Possession Is Nine-Tenths of Something

Yesterday I started reading Glimpses of the Devil by M. Scott Peck. I picked this up at the library because Peck is a psychiatrist, so I thought he might have something interesting to say about evil.

After reading about three quarters of it, I can say that it’s relatively entertaining but not very convincing. Some of it is laughable. He picked up some idea (from Malachi Martin) that possessed people have remarkably smooth skin and unwrinkled faces. Oh give me a break. Demons as botox—everyone will want one.

It didn’t help that he laid the blame for his second patient’s possession on an “evil” book, Gods’ Man. From the way he talked about it, you’d think it was some arcane book of the occult. I looked it up and it turns out that it’s by Lynd Ward, one of our premier illustrators, and it does not have a history of destroying the lives of those who viewed it (and given that it sold very well, it got quite a viewing). The story, a parable of an artist selling his soul to the devil (which is the most pedestrian story ever—Faust, anyone?) is told entirely through woodcuts—no text. Looking at a few of the woodcuts from the book, I can’t see anything particularly malevolent. Goya’s “Disasters of War” collection was more viscerally disturbing. I felt like jumping under a bus after going though an exhibit of those drawings. And those weren’t parables at all. They were about real events.

Anyway, his credibility went kerplunk for me, because he obviously didn’t know anything about the history of the book or its creator. And he also got a lot of his info on exorcism from Malachi Martin, who seems to have been either a complete charlatan or just a manipulative bastard. Peck admits that he was himself manipulated, but he felt loved.  Isn’t that sweet?

Despite the fact that I think the book is shaky in its conclusions, I still found it pretty creepy. Both these women had been abused and had pushed that information way way back. That in itself is disquieting. I was also disturbed by Scott’s premise that a victim’s need to believe a lie (everything’s fine, nothing happened) lays her open to evil. That seems possible indeed.

The reason I’m interested in the topic of possession at all is because my mother went through a period of obsession with it. When The Exorcist came out, she was keen to take me to see it with her. I was six.

Think about that, how we strive to protect our children from seeing unsavory things, yet my mother wanted to take her six-year-old daughter to see a movie about the possession of a young girl.

Even at six I knew something was wrong with this arrangement and flat-out refused to go. The movie was re-released when I was thirteen, and this time I did go with my mom.

Big mistake

That movie terrified me. I cried. I put my hands over my eyes and cried. I wanted to leave, buy my mother was fascinated. She was weird fascinated. For a very very long time I was seriously frightened that I could become possessed. I was worried that I would become possessed and chop up my parents with axes.

There was a period of time when there was something seriously wrong with my mom. Beyond the schizophrenia or bipolar or whatever she had, which was bad enough. When I was quite young I had a dream that I walked into the bedroom and saw my mother, but then I also saw her in the bathroom. I had two mothers, and one was fake. The fake one had two snaps at the base of her neck. I was scared of her. That seems like a classic dream about having a mentally ill mom—there’s nice mom and there’s hallucinating paranoid mom.

But then there was this possession obsession. She bought a few books on the subject. She tried to talk with me about it. I suppose, since she heard voices, that she wondered if she was possessed. She seemed to imply that maybe I was. Or could be.

She went through a spell of buying True Detective magazines. If you’ve never encountered one of these, they are all about violence--describing violent acts in gloating, graphic detail. I picked one up once to see what she was reading and felt physically ill, and pretty freaked out that my mom devoured this trash.

She bought a Oija Board. This was something I stayed faaaaar away from. I had no interest in talking to dead people. I wanted dead people to stay faaaar away.

She bought me a collection of ghost stories. This was no innocent collection of folklore—these were horrible, lurid stories.  Of course, my mom did once choose to read as a bedtime story “The Tale-Tell Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. Pleasant dreams, little one.

So I spent a good bit of childhood and adolescence scared out of my wits.  After I left home for college my mom lost her weird obsessions and started reading Aquinas and William James. Even her bipolar schizophrenia whatever seemed to go into remission for long stretches, so that by the time I was a mother she was just a sweet, intelligent woman who could have been happy studying in a seminary.

To this day I do not like the dark, and I will not look in mirrors in dark rooms. I will never watch The Exorcist again—I can’t even bear to hear any of the sound. I’m still uneasy about what might be under the bed. Seriously. Sometimes the memory of one of my biggest childhood fears—a hand coming out from under the bed to grab me—flashes through my mind and I experience the same irrational terror, despite logic and years of experience.

RSVP

I always thought that RSVP had a very specific meaning.

My definition: You will phone to let me know your child will be attending Firecracker's birthday party, and you will also phone to let me know if your child will not be attending.

The definitions I'm assuming other people are using:
Option 1: I will phone you only if I know for sure we won't be there. But I don't know for sure. My kid might be bored that day.
Option 2: If I don't phone it means we'll be there. Maybe.
Option 3: If I don't phone it means we won't be coming. Probably.
Option 4: I will call you the day of the party and ask if it's too late to RSVP.
Option 5: haven't met you so I don't have to RSVP.
Option 6: Huh?

I hope someone of the 20 or so people I invited actually show up.


Update:

Well, exactly one child showed up. Luckily, Firecracker didn't seem to care. And it was just McDonald's.

The suggestions to call would be great, except that schools don't release phone numbers. And of course I have never met any of these parents. When would I? I work. So do they, I imagine. And there aren't many (make that any) after hours events. DramaQueen's teacher had the foresight to get permission from all the parents during orientation and gave us each a sheet of names and numbers. Of course, all DramaQueen's classmates RSVP'd to her party.

But it didn't much matter. Firecracker had a great time climbing through the McDonald's playground with her friend.

Conversion

I ran across a post today on conversion at Thoughts on the Way to the Abbey. I found it compelling because I never had any blinding flash of light conversion experience. Conversion seems like a rather slow and not always pleasant process, and accepting Christ as savior is just the beginning. I was “saved” at the age of seven or eight, when I didn’t have much understanding of what it meant, and then life led me away from faith and then I started inching up to it again. Anthony quotes a monk, Father Simeon, in his post. Here is what he says:

Father Simeon said that if conversion means anything,it must mean that your life is not going to be the same. If your life is basically the same after you said some words or something, you have not been converted. He said that he sometimes wonders when he hears people talk about their conversions, and he wants to ask them, "Is your life any different apart from a few added on religious observances? Has your life been disrupted?"

Has it disrupted mine? I have to admit that I very much like to be comfortable. I wonder how much conversion actually disrupts the lives of most Christians. I witnessed a lot of emotional walks to the altar. People get caught up in the emotionalism of being saved--but as for fruit . . .

I was also captured by the idea of marriage as conversion:

He said everyone who has been married for very long has been called to conversion, because that's what marriage is, a call to conversion, though people seldom see it that way, and that may be a reason so many marriages fail. We enter marriage with the idea that "this person will enhance my life." Father Simeon says, "What, like a new Lexus will enhance your life?" And notice the emphasis on "my" life. Marriage is no longer my life, but our life.

Happy Birthday, Firecracker!

Firecracker is four today. She'll have a party later in the month, but tonight we celebrated with cupcakes piled hight with pink and white frosting. The girls have been buzzing with sugar all evening.

When Firecracker was born, she weighed only 1 lb, 15 oz. She wasn't much bigger than the Beanie Babies that the nurses used to prop up the various tubes that fed and oxygenated her. She was born at 26 weeks, and we didn't know if she would live, or if she would survive but have serious physical or mental problems. The doctors told us to prepare for a rollercoaster ride. But from her first days Firecracker was fiesty, and she made it through her two-month hospital stay with very few issues.

Some problems developed later--seizures, hypothyroid, asthma, learning delays. Tomorrow Dear Husband and I meet with her IEP team to discuss the strategy for next year. She has made dramatic progress over the past few months, but her language skills are nowhere near those of most four-year-olds. She can understand at a four-year-old level, but speaks (just barely) like a three-year-old.

Firecracker is such an affectionate child, lavish with hugs and kisses. She has never met a caretaker she couldn't charm. She runs after them saying "Big hug!" and they break out into smiles. DramaQueen is very protective of her, and Firecracker is pretty possesive of DramaQueen. When she can't find her, Firecracker says, "Where's my Bish?" (She can't pronounce DramaQueen's name, so this is her radically short version.)

Firecracker loves baby dolls, trains, Bob the Builder, and toy cars. She insists that all her clothes have pockets (which she stuffs with toy cars). When she's excited she pumps her arms up and down, shouting "Huwway! Huwway!" When she laughs, her whole body laughs.

Happy birthday, little Firecracker, little miracle.

The Number 12

Yesterday at the daycare after-school program, the teacher noticed that DramaQueen was writing down a number sequence

12, 24, 36, 48

so she explained how the sequence works and how to continue it.

All evening DramaQueen, using two-and-a-half hands, added 12 to increasingly large numbers until she got to 156. Then she started over again. She was very excited and pleased as punch with herself.

I don’t know how she ran across this sequence. And why 12? That’s an unwieldy number to manipulate when you have to use your fingers to add. I don’t think she understands that you can manipulate all numbers the same way. She just really likes 12.

Work Sure Can Ruin a Day

My job is beginning to feel like a three-ring circus, and there’s a man-eating tiger in every ring.

1. I’m taking a class in FrontPage so that I can take over updating our web site. This is daunting, since they want the web site redesigned.
2. I’m about a week behind getting our yearly devotional ready to go to the designer.
3. I forgot several steps relating to 2, which will delay matters even further.
4. Oh, and I have to promote the devotional, which involves setting up email campaigns to our churches and bugging other agencies.
5. I have to create a bunch of schedules for upcoming projects. This is always time-consuming.
6. The monthly e-newsletter is breathing down my neck.
7. An appeal letter that the director keeps saying will go away hasn’t gone away and I still have to write it.
8. I have to edit and update all our fliers. Oh, about half a dozen if not more. I think I have until May 1, but
9. There will be quite a few other things due by May 1, the cutoff date prior to big ol’ General Assembly.
10. Oh no, General Assembly.

The art instructor at DramaQueen's school chose her artwork for display at a new teacher training center in our county. She was one of two from the school, so this is my first official "brag" on my daughter. Dear Husband was so tickled he emailed everyone in our address book and posted the letter from the teacher on his blog.

Now We Are Six

This morning I let DramaQueen go into daycare ahead of me while I put Firecracker on her bus. Then I went in to give her a goodby hug and kiss. She looked at me warily and said a quick "bye-bye" that came out more like "ba ba," then gave me a perfunctory hug when I kept coming.

She was embarassed to hug and kiss me in front of the other kids.

I thought I had at least another couple of years.

On the way home this evening she asked if she could watch some television when we got home. I said she could either finish her movie or watch whatever was on "her" (Disney) channel.

"I'll watch whatever's on TV, if that's acceptable."

I'm getting teary-eyed here.

Sick in the Head

Literally. I stayed at home today with a sinus infection. And now it's evening. How did the time, my time of rest, go so quickly? Of course some of it was spent at the doctor's office and the pharmacy, but still, I feel so very tired. And whiney. And I always feel guily when I take a day off work, as if I'm kid playing hookey. And I feel guilty that the kids are still at daycare, even though I'm tired and sick. I dread the pileup of work on my desk tomorrow. I like my job. I like the people I work with. But this afternoon, when I was wandering the drugstore aisles waiting for my prescription, I saw a girl in a school uniform with her mom. And when I drove into the parking lot of our apartment complex, I saw another girl, walking home from the bus, and I felt such a pang of sadness. I wish I could be one of those moms who's waiting at home when their kids come in from school.

Why I Hate Mornings

I have a bit of a quandary that I’ve been dealing with all school year. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have to wake DramaQueen and Firecracker at 5:45 am so that Firecracker can catch the bus to her school at their daycare center. Firecracker goes to a special school that starts an hour earlier than DramaQueen’s school. It isn’t in our school district, and this has led to some complications with regard to transportation, pick-up times, and my job, all of which is too boring to explain here. Life is sooo unfair.

I could probably part the Red Sea more easily that I can get a three-year-old and a six-year-old out of bed at 5:45 am (unless it’s Christmas, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion). Getting them to bed earlier has not worked well—partly because by the time I pick them up after work and get them home, I would have about an hour to do get them fed and bathed before bed. Dear Husband might like that, but the girls have other opinions. And at the end of that hour, Dear Husband will be home and the celebratory dancing and chanting will commence: “Daddy! Daddy! Daaaadddddyyyy!”

(Have I mentioned that no matter what time Firecracker goes to bed, or how busy her day, at 10 pm I will find her sitting up in bed, bright-eyed, playing with a car?)

We have been conscientious about laying out clothes for the next day, having the backpacks and lunches by the door and the coats at the ready, and setting Mommy’s coffee maker to go off at 5:30 am. But all the preparation in the world cannot get around the fact that no one wants to be awake at 5:45 am. Including me.

It’s amazing how difficult it is to dress inert bodies.

And why do they put seams in children’s socks? If we can fly to the moon, can we not develop a seamless sock to save the sanity of moms across America?

But back to the early start conundrum. I think I have arrived at a solution. If I limit their clothing to sweats and leggings with t-shirts, they can sleep in what they will wear the next day! Problem solved!

You think I’m kidding.

DramaQueen's Birthday Party

DramaQueen has a smashing birthday party this past Saturday. She actually turned six on the 4th, but Christmas break makes it hard to coordinate an earlier party. We held the party at a plaster painting place. The manager lived up to her name by managing the children wonderfully. I didn’t have to do anything except sit in the front with some other parents and eat leftover pizza. She was truly amazing. Imagine organizing 13 excited, squealing six-year-olds in a space where everything is breakable. She maneuvered them neatly through donning a smock, choosing a piece to paint, and painting. Then she served pizza and set up a game of musical chairs. She even kept them all in line during the present opening segment. And at the end she was just as calm and collected as at the beginning. And it was her third party of the day. Whatever she has, I need it.

Anyway, we have more toys than she can play with. I still haven’t unboxed some of them. And what is with boxes these days? I need a tool set just to unlock a Barbie doll from its wrapping. I’ll be fishing those stupid twist ties out of the carpet for weeks. I also have a burning question: Who invented Polly Pockets? Whoever you are, you’re going to roast for it. These things have shoes that are smaller than my pinkie nail. That is so wrong.

Friday Five: Pleasures

1. Sex
2. Reading when I should be working
3. Chocolate, particularly a box of assorted chocolates, as long as they are mostly nut and caramel centers.
4. An iced Caramel Machiatta from Starbuck’s
5. Watching someone else clean my house

Bonus: The absolute quiet when Dear Husband takes the girls on an outing.

Quick Note

I wanted to peek my head out and say thank you to everyone who left comments on my Gloomy Depressed Post. Your kind words and prayers mean a lot to me. I’m busy busy busy at the moment. DramaQueen’s birthday party is this weekend—and there’s another birthday party the same day! I also have an editing project to work on at home in my “spare” time. My concentration has improved dramatically, but I don’t think there’s a pill to overcome the lethargy that overwhelms me when I look at a sink full of dishes or a dryer full of clothes. Sigh.

DramaQueen, on a dark and windy night

Mom, the trees are dancing!
See??
The trees are dancing to the hip-hop!

Just Me and My Shadow

Depression has the unfortunate side effect of making the world all about me.  Like a bad toothache, depression is impossible to ignore for very long; it narrows my focus until all I’m left with is the darkness lodged in my psyche. I’m on medication, so now I am functional. Unhappy, but functional. My concentration has improved. I can get work done. Sometimes the physical tension of this is so great that tears seep out. Depression is a burden on the soul. The following is shameless self-indulgent confession.

I remember my first encounter with depression. It was my junior year of high school. I was smitten with one of my friends, a senior.  He was an atheist, and a good debater.  I kept in my personal cupboard a few unexamined beliefs about God, Jesus, salvation, goodness, love, morality, and the way the world operated.  He took out every single one of them and smashed them.  This was a very strange experience, to look out at the world unprotected by any creed, to see, well, Nothing.  Why get up? Why have an opinion?  Why anything?  Why be?

I read the Bell Jar. Doesn’t every depressed teenage girl read the Bell Jar?  There were no pills to overdose on in my house.  I wasn’t savvy enough to know exactly what would make you overdose.  I read somewhere that if you slit your wrists you have to make the cuts vertical rather than horizontal.  Perhaps, I thought, I could do that.  It seemed a rather painful way to go, but perhaps razors were sharper than I thought and flesh not so resistant.  I found the blades for my dad’s razor in the bathroom.  I made a few cuts on my arm.

This isn’t going to work, I thought.

Fuck, I can’t even kill myself.  

I made a few more cuts, and then some more, until my arm was crosshatched.  And then I stopped.  

I felt better.

Small cuts like this release opiate-like substances into the brain.  Self-medication was never so easy!

Except I had to wear long sleeves all the time.

You might wonder if my parents ever noticed that I had turned into a dour, joyless, self-injuring freak. Nope. They were too busy tormenting each other.

IF they worried about me, they worried about sex. They were afraid I might be having sex with the atheist boy. Which I wasn’t. Unfortunately.

Unexpectedly, one day at the end of the school year, the darkness lifted a bit, and then a bit more, and I had a relatively happy senior year. And I could wear short sleeves.

And then I went to college. On the one hand, college was a liberating experience, to be free of my crazy parents and the petty crap that goes on in high school, to find like-minded people who actually had conversations about books and politics and art.  On the other hand, I was a painfully shy person. All my thoughts lodged in my throat.  I wanted to love and be loved, but that was too intimate to bear.

I had to wear long sleeves a lot.

Since there were free counseling services, I went to see a therapist. Funny me, I was so secretive about my little “self-medication problem” that I never even told my therapist, a somewhat sour fellow that I don’t even remember. Then there was the nice woman therapist who taught me relaxation breathing. Uh huh. Then there was the intake therapist who caught a glimpse of my arms and freaked out so much I thought she might commit me. She decided I was beyond the reach of a college counseling center and foisted me on a psychologist in downtown Atlanta.  I always think of him as the gay therapist, because he was.  He gave a new meaning to talk therapy.  I heard more about his life than my own.  I still have one of his books, Mae West Is Dead.  I made him very happy by deciding that I was actually a lesbian. It seemed to explain a lot of things.

And then I went to New York to be a poet.  This is the perfect vocation for depressives, and New York is the best place to be if you have any abnormal traits.  Everyone has a therapist and everyone is nuts.  I can’t remember meeting anyone who was happy or well adjusted, at least not in the poetry department of Columbia.  We were like guests at a Jerry Springer show: incest, child abuse, rape, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide attempts, spouse abuse, homosexual but conflicted, homosexual but no longer conflicted just really pissed off.  My problems paled in comparison.  But I wasn’t really capable of looking on the bright side.

Eventually I ended up at the Mt. Sinai outpatient psychiatric clinic, where I was introduced to the miraculous properties of Prozac.  

Ah, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors . . .  

This is IT, I thought. This is what normal feels like. Wow.

I wasn’t sure I had felt like this before EVER, even as a child. Definitely not as a child.

But

Fast-forward to here and now. Which isn’t so great. Getting better, perhaps, but not so great.

My therapist says I need to see myself as God sees me.

Well, yeah. Duh.

And I should pray for guidance. Uh, since I wasn’t so clear on how that worked before the Black Crow came and nested in my heart, I sure don’t know how it works now.

Oh, and if you’re worried that I might be “self medicating” again, I’m not.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Hot Wheels

I've started to worry about Firecracker's teeth. As a baby she wouldn't let anyone near her mouth--a response to being intubated after birth. It took a lot of coaxing to start a brushing routine. For a while the electric toothbrush was a wonder, but then she started to dislike it's vibration, and the head is a bit too big for her mouth. Brushing sessions sound like this:

Me: Let Mommy brush your teeth now.
Firecracker: Do it MYSELF!
Me: Okay, but let me finish up.
Firecracker: NO! MYSELF! (proceeds to lick off toothpaste and chew on bristles)
Some negotiation later:
Me: Open wide! (I brush as gently as possible with a disabled electric toothbrush)
Firecracker: Ouch. Ow. Ouch.
Me: Just a bit more--open wide.
Firecracker: Ow. Ow. Ow. DONE!

The other day I thought I spotted two little brown dots on her upper teeth. Horrors! Since DramaQueen had to have two root canals at the age of three (I swear, I did brush them every day and I didn't give her lots of sweets!). I decided it was time to take more agressive action. Flouride rinse. Floss every day, not just when I can wheedle her into it. New toothbrush with smaller head.

So last night Dear Husband came home with a special toothbrush for Firecracker. It's a Hot Wheels toothbrush. The handle swerves like a racetrack and has a racecar at the bottom. You should have seen Firecracker's face light up. "Hu-way! Hu-way! Hu-way!" she cried, doing her special happy dance. I had to open it right away and brush her teeth. Several times.

I think she likes this toothbrush more than all her Christmas and Chanukah presents put together. She fell asleep with it clasped in one hand, and she was inconsolable this morning when she woke up and it wasn't there (Bad Mommy had put it away) until it was once again where it truly belonged--her hand.

I didn't know there were so many aspects to dental hygiene.

Give the Little Lady a Hand

A few nights back I had an icky dream. Or really, a dream snippet.  Hands were breaking through the ground, hands covered with what looked like rivulets of blood or perhaps red vines snaking around them.  Dear Husband says this is a direct result of the movie War of the Worlds, even though I didn’t watch it. It just seeped in. The one image I did catch was of a city covered in red vinous stuff.  So, yeah, I guess there’s a connection.

On the other hand (ha!) some of my most vivid nightmares have featured hands.  When I was 5 or 6, I experienced a series of nightmares that I can still vividly recall:

Nightmare 1:  I am in our living room (of the house I grew up in) and there are dismembered hands and fingers lying on the sofa, end tables and chairs. There are no evident signs of violence, no blood. The room is well-lit; there are no shadows.  It is very quiet, and eerie. My father comes in and begins putting the hands and fingers into a brown paper bag. My mother is there, too, but she does not seem to be paying attention; she is staring off into space.

Nightmare 2:  I see an expanse of desert covered with hands, as if there were bodies buried there with just the hands showing. On the horizon is a man dressed in dark robes, on horseback.

Nightmare 3:  I am in a neighbor’s bedroom (a teenage girl who lived next door). On her dressing table is a hand. It looks something like a mannequin’s hand. It “stands” on its wrist, all the fingers extended, as if its purpose were to hold rings and necklaces. The hand has long, red nails. I go up to it and touch it, and it grabs my hand.

So, why do I dream about hands? Do they have a symbolic significance? Dear Husband thinks they are related to the ability to act. So I guess following that thought that severed hands indicate impotence. That does have a nice Freudian ring to it.

Would anyone like to play armchair dream analyst?

Praise God and Pass the Wellbutrin

Just a note to say that I'm toddling along here. Christmas and Chanukkah have been very nice. Thank God my MIL was here. She's a dear and kept things running along, and the girls love being spoiled by their Nana. I love being spoiled by her, too. There are two meatloafs, a leg of lamb, and a kugel in the fridge.

I hate New Year's--not much of one for optimistic new beginnings. I do have one plan for the year. I joined a Yahoo group called Lectio Divina. The name's a bit of a misnomer, since we'll be reading through the Bible in a year, which seems a pretty rapid clip for actual Lectio Divina. It should be interesting, since the participants are all over the board, including a few pagans.

DramaQueen's sixth birthday is approaching. I finally settled on having a party in a pottery place, because it relieves me from practically all planning and hosting duties, except chasing down the parents of invited kids, because no one every bothers to RSVP. The woman who runs the pottery shop cheered me with the story of a little boy who had his party there and absolutely NO ONE showed up, not even his dad. It doesn't help that I've never met any of DramaQueen's classmates or their parents. Hurrah, with a new year begins new vacation and sick leave. Maybe I'll actually get to participate in a school activity, unless Firecracker decides on her annual February stay at the hospital.

Oh, and in a moment of weakness and financial panic I took on an editing project, when all I'd like to do is soak in a hot tub and read one of my Christmas presents, Red Moon Rising.

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers. I've had problems off and on with depression since my teens. After I had kids, I discovered that it's really easy to not notice when you're depressed. You have to focus so much on other people that the warning signs get buried in the day to day. I've also discovered that switching from one anti-depressant to another can be a real bitch.

Tonight, I plan to savor the leftover eggnog, with a splash of brandy. That should help the editing.

Depressed

Too depressed to post for a few days. Please send up a prayer when you have a chance.

DramaQueen and Firecracker

Lorna suggested that I explain why I’ve given my five-year-old and three-year-old the blog names DramaQueen and Firecracker.  So here goes.

DramaQueen is actually taking a drama class, for which she is well suited.  Her instructor tells us that she has given herself a new name—Chloe—and a vocation—Rock Star.  Being a rock star to her means playing guitar. So far singing, although she likes to sing, is not her thing.  She likes to dance, too, and wants to learn hip-hop.  We’re waiting for a windfall of money so we can enroll her in all the music and dance classes she wants to take.  Besides being Chloe, she sometimes asks me to call her Jessica.  DramaQueen loves to be photographed. She’ll pose for you. She’ll pose for herself in the mirror.  She loves clothes, and already has definite ideas about what looks good on her.  She likes to make people laugh, and she’s happy to be the cut-up, the center of attention. Usually. She can also be shy, and sometimes she can play up being shy.  She also loves drawing and all things artsy, as long as I don’t try to force-feed her anything with my own arts education agenda.  If she is at a loss for what to DO, it is a TRAGEDY.  She drapes herself over the sofa, “Mom, what can I DO now?”  She has always been running ahead of herself, ever since she was born.  She came out of my womb with muscular little legs, as if she had been doing squats for nine months.  And indeed within hours she was trying to push off with her legs.  By nine months she was walking.  She’s eager to be 7, and 17, and she likes attaching herself to older girls (poor things, they seem to be very kind to her) but is not so eager to be an adult, since we all seem rather dreary (need to work on that, I guess).  She wanted to know if she could go right to first grade when she turns 6 this January.  She is very protective of Firecracker, despite the fact that Firecracker frequently annoys the living daylights out of her.

Firecracker is an enchanting child, the kind that caretakers connect with immediately. She is very affectionate, offering smiles, hugs and cuddles with abandon.  When she laughs, her whole body shakes, and her laughter sounds like bubbles floating into the air.  But don’t cross her.  Don’t rush her.  And yes, she WILL do it herself, and if you do it she’ll undo it and do it again HERSELF.  Her temper is daunting.  She requires special handling, because she does not make transitions very easily.  Her expressive language skills lag behind her comprehension, and she is often frustrated trying to make herself understood. I’m convinced that her temper helped her survive. She was born severely premature at 28 weeks. She weighed a mere 1 lb 14 oz, not much bigger than the Beanie Babies the NICU nurses used to prop up her tubes.  Even though premies this early and even earlier have increasingly high survival rates, doctors are very skittish, and the two months Firecracker was in the NICU, several babies died. Firecracker was known for her feistiness.  She had to have surgery to close the PDA valve in her heart, and the surgeon warned us that the anesthesia would probably render her motionless for a day or two, and not to worry.  Well, just two hours after surgery she was kicking the Beanie Babies out of her incubator, probably pissed off about the uncomfortable incision under her shoulder.  Firecracker likes toy cars and trains and baby dolls and being tickled.

Those are our girls, our wonderful, funny, rambunctious, infuriating, lovable girls.