A Basket Full of Easter Memories

Standing here with my brother Andrew,
circa 1981, I'm wearing a yellow sundress and
lace vest made by my mother for Easter.

My mother really knew how to do up Easter when we were growing up.

She sewed a new outfit for me to wear to church every year. She helped me and my brother dye dozens and dozens of eggs, most of which came from hens on our own farm. My dad liked to dye some too, and we always had one coffee mug of blue dye set aside for him to soak an egg extra long to get his favorite hue. We used wax crayons to create patterns, tiny stickers of ducklings and daisies, and these cool plastic cuffs that would form around the egg when dipped into hot water. Ah, the '70s.

My parents would send us to bed and then hide the eggs all over the house for us to seek on Sunday morning. As much as I like fancy shoes now, I pretty much lived barefoot on the farm. My mother recalls that Easter was the only day of the year that we kids wore slippers, only because we knew there would be an egg hidden in one. She also recalls our furious objections when she decided we were too old for this hide-n-seek game. I might have been 25 or so.

Perhaps that expression on my mother's face, circa 1979,
shows concern for how much candy her son could eat
and still be expected to behave in church later.

Easter baskets were a glorious riot of color and candy, for young and old alike.

In a brilliant move to reinforce how much we kids were to respect our daddy, she always put the biggest chocolate bunny into his basket. We thought that was pretty cool. He was a big guy, and the Easter Bunny knew he had to have a big piece of chocolate.

He never tore into it right away, displaying it in its box on the table next to his recliner for a week or more, giving us kids time to mow through our own goodies. Soon enough, we would start eying that big, beautiful, brown confection with big, beautiful, brown eyes that he just couldn't resist. He finally would open the package and let us bite off the ears.

I got a real, live bunny one year. It lived outside and pooped what looked like chocolate beans, but I never could convince my brother to taste-test.

Searching for hidden Easter eggs was definitely one
of the best parts of the holiday morning.

On Easter Sunday, we went to worship, and then the extended family gathered at our home for a meal. A particular favorite of my older sisters was my mother's calico casserole, a cheesy confection of ham and vegetables. There was roasted beast, also raised on our farm, and Grammy's pies. Life. Was. Good.

My mother is still knocking Easter out of the park, but she's wearing a backwards collar to do it these days. She is preaching basically non-stop from Palm Sunday through two Easter services, and all she wants to do after that is take a long nap. She may envy Jesus lying in a private, dark space for three days away from the rest of the world.

So today, I'm hosting a family meal. My dad has taken over nearly all of the cooking at the farm these days, but only part of the cleaning. A big to-do there, even if she's not making calico casserole, is still work for my mother. It's harder to guilt your kids into doing the dishes when they are chasing after their own children.

However, the roasted beast and some side dishes is all I'm able to manage this year. Apart from spring flowers and different placemats on my table, I didn't even decorate. I figured that if I didn't drag up from the basement my Grammy's collection of decorated eggs and rabbit figurines, I wouldn't have to bother putting them away again. I have enough work to do in the nursery, with my due date about five weeks away.

And don't bother looking for a basket of candy. Chocolate gives me heartburn now (*sob*).

It's OK to Hate Them

My husband tells me that he knew I was a good mother because "every once in a while you say things like, 'I hate that @*]%$#< kid.'"

Of course I love Gabe. To pieces. But sometimes a combination of rage and disappointment get the better of me, and I mutter -- TO SOMEONE ELSE -- what I'm thinking about him at that particular moment. Doing so helps me return to feelings of pride and appreciation all the more quickly.

I'm quite distrustful of parents who have only good things to say about their children. You can't pull one over on me, as my mother says. I know how kids are, and it ain't all good.

Sure, I'm happy to hear about their successes, but the longer you go on acting like they are perfect children, the more obvious it is that you are trying to convince me that you are a perfect parent. At which you're going to fail, by the way.

The following is what parents really think, as a friend texted me recently on treating her youngster's ailments:

"I gave her some Benadryl. I hope it knocks her ass out. If my husband keeps it up, I might put some in his beer too. Everyone shut the f*ck up and take a nap."

This is how parents retain whatever sanity they have left, through honest expression. Bottling that up and insisting to everyone else how ducky family life is may cause such a bottleneck in your emotional well-being that you will explode at the most inopportune moments.

Worse, you could do actual damage. You could say that kind of stuff to your kid's face. You could cause physical harm. You may just do something heinous.

Say it with me, folks: "I ... hate ... my ... kid." We know you don't really mean it, deep down.

Some days, perhaps deeper down than others.

Play Ball

Today is opening day for the Mud Hens, Toledo's minor league baseball team, and it's quite the social event downtown.

I share a set of season tickets with my newspaper's beat writer and his family's friends, four club-level seats behind the home plate net at Fifth Third Field. The walls of the club house and indoor-outdoor suites are peppered with dents from fly balls, a few of which have found our hands.

One also nearly found my dad's face once. He was standing along a suite exterior, stretching his back, when a shout alerted him to "objects leaving the playing field," as the warning signs profess. He ducked his head to the side just as the ball thwacked the concrete wall, right where his head had been, with a sound that promised it would have left more than a lump on his skull.

Apart from the occasional near-death experience, getting taken out to the ballpark in this particular stadium is immense fun. It truly is a family-oriented place.

The park is a green oasis right downtown, ringed by decent pubs and eateries. The food is pretty darn good inside the gates too, with specialty grills and carts offering better quality fare at better prices than any major league game. I'm spoiled by the club house concessions, but the masses below are closer to the yummy gyros. And anyone can get an entire batting helmet full of ice cream.

The promotions and between-inning contests are amusing enough, and summer weekends boast firework displays. Kids kick off the action with a shout of "play ball," and they get to run the bases after Sunday games. Great big JumboTron screens keep fans informed and engaged.  For a buck, you can get a birthday or greeting message played on them. The "Kiss Cam" always catches two guys on the opposing team, who sometimes play along with an exaggerated smooch.

My son Gabe, brother Andrew and dad Jim enjoy each
other's company before the start of an April 2011
Mud Hens baseball game in Toledo, Ohio.

There isn't a bad seat in the house. There is a special "roost" area with two rows overhanging fair territory, and picnic areas on club-level terraces and all around the outfield. The mascots, Muddy and Muddonna, dance on top of the dugouts and make rounds through the entire stadium.

Oh yeah -- there's some sort of game being played on the field too.

Mud Hens grow up to be Detroit Tigers, so we can have league-winning teams whenever we haven't been gutted by the parent organization. The players truly are Triple A: approachable by fans, aggressive in the game, and all-around good guys.

One of the absolute best things about this baseball park is the open fencing surrounding it. Anyone walking by can catch a glimpse of the game and feel a part of the community, even if they don't have a paid ticket. One section of the fence is a bronze statue of kids peeking through knotholes in a boarded fence, an homage to just how much people love the game. It was quite the scandal when one of the figures was stolen, but thankfully the little girl in overalls and an old-fashioned fingered mitt was reunited with her "Knothole Gang."

But you really don't need to like baseball to have a good time here. There's a gaggle of women who sometimes sit in my section, and they chatter and yammer through every inning, swirling their cocktails and laughing merrily at every shared story. They may sing along to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" or clap along after a home run, but they aren't there for the baseball. They are there for the warm sunshine and the amiable spirit of the crowd.

Kids are there for everything. There is a playground behind the black wall in center field, but a surprising many of them are content to sit in their seats and cheer for the Mud Hens. Grabbing a fat wad of cotton candy on a stick as the concessions hawker passes by helps a great deal. I'm pretty sure my son Gabe has been going all these years just for the food.

For this season, though, I'm on the DL. I might manage a few innings of an April game, wedging my pregnant hulk into my folding seat with the help of Charlie, the best usher on the planet. He always gives me a big hug, and we laughed when he felt it was necessary to transition from high-fiving Gabe to shaking his hand like a man.

But the rest of the 12 home games I secured will be sold off to friends and coworkers and whoever else will take them off of my hands. I've seen newborn babies at the stadium, but I don't think I'm cut out for that kind of commitment this summer.

I don't like baseball that much.

The Shock of New Parenthood

Realizations come like the dawn to new parents,
but not until reality zaps them like an electric fence.

There are some things in life you just can know intellectually, and others you must experience first.

Growing up on the farm, my father told me repeatedly that the electric fence surrounding the pastures would poke me if I made bodily contact with it. I conceptually understood what he was saying, but I had no way of knowing that the "poke" was -- at once a zap in my fingertip and a sickening thud in the middle of my abdomen -- until I actually touched the damn thing.

Similarly, knowing what kind of parent you will be is not really possible until you actually touch the live wire.

Even though I might be a different kind of parent to a different kind of baby, I generally know what to expect. Not much is going to shock me this time around.

I "know" there will be sleepless nights and unshowered days; crying jags (the baby's and mine); and wild vacillations between unbearable love and unbearable exasperation. I know about walking around with the odoriferous mix of lavender-scented lotion and milk spit-up always clinging to every article of clothing you own. I know how much of a change it will be to bend every adult thought, moment and hope around the demands of a tiny little person who cares not that you once had a career and a sex life.

I know how to encourage the various stages of physical, mental and emotional development, and how a toddler will totally have his own way of doing all of that despite my best efforts. I know that I prefer to give him real food over processed junk, medical terminology over goofy labels for body parts, PBS over Cartoon Network.

I know he'll grow like a weed and get filthy anyway, so most of his wardrobe will come from thrift shops. I know he'll be equally curious about his mommy's makeup and his daddy's shaving cream and that it won't freak me out if he comes out of the bathroom with eye shadow on his chin and foam on his arms. I know to organize his room and play areas into "centers" just like a preschool does, making it that much easier for him to learn early how to pick up his own toys.

I know that school is his job, and that I'm not spending my valuable time doing his homework. I know that sports or band or chess club are his activities and his chance to have a life apart from me, and that I'm not spending my valuable time sitting in a lawn chair watching his practices. I know that he will be expected to mind his manners, help out at the farm, go to worship, and be nice to every person and creature he meets.

I know I don't know everything, but I know I've tested, failed and succeeded enough to be confident about parenting. I've had plenty of advice and criticism, thank you very much (sincerely, some of it was helpful). I got this.

My husband? He has yet to be zapped.

Gabe was fully cooked once that egg ever came to live with him, so his role has been more like what he assumes as an officer with any new able-bodied seaman that comes his way, teaching adult tasks by example. When Gabe blundered through the sliding screen door, Dan just got his tools and talked Gabe through the repairs. The next time Gabe knocked the door off its track, he muttered a curse under his breath, got the tools and fixed it himself, without even been told to do so. Ta-da!

Dan shared with me that during one of his recent sea cruises, he spent many a long watch wondering what kind of parent he would be to our baby. He said he felt much better when he realized that I already was a good parent and that he just had to be the one following my example this time.

That was a really nice compliment, and frankly a good plan, but he will need to find his own way too.

He will have to face that moment when he discovers his son is painting his lawn mower with mayonnaise, and put to the test all of his preconceived notions about discipline as a teaching method and not a punitive method, and somehow find the strength not to drop-kick that kid to the moon like he will really, really, really want to.

He will have to find an answer when his naked son toddles up to him and asks, "Daddy, when I do this to my penis, why does it do that?"

If he ever responds with, "Ask your mother," I will remind him that I don't mow and I don't have those parts. Totally his area.

He will have to change diapers, read aloud stories, and scrape pureed squash off the baby's face and back into his mouth, over and over and over. He will have to bandage boo-boos and attend parent-teacher conferences. He'll know that thud in the gut when he sits up all night long, praying that the fever leaves the most precious grip on his heart he has ever known.

He may have other challenges, too, like figuring out how to parent when he is away for months at a time on his ship.

I know he'll be just fine. Once he gets poked for real.

Invasion of the Baby Stuff

My husband vacillates between fantasy
(above) and abject fear (below) on what
our house will be like once the baby comes.

If you build it, they will come.

Nothing makes the arrival of your new child seem more impending than when you really hit a stride and start filling your house with all that baby stuff.

We haven't actually started building a crib yet, but registry gifts have begun to arrive in the mail and dresser drawers are beginning to fill with onesies.

My husband seems to be operating under the illusion that all infant accoutrement will be contained in the nursery. He even offered to install in there one of those little box refrigerators to store pumped breast milk.

With a frankness that has grown along with my belly, I told him that the last mother-you-know-whating thing I was going to do was traipse all the way upstairs every time the baby needed to be fed.

When I added that the milk would have to be brought downstairs to be warmed up, I saw his brain working on also installing a microwave up there, but he wisely abandoned the plan. (Remind me to tell him to never use the microwave to warm up bottles, on any floor of the house.)

He'll just have to get used to the breast milk sitting next to the chocolate milk. And to all of the other crap spread all over the house.

Toys, blankies, stacks of diapers, books, toys, burp clothes, a boppy, toys, baskets of laundry, toys ...

I'm not sure which will bother my husband more, the clutter or the crap. He scraped up dog vomit from the carpet the other day readily enough. Maybe he'll surprise me and be totally OK with all of it. Depends on how much gin is next to the chocolate milk, I imagine.

I haven't told him yet about the possibilities of literal, actual crap everywhere. You know, the "poo bomb." My darling little cousin Amelia managed to deliver one to her daddy the other day, succinctly described in the blog post "Poopocalypse."

The absolute best post of all time regarding poo bombs remains in Volume 5 of "The Story About the Baby" on ironycentral.com. If you have the time an inclination, please read the whole story -- there's even a book (don't give it to my husband) -- and a sequel in "The Story About the Toddler."

If you're laughing so hard you're messing your own pants, it's a lot easier to deal with your baby's diaper disasters.