haiku This Other World and I plucked it off the shelf. All 817 of the book’s haiku were written by Richard Wright, the African-American novelist. Wright was born in 1908 in rural Mississippi and became famous with the publication of Native Son in 1940. He spent the last years of his short life in exile in France where he became obsessed with haiku, writing over 4000 of them in less than 2 years.
These two are typical of the melancholy throughout the book — I’m not sure if that sadness is Wright’s or just a natural product of haiku.
Steep with deep sweetness,
O You White Magnolias,
This still torpid night!
Past the window pane
A solitary snowflake
Spins furiously.
I like the ones where Wright is a presence in the work, but that may be just my aversion to the loneliness the others invoke:
I give permission
For this slow spring rain to soak
The violet beds.
Burning autumn leaves,
I yearn to make the bonfire
Bigger and bigger.
On my trouser leg
Are still a few strands of fur
From my long dead cat.
And then there are a few of relieving wry humor:
I am paying rent
For the lice in my cold room
And the moonlight too.
Two flies locked in love
Were hit by a newspaper
And died together.
But finally, my favorite. This one has a novel behind it:
Suddenly one spring
She did not skip any more,
And her eyes grew grave.
Do you remember that song “Who Let the Dogs Out?” No? It was a huge hit ten years ago. Also ranked the #3 most annoying song ever by Rolling Stone, handily thrashing “The Thong Song” by Sisqo. If you enjoy having a song stuck in your head for days, do click on this link:
Anyway, we received one of those talking greeting cards that plays that song. The kids have opened and closed that card hundreds of times, and it led to this exchange:
Lucy, singing: “who put the moo in the cow? Who who who?â€
Ben: “that IS a good question!â€
Lucy tries on my sunglasses and strikes a rapper-pose.
Ben, appraising her:  “If she just had a fancy pair of shoes on, she’d look like a model in a shoe store.â€
This makes me have, as Ben would say, “many wonders.” I wonder: how did Lucy know how to fold her arms and mug like that? I wonder: do they have models in shoes stores?  And do they pose like rappers? And WHO has been taking my son to shoes stores?
Their thought processes just don’t match mine at all sometimes. This leads to lots of irritation and frustration on both our parts, but in that instance, I just felt a little jealous that I couldn’t join the conversation without making it thunk to a halt.
It’s been a while since Lucy delivered a zinger. I found this one sitting in my drafts file. I really thought I’d shared it. It’s a jewel.
Lucy:Â Mom, dogs are people too.
Sara:Â No, they’re not.
Lucy:Â Well, they could be.
Sara: No, they can’t. People are humans. Only humans. You know, women, men, boys, and girls.
Lucy: And hobos.
Yes, dear. And hobos.
Here is what she said to Karl later in the evening:
Lucy: Dad? If Ben had a personal narrative, it would be “I’d like to be alone.”
Spot on. You think they’re just planning their next raid on the refrigerator or their next assault on their mother’s underwear [Wedgies Live!], and then they reveal the workings of their freewheeling, unencumbered brains.
by Anthony Trollope. Dr. Wortle discovers that his most esteemed teacher at his school for boys, Mr. Peacocke, is not actually married to his wife, leaving the school and Dr. Wortle in a moral quandary. I’ve never read Trollope. It was charming. The ending of this book was so strange — Dr. Peacocke’s marital situation is resolved and the last 20 pages of the book find Dr. Wortle’s daughter engaged to a former student. I am too thick to see the connection.
Thank you Sheila McGrath for mentioning this book years ago as one of your favorites. Now it’s one of mine too. I looked for a copy that didn’t have this hideous now-a-movie cover, but at $150-$1600 a pop online, I’ll just keep this one. Delightful.
On the first day of May (in my 50th year), my aunt Sue gave to me…. this wonderful little book I’ve never heard of written in 1949 and re-released by Persephone Press. Lovely.
