faulty vision

Poppi ring - garnet roe

“What is that?” the Guy demanded when I came home last night.

“It’s a new ring. I bought it. And,” I added defiantly, “I love it. LOVE it, do you hear?”

Hobbes was instantly fascinated, and wrapped his little hand around the ring. “HI,” he said.

The Guy looked deeply skeptical.

“I know, it’s not my usual taste. But it’s awesome. And it’s comfortable. And it’s red. And I love it. So shut up.”

“It looks like something you’d buy on etsy.”

“When was the last time you bought something on etsy? And no it doesn’t. At least, it could be, because etsy has a lot of professionals on there too, but — stop trying to rain hate on my parade. It’s a great ring.”

And it is, too. It really isn’t my usual style, and my hand is far too pudgy and short-fingered to carry this look off, but I do not care. A girl’s got to have some fun. “And anyway,” I told him, “I look fantastic with it on.”

“Right,” he said.

“Fantastic,” I repeated loudly.

At least Hobbes agrees with me.

Good boy, Hobbes.

Ring purchased from Poppy Arts Gallery online, which incidentally has great customer service and really fast delivery times.

As I mentioned before, the Guy lost major husband points this past August by forgetting my birthday. We do not commonly celebrate birthdays in our household, but this is a matter of choice rather than omission; we do not celebrate birthdays because we have the comfortable awareness that we could celebrate it if we wanted to — we just happen to be too cool to bother with them. It’s the difference between quitting and being fired: the end result may be the same, but it’s where the power lies that matters. One spouse turning to the other spouse at 11:45 pm on the night of spouse 2’s birthday to say, “Oh, I forgot your birthday, didn’t I?” is not being cool. It’s being a nincompoop. Common self-preservation aside, there is no happy ending to this plotline. Either spouse 2 forgives spouse 1 and says it doesn’t matter, in which case spouse 1 is a schmuck, or spouse 2 gets mad and yells at spouse 1, in which case spouse 1 is a schmuck. Or else spouse 2’s feelings are hurt and she retires in dignified silence to move spouse 1’s pillows to the sofa, in which case spouse 1 is a schmuck….

You see where I’m going with this?

The Guy’s birthday happens to be after mine, on October 23rd, two days before Halloween — just go with me on this. It’s easier to just trust my worldview than to ask me to explain — which provided ample opportunity to plan coals of fire. On the day before, I left work early to head over to his workplace, arriving just after he’d left to pick Hobbes up from the airport.

Two of his friends let me in.

Birthday sabotage

The Guy is a good man, but he has a grumpy outer crust that I imagine is a bit tough for his coworkers to penetrate. He is, if you will, the Jack Lemon (or maybe Walter Matthau) of software development. Heart of gold, really! But there’s more than a bit of the, “Get those damn kids off my lawn” about him professionally. Perhaps because of that, the coworkers who happened to be around — quite a few, as it happened — entered into the spirit of things with surprising enthusiasm once they figured out what was going on.

“Do you think he’ll be ticked off when he sees this?” one of the coworkers asked another, in my hearing.

“I hope so,” I answered for him. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Sorry,” I told his boss, when I glanced up and found six or seven developers gathered around the cube. “I’ve sort of ruined your team’s productivity for the evening.”

Since his boss was busily filling a helium balloon at the time, it would be fair to say I didn’t meet with shock or dismay at the revelation.

“You’re a nice wife,” one of the developers said. I didn’t catch his name. “Where do I find a wife like you?”

“Oh, no. This isn’t me being nice. This is me doing my damnedest to embarrass my husband in front of his peers.”

I think the developer was new; he briefly looked uncertain. If he’d known my husband, he wouldn’t have.

“He forgot her birthday,” someone said, kindly letting him into the story.

“This is what you do when you’re mad?”

“To be fair, he really did feel bad about forgetting your birthday,” the Guy’s friend told me. “And he made up for it.”

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that the Guy eventually gave me one of the new iPhone Nanos, yellow, with a charming little engraving on it from himself and the Hobbes. It’s a great little gadget. I use it almost daily.)

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I told his friend loftily. “And,” I added, because I am also capable of honesty, “it’s just funny.”

Which it was.

Notice the idea one of his coworkers had about his shoelaces? And his keyboard?

It was almost 11 when he finally instant messaged me the next day.

(10:48:11 AM) The Guy: we want kaiser right? I have to do open enrollment again
(10:48:22 AM) Me: Sure.

A short pause ensued. Then:

(10:49:04 AM) The Guy: you evil monkey
(10:49:07 AM) Me: Yes.
(10:49:09 AM) Me: Happy birthday.
(10:49:14 AM) The Guy: thank you
(10:49:22 AM) Me: You’re welcome.

Fortunately, his coworkers had taken pictures the day before — the ones in this post are from them — since the first thing the Guy did when he arrived at his office was to start popping balloons. Killjoy.

(3:54:02 PM) The Guy is no longer idle.
(3:54:10 PM) The Guy: thanks for the cake
(3:54:19 PM) Me: Did you just have it?
(3:54:21 PM) The Guy: you really really pulled out all the stops huh?
(3:54:23 PM) The Guy: yeah

Next year, if he forgets my birthday again, I’ll start getting serious. I noticed the place that I rented the helium tank from also rents jump houses. And one of his coworkers mentioned that there is an adults-only balloon shop in San Francisco.

I’m just saying.

The Guy commented that I haven’t journaled about Hobbes as much as he had thought that I would. “I think you’re trying to keep from being boring,” he said, leaving unspoken the thought that I shouldn’t even bother trying because it was too late.

It was true, thinking back, that I had missed out on documenting a lot of milestones which may not have been particularly remarkable in the grand scheme of babyhood — almost every child cuts his first tooth, learns to walk, says his first word, and figures out how to unlock his mother’s Blackberry and speed dial his aunt at some point or another — but had all the shiny wonder of being an achievement of our very first (and possibly only) child.

Somewhere on the internet there is a young man who once informed a group of us that he would acquire a new word for his vocabulary. “This is the third time I’ve heard people use it,” he announced, “so I’ve learned it. Level up!” I laughed about it for days, but this is now what the Guy and I say in all seriousness whenever Hobbes has gained a new skill. “Achievement unlocked!” the Guy says, because he is a gamer and can’t help himself. “Level up!”

Hobbes is sort of like those strange and exciting packages you can buy from the backs of comic books. Formless powder. Add water. Watch as the cryptic little lint turns into real sea monkeys!

We finally got around to cutting Hobbes’s hair the other week, after I made a botched job of getting wisps of hair out of his eyes. That is to say, we took Hobbes to a professional. The job I was doing was getting us nowhere, fast.

Apparently, one can get away with charging quite a bit for a child’s haircut. I found it hard to begrudge the cost, though. The Guy and I certainly weren’t up to doing the job; we can’t even brush the child’s teeth. For a person the size of a small microwave, Hobbes has surprisingly powerful jaws. When I’m on the floor on top of him, trying to pry his mouth open with both hands, I find myself put forcibly in mind of those ants in rainforests, whose mandibles can take out entire warthogs. How he manages to keep his mouth closed and yet scream at the top of his lungs — with syllables, no less — is a secret that eludes me, I confess.

The hairdresser made quick work of it, with Hobbes shrieking the entire time. You would’ve thought we were trying to castrate him with dull tweezers, by the sound of it. The hairdresser, who had apparently gone through this many times before, phlegmatically whipped an electric razor around his head and voila! done. When I’d initially walked in with him, she’d asked me how I wanted it cut. I’d just stared at her blankly.

Experience with my husband has not made me an expert on haircuts that don’t make one look like a girl.

“You want him to look more like boy, okay?” the hairdresser said, telling me more than asking me.

New hair cut

Afterwards, she gathered up a tiny lock of hair, sealed it in a small plastic bag, and stapled it to what looked like a certificate. “You write his name here,” she ordered me, “and date here.” I obediently did so. After which she signed it and handed it across to me.

Certificate of Achievement. I kid you not. ‘This is to certify that (insert name here)’s first hair cut took place at (salon name) on (date).’

I showed it to the Guy without saying a word. He stared at it.

“Is that hair?” he demanded.

I started to snicker.

The Guy raised one of Hobbes’s little fists and pumped it in the air. The child yodeled. “Level up!” said his father.

“Tickle!” said Hobbes.

In other words, Hobbes has acquired his second grown-up word.

He now says, “Hi.”

So far he shows absolutely no interest in calling for his parents by name. From his point of view, I can see why not. What’s the point, when they’re always around?

We spent the tail end of September up in Seattle, in a quid pro quo nod to Mom’s visit last year. Last September, she came to California to celebrate Hobbes’s birth; this time we’re up north to celebrate Mom’s 70th birthday. In point of fact, we came up to throw a surprise party for Mom, but without the ’surprise’ component that makes a surprise party especially memorable. It was intended to be one, but we ended up throwing it at her house, which sort of took our ability to sneak around behind her back a bit problematic, to say the least.

My mother may be in her 70s now, but she is not a moron. Our insistence that we clean the dining room (and the living room and the kitchen and the entryway) would have seemed suspicious to her even if we hadn’t spent most of our time under her roof doing things that end up on reality TV specials involving industrial strength cleanser and riding crops. We fudged it a bit by saying that we had invited a couple of friends over to hang out on — oh, oops, is that your birthday? We thought that was Friday.

“How many?” she asked, in increasingly insistent anxiety as the answer moved from a handwavey, six or seven, maybe? to an apologetic, maybe twenty? followed by an even more alarming and inaccurate, Or more? Adding, don’t worry about it. It’s all under control didn’t noticeably appease her domestic alarms. Neither, to be fair, did our efforts to help her clean.

She has passed on many of her better qualities to us, but apparently one thing we never did inherit was her ability to really clean. Sako tends to just throw everything out. I take care of surfaces and visible bits. Mom has a craftsman’s pride; the dust bunnies might be under the sofa, but she’ll know they’re there.

It was Hobbes’s first taste of cake, and he enjoyed it a little too much, with the aftermath being that he scooted around on the floor like a mad spider in search of his life’s vengeance, Inigo Montoya on all fours. He was not the least inhibited by the fact that most of the people in the house were complete strangers to him. Insofar as he was concerned, they had all been invited to flirt with him. Since nobody raised any serious objections to this perspective, we kept the peace and all was good.

In all other respects, the visit to Seattle was quite successful. Our arrival was (somewhat) of a surprise as well, not as extreme as we had actually planned since in retrospect it seemed cruel to suddenly show up at my mother’s house with a one year old in tow.

It took all of a second for Mom and Hobbes to strike up their old lovefest again. Skype has been good for keeping my son’s memory sharp on that subject. Mom hasn’t needed any help.

“It’s too bad we don’t live closer together,” I commented. “Then we could leave him with you to babysit and go out sometimes. Hint hint.”

A couple of years ago, Mom would immediately have reminded me that she was old and weak and not up to the task of wrangling a small infant. This time, she simply said, “Too bad.” And it sounded like she meant it.

Hobbes's 1 year portrait, with grandma.

This isn’t to say that everything went all that smoothly. Hobbes was working on his third tooth and getting quite vocal about his objections to the task of teething. The Friday we were there, one of Mom’s old friends — in fact, an old family friend, Dr. Evelyn Hermann — learned that she had terminal cancer. The Sunday that we left, Mom packed herself, Aunt Michi, and a lot of leftovers into the car and headed out to Yakima to spend the day with Dr. Hermann.

And of course there was that party thing.

Hobbes and Dad, Seattle - Sept 2009

“How was your vacation?” my boss asked when I got back.

“Vacation?” I said weakly. “Vacation? Really? Is that what I said I was going to do?”

The first alarms proved to be groundless. Hobbes is by no means as mobile as we had thought he was, though he makes up for distance and speed in sheer determination, such that a trip across the living room floor has a bruising effect on his diaper-padded rear end. Where he developed this kind of drive is a mystery to both of us; I can only surmise that it comes direct from the generation before mine, hop-scotching straight from my mother to my son. More power to him. I’m happy to watch from the sidelines.

Our initial thrill of vicarious achievement has matured into a durable and completely idiotic pride in his accomplishment. This bodes ill for the future. I never had ambitions to be a doting mother, but I’m horribly afraid it’s inevitable.

“So he’s walking now?” said one of the ladies at the day care.

“He’s working on it,” I said.

“Hm,” she said, and gave me a pitying glance as I bore a chuckling Hobbes away.

Two steps. That’s all he had ever done before. Two shuffling steps, after which he would fall over flat on his ass. And then tonight he levered himself up to his feet, looked very pleased with himself, and shuffled a good four, five feet to his father.

I rewarded this as it should be rewarded.

“Holy crap,” I said.

“We are so screwed,” said the Guy.

“Ti-kow,” said Hobbes, and applauded.

“So is he saying anything yet?” asked the doctor.

“Um,” I said.

“Uh oh,” Hobbes said.

“Well, that’s sort of a word!” the doctor congratulated.

“And he says, ‘cheeto,’” I said.

“What?”

“Uh oh,” Hobbes said again.

“And,” I hurried on, seeing the doctor’s face, “it’s not fair because it’s not like he’s actually ever seen a cheeto, much less eaten one.”

I blame the Guy for this, frankly. While we were in Seattle last week, he introduced Hobbes to the concept. “This is a bag of Cheetos,” he said, waving a big bag of them in front of him at the grocery store. “You don’t get to have any now, but your Mommy poisoned you while you were in her tummy by eating lots and lots of them. You are contaminated now.”

Out of all those words, Hobbes picked the one that was most calculated to embarrass us in front of our friends. “Cheeto,” he said, clearly and distinctly.

“Oh, no,” I said. “You did not say what I think you just said.”

The Guy started to laugh.

“No. I reject this reality and replace it with my own. He did not say this. To date, his only recognizable word is ‘uh oh.’”

Back in the present day, Hobbes stared at me gravely. “No worries,” the doctor said, when she had recovered her composure. “He’ll pick up other words later on. Does he Mama or Papa–? No? Well, it’ll come.”

Hobbes babbled happily in something that sounded like Ewok. The doctor listened with great interest.

“It’s like he’s really talking, isn’t it?” she said. “I feel like it’s our fault for not knowing his vocabulary somehow.”

Hobbes chattered again with great urgency, making his point. I patted him on the head. “Good boy,” I said.

“‘Cheeto,’” the doctor said, and bit her lip. “Well, that’s a new one.”

I reported the conversation to the Guy, adding darkly, “And if you teach him any other words like that–”

“Tikotiko,” said Hobbes.

“I never heard him say it,” the Guy claimed with perfect, if inaccurate, sincerity. “It was just your guilty conscience.”

“Tiko tiko tiko,” said Hobbes.

“You did too hear it. You laughed.”

“Ticko ticko ticko!”

“I didn’t. You just said he’d said it. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Then why were you laughing?”

“Tickow tickow tickow!”

“It was the look on your fa–”

“TICKOW!”

I stopped. “Is he saying ‘tickle tickle tickle?’”

Hobbes beamed. “Tickow tickow tickow.”

“I told you he’d been doing that.”

“Since when?”

“Tickow tickow tickow tickow tickow tickow–”

“Goddammit. This is your first official word? Not Mama or Papa? Tickle? I’ve only said that to you a few times. C’mon, son. Say ‘Mama.’”

“Tickow,” Hobbes said smugly, and shoved his finger up my nose.