staycation

staycation

all the kids

all the kids

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Magic Bubble

The Magic Bubble Today I had to take Bess to the doctor, and it’s never just me and Bess, not after 4 pm, when the other kids are home from school demanding snacks and homework and attention. But they stayed home because the doctor’s office is notoriously slow and boring and not even I want to go and waste another afternoon of my life there. So we are suddenly luxuriously alone, in the waning hours of the day, when we’re both getting a little tired. Lilly has kindergarten coming up, and we have to get all her “papers in order” (to be said in a German accent), and I’m dreading it because even though we’ve had every shot known to man, she hasn’t had her TB test. And she so hates shots because the last time we went to get shots they gave her like 45 hundred shots in all areas of her body so now one little needle prick can send her running for the trees so I didn’t tell her, I sort of suggested that they might make a magic bubble on her skin, because the TB test is really just a little bubble on top, not a severe and repeated jabbing, like some dates I have been on. So she kind of was intrigued by the idea of getting a little bubble, which I was still dreading because I didn’t tell her the bubble was coming through a needle which pricks you. How much to tell, how much to hide? I want her to trust me but I don’t want to riddle her with anxiety. There is no perfect way here. She has a four year old loving heart. So me and Bess are sitting in the little room and she’s laying on the white paper cover on the exam table, and looking out the window and they take FOREVER, like they’re INVENTING MEDICINE in the other room, and Lilly is patient, she looks at the posters on the wall and says “That’s blood and bones. That’s inside us.” I look at the meaty muscly guy on the poster and the skeleton guy on the other poster. Then we look at the poster of the cut up heart. This place is a crime scene, doctor’s are so gory. But it’s four-thirty on a Tuesday, and Lilly is going to be five years old, she’s going to go to kindergarten, and I don’t have to police the older kids or listen to them complain or throw things at each other, and suddenly at this tired, four o’clock hour I can just look at this amazing, fleshy Lilly who is 38 pounds and has blonde curly ringlets all relaxed from swimming in the pool. And remember how an hour earlier she came out of the garage with a silver princess crown and a giant pirate sword tucked under her arm. Beauty and the Beast. I feel actually relaxed. I grab my Lilly and hold her on my lap, and feel her soft tummy and squeeze her. I feel a moment of realization that sitting and waiting at this doctor’s office is maybe the greatest moment of my life. I don’t have to do anything, but just feel her, and listen to her chatter and she is layering me with her unconscious joy, her contented lilliness. She feels this way pretty much all the time. It takes me doing nothing else for a minute, stilling my hands, for me to leap into her watery wandering wonderland. The doctor comes in, I get to watch as Lilly is the determined-to-be-excellent patient, staring at the clock with her eyes wide (luckily she’s good at staring contests with Emma) as he requests while he checks her eyes. Silently solemn while he squishes her stomach around. I think about when she brought her turtle into preschool this morning. One of the other kids came running up and she was so proud to have something as important as a turtle-in-water, she just silently held the turtle up, unable to speak. The kid didn’t speak either, and he didn’t fakely act excited or anything. He just jumped up and down and showed her the peach pit he had brought in his hand. Both feeling their moments of genuine glory, without one word spoken. The nurse comes in to give the TB test and Lilly sees that there is no magic bubble without that mean looking shot device. She curls up in my lap, in silent horror. She is afraid of the lady who comes to smooth out her arm. She starts to cry. I tell her it’s okay, it’s not really a shot. She pokes Lilly and then the bubble happens and I tell her Luke had the same bubble, all the kindergartners had to have the bubble. She half-cries, from the horror of it, and then the nurse leaves and Lilly cries all curled into my arm, and I tell her I’m sorry. She is so brave. She is all done. On our walk to the car, she says she does not like things that are almost like shots. But we are going to meet her best buddy at McDonald’s, and they will get to play together. She loves books that have flaps in them, she says. She likes to lift up things and see the surprise underneath. Me too. Time with Lilly at the doctor’s office. She’s my magic bubble. My surprise, under the flap.