Stage Mite

There was a moment today when a sharp shard of Drew’s burgeoning independence flew up and sliced my heart. (In a good way.)

Drew has a toy that plays a variety of songs depending on the button you push, and one of them is The Itsy Bitsy Spider, a Rhodes Family Favorite. Today I was reading a magazine and heard the song begin, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Drew’s little sausage arms moving up and over his head, down around his belly and clasped back together in front. My fifteen-month old son was doing the hand motions.

But the blessed moment, the thing that just warmed and melted me like candle wax, was the look on Drew’s face: sheer self-contentment, with a smidge of self-consciousness, as if—dare I say it—as if he was performing and loving every minute of it. He was not facing me, though. In his mind’s eye, apparently, a vast audience of pre-verbal crumb-crunchers stretched out before him, hanging on his every twitch. And all was right with the world.

(Oh boy. I’ve got mini-me on my hands…)

But I’d seen this coming. Another recent development in Drew’s appreciation for the Fine Arts sprouted last month while I was singing Broadway on the top of my lungs in the car. Drew was in the back seat, strapped in like a hostage, quiet and bug-eyed, listening to every note I suppose. The song ended, the light turned green, and then I heard it, faintly-- the pat-pat-pat of fat baby hands clapping. I sang another song just to be sure. And behold, Drew had all at once become a member of the applauding public. In that moment, there was something in me that startled; the way infants do who have just been born. This something I didn’t know existed and had perhaps just sprung into existence; a longing I had never named but was all at once realized: that is, to have the appreciation of my offspring. It was a marvelous thing--not un-like eating a family size pack of peanut M&M’s.

So, it appears my child has a flair for the dramatic. And I will be sure to let you know when Drew has begun his exploration of interpretive dance, because it looks like that might develop before he can say a proper “Mama!”

Fleeing

Today, we fumigated the house. I started noticing tiny pinprick bites on the back of Drew’s hand and forearm, and on his back and at the nape of his neck. They grew in number and when I saw a little black dot of a thing, appearing and disappearing again and again on the side of Drew’s head, I shuddered with the word that ran like a rat up my spine: fleas.

This embarrasses me. My son is better than that. He is cared for; his mother is competent. But I am in denial. Maybe it wasn’t a flea. Maybe it was just a little black dot—a cataract playing tricks on my vision, a disturbance in the Matrix, a bit of traveling stubble from Gordon’s five o’clock shadow…with a jump shot. It couldn’t be fleas anyway because we do not have pets.

I took Drew to the doctor a few days later because his sleep had been disturbed and he continues to tug at his ears indiscriminately. The last time I took him in, he just had fluid in his ears, no infection. The time before that: double ear infection. And that was the diagnosis again this day. “By the way,” I say casually, holding up Drew’s little brie-cheese arm, “Is this a rash? Or bites of some kind?”  

“These look like ant bites,” the doctor said, pointing out the clustered nature of the bites on Drew’s hand. “See, breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Oh the relief. Better an ant farm than flea infestation.  But on Tuesday, I saw a few more flying black dots, one of which actually crawled up the side of Drew’s head, forcing me to question my beard stubble theory.

Since I enjoy Orkin commercials, that’s who I called, except the exterminator did not arrive wearing a helmet, which was slightly disappointing because then I could ask why they wear them in the commercials. Does that not make you wonder, why an exterminator needs a construction helmet to spray juice in corners?

When the Orkin man-child arrived at my house, I wondered if perhaps he was committing a truancy violation. But he was very polite and competent, and explained that his trusty canned toxins would be good for spiders, roaches, fleas, ants and crickets. Thanks, dude. I can tell you know a house that’s just begging for vermin when you see one. I wanted to let him know that our kitchen has just been remodeled and so we’ve been living under a thicker layer of grime than usual. I also wanted him to know I didn’t think we had fleas—we might—but that we definitely have spiders, which seems more respectable.

I had to take Drew out of the house when he finished, to let the toxins dry on all of the rugs and carpet that Drew loves to crawl on. I kept asking how safe the stuff was for a baby to be around, but Orkin Teen’s best answer was that “it dries.”

At the end of the treatment, the exterminator told me he saw most of the fleas in Drew’s room (so, they are fleas?), particularly on his plush rocking horse, horror of horrors. He gave me instructions to vacuum all the rugs and carpet after three hours and to dispose of the vacuum filter.

Case closed. My child is officially a ragamuffin, straight out of Dickens.

Forced to leave my flea-infested house, where the cries of the dying were hopefully rising up like smoke, I took Drew to Home Depot to return some leftover kitchen hardware. Then on to the Container Store to buy some overpriced plastic bins for his outgrown clothes. When I got back in the car after the Container Store, I made it about a quarter of a mile down the road and to a red light when I looked down and, to my great shock and fascination, four ants were loitering on my left thigh! One seemed to have been crushed, perhaps in a fold of my shorts when I leaned in to adjust an air vent. I made a shrill primal noise and brushed them away. I had ants in my pants!

Later, after the car was safely in Park, I inspected the floorboards of the car, where another five or so ants were doop-de-dooing around like they owned the place. All along, I had been putting my son inside a rolling ant party limo. He was like a fresh sacrifice, all strapped down and wide eyed.

The doctor had been right! What was worse, we both had been right.

(If my other mom friends no longer feel comfortable coming over to play, we will understand. Please don’t tell other people who don’t read this blog, though, because the problem(s) surely will be fixed soon and then where will my reputation be?)

I lit a candle and took a bath later that night in order to learn how to breathe again, and to read. I found a flea floating in the water. My mind began to wander over the day and over life in general, resting on the thought that’s been perched on the top of my head for the last few weeks: Drew turns one next month. I got out of the tub and blew the candle out, and it smelled sweet and charcoaly, like birthday cake.

Let’s all pray there’s enough of Drew left to celebrate…