homefaith<\/a>. Maybe a quick sojourn into the livingroom, to see what they know there (nothing; everyone but Nat is glued to a laptop or reading; why read when you could be running all over the house loudly, from room to room?\u00a0 Normal is defined purely by the majority.).<\/p>\nSo I start to come up with projects.\u00a0 I’ll bake gingerbread with him and Ned will take a walk with him.\u00a0 I’ll take him food shopping and then make him carry my laundry up and down on those practiced legs of his.\u00a0 Ned will see what he thinks of the iPad.\u00a0 I’ll see if any of his teachers want to come by and do something special with him.<\/p>\n
Still, over vacation we have our own inner lives, our own desires — Nat included — and these orderly plans don’t always pan out.\u00a0 For example, the other day, I got all psyched to have a quiet house for an hour while Ned took Nat out to Peet’s to pick up a pound of our favorite decaf (French roast).\u00a0 Problem is, Ned needed to help a friend out with something right after he had given the signal to Nat to get ready to go.\u00a0 So we were already on Defcon 3, which is the level at which Nat already has on his shoes (Defcon 2 is coats on, Ned’s shoes not yet tied.\u00a0 Defcon 1 is some other unforeseen delay).\u00a0 But sometimes Defcon 3 can blow straight through 2 and suddenly, Houston, we have a problem.<\/p>\n
Ha ha, that’s so funny now, in retrospect.\u00a0 But when it was happening, Ned was on the third floor in his office (where it was quiet) trying to help our friend on the phone, Max was on the second floor with two friends over discussing video games, Ben was trying to keep his cool while chatting with numerous friends on Buzz, and I was — what the heck was I doing?<\/p>\n
Whatever it was, I could see Nat was escalating.\u00a0 I heard, “Take walk, take walk,” in increasingly higher pitch, the stomping even harder (loose old house ceiling fixtures clinking).\u00a0 My pulse racing, Think think think Susan.\u00a0 Scared, scared…memories dark the corners of my mind…pissy, ordure-colored memories, of the way we were<\/em>…<\/p>\nCan it be that it was oh so simple then?\u00a0 Let me tell you, it was not.\u00a0 I used to be so lost in Nat’s upset.\u00a0 My mind would go: “Ahh! Benji!\u00a0 Scared! Stop it! Loud! Think! Don’t reward bad behavior!\u00a0 Must stop bad behavior quickly! Reward it — who’s going to know? Act! What did the school say to do?\u00a0 Fuck the school!\u00a0 Our house is blowing up!\u00a0 Siege, warning, warning…NAT!\u00a0 STOP THAT YELLING AND STOMPING,” I say, yelling and stomping.<\/p>\n
But that was then.\u00a0 You see, neurons can be retrained.\u00a0 Mine and Nat’s.\u00a0 All I could think this time was, “Come on, Ned.\u00a0 Nat is getting upset, thinking he may not be going on a walk.”\u00a0 I could see Nat was so upset, and I felt bad for him.\u00a0 I yelled at Ned a little, and then I thought, “You know what to do.”<\/p>\n
“Come on Nat, come sit with me.”\u00a0 He followed me upstairs.\u00a0 “Sit here,” I said, sitting on my bed.\u00a0 Not a time-out.\u00a0 Just the two of us sitting in a peaceful place.\u00a0 The sun through the lace curtain was soft, etching filigreed gray shadows on the white bedspread.\u00a0 Quiet air lay heavily, reassuringly on our shoulders and against our ears.\u00a0 Nat began sucking his thumb, a good sign.\u00a0 The loud chirps rocketed me back in time, to 1990, to another room, the same bed, my beautiful golden baby next to me, refusing to nap.\u00a0 Oh Nat, I thought.\u00a0 We are still the same.\u00a0 We are still you and me.\u00a0 “Let’s just wait a little bit.\u00a0 Daddy is almost done talking on the phone.\u00a0 He will come.\u00a0 You will go on your walk.\u00a0 I promise.”<\/p>\n
Nat exhaled deeply.\u00a0 He heard me.\u00a0 And so we just sat together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love it when I’m right.\u00a0 This has been quite a week. A typical Christmas break week.\u00a0 I watched War Games the other night, a movie I’d never seen, but one that we all could agree on.\u00a0 I learned what Defcon 1-5 is really like from that flick.\u00a0 It wasn’t bad.\u00a0 The movie, I mean; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-tM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4963,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/4963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}