| 26 june 2007
No Escape
By Lucie Amundsen
Listen to an audio version of this essay!
Our escape was a long weekend in Puerto Vallarta. Jason, my on-again-off-again boyfriend, had finished months
of hospice care—then buried his father and we were desperate for a break.
But when we returned, I didn’t
feel so well.
I obsessively researched Giardia and all related diseases that Mexico INFLICTED on me and finally went
to the clinic armed with my diagnosis – where After some tests, I’m told by a chirper physician, “It’s
nothing nine months wouldn’t cure.”
(pause)
I turned this information around in my head and like a good public radio listener said, “I have Lyme
disease?” Now
to my defense, I had recently heard a lengthy program on the topic, but if you read the thought-cloud above
the doctor, it said something like, “you’re pregnant—AND stupid.”
Flash ahead—we have a
wonderful daughter, now a toddler, and we’re living in a one and a half bedroom
duplex in NE. It’s late summer that year Gov Jesse Ventura has made access to fireworks easier than buying
nasal decongestant—and the ‘tweens in our alley are torturing us—making the dog bark, waking
the baby, … and I’m pregnant again…and cranky.
We must escape to a bigger space in quieter neighborhood.
We find the beige rambler of our dreams and will move in
at the beginning of the year. The ink is still wet on
our closing papers, the phone rings and Jason is literally “called up”—there is some clause
in long forgotten ROTC paperwork and he is immediately sent to in-process in WI. And it sinks in—I’m
hugely pregnant, have a two-year-old daughter, a 60 lb Rotwieller mutt—and I have to move without my husband.
At Fort
McCoy, Jason walks across acres of empty fields on base, in snowstorms, to find a cell phone signal so he can get helpful
messages from me like, “
I guess that masters wasn’t as free as you thought it was!” …
and after realizing that Jason, whose one job was to pack the garage, did not bring snow shovels the new house … IN
JANUARY … and I have to literally break one of his bookshelves to use a flat board to shovel out our stuck Honda
Accord where my daughter is encouraging me, “go momma, go momma, go!”
I leave the helpful message…
“You are a Captain—a logistics officer—in the United States Army and I fear for the safety of the nation!”
****
Single parenting a baby and a toddler is not going well.
We escape late winter at a Barnes & Noble story hour,
my now 3-year-old refuses to leave. She tears off through the mega-store disrobing as she runs. After a scuffle, I
manage one under each arm: the baby, overheating in his bunting,
is red-faced and crying, Belle is a swinging tirade of a near-naked girl. She is shrieking with such intensity that
she vomits on my pants; the same sweat pants I had on yesterday—and then slept in.
Dashing to the minivan,
I am spotted by every mother’s arch nemesis—the-perfectly-together-childless-woman.
Her attractively made-up face is horrified; clearly she will NEVER allow THIS when she has children. And before I
can restrain myself I say with a smile, “Feel free to talk about me at dinner.”
Because at the moment
this is my life, there is no escape, and someone should get some pleasure out of it.
—Lucie Amundsen writes about “the
everyday drama of family life.” You can visit her website at http://www.twowordy.com.
She is a contributing editor to the Reader's Digest publication "The Family Handyman" and has been
a guest commentator on Minnesota Public Radio's "All Things Considered." |
