ABC A-long

In all my years of dating, I never once fell for a blonde guy. ::I did once go on a date with a blonde guy. One time. One bleh. He was a mushy kisser, sloppy drunk and overall pud. Don't get me wrong, in no way am I generalizing these qualities to all blondes. I’m just stating what happened to me. I like da boys widda brown hair and da beefy mitts.::

So, for the first 28 years of my life, my heart was a relatively blonde-free zone. And then this guy came along, and stole it right away.


From the day he was born, My Boo has always been gentle-natured and easy going. In fact, he slept through his first night home from the hospital. Six hours. Of course, I thought he had died in his sleep. Come to think of it, sleeping is still one of his personal strengths.

Not only was my baby boy low maintenance, he was also resilient. For example, as a newborn he was nearly starved to death by his mother, on account of her lacking something in the lactation department. Not that I didn't try. For the first two weeks of his life, my son was munching momma every waking moment. Happily. So I was both surprised and horrified to find out at his two week checkup, that he had lost over two pounds.**

My doctor, while supportive, was very concerned and gave me a couple of days to put some meat on my baby's bones. Otherwise, he'd have to put my boy in the hospital, where he would be properly cared for. ::Okay. My doctor didn't say that last part. But that is exactly what I heard.::

At that time I was also referred for a mandatory stint at La Le*che Leak Boob Boot Camp for the Mammarily Inept. ::Okay, that's a lie too.::

My doctor did encourage me to keep feeding au naturale,while supplementing with formula. If any of you have tried this, you know where this is going. And I hear your snort of sympathy.

I intended on following the doctor's recommendation, but after watching my baby snarf down that first bottle of rat-turd-infested, ground-glass-dusted, toxic elixir known as formula, and seeing for the first time in his short life that he was actually full. I wept. And weaned. Cold Turkey.

And as I watched my boy plump up on the toxic elixir, after just two days, I couldn't stop thinking about the other thing my doctor told me at that first appointment. That he would've diagnosed my boy with Failure to Thrive if he hadn't looked so alert and happy.

I couldn't starve that boy into a bad mood.

::It took years to live down the intra-family notoriety of being the mom who almost breast fed her baby to death. Out of loving support and concern, my husband at the time nicknamed our baby "Biafra." Gawd how I miss that man.::

My boy also survived my new-mom jitters, which went into hyperdrive after the starvation incident and eventually developed into a severe case of Post Partum Depression.

19 years ago, PPD was not talked about much. In fact I’d only just heard of PPD from our Lamaze instructor, who had been hospitalized for it. She must be a loon, I remember thinking at the time. Who’d ever heard of such a thing? And then I forgot about it.

Oddly enough, when I was going through the PDD cycle of depression, anxiety, obsessions, etc., I didn’t really notice. It was only after I came out of it, that I realized how disturbed I had been.***

When my boy was five, his father and I divorced. Even though it was devastating for all of us, his father and I vowed to keep our son's best interest at heart, always. And we did. Always. If we did anything right through that emotional clusterfuck, it was that.

As always, my boy survived that soul rendering like the champ he is. He never once lashed out at either one of us, even as a teen, and despite having every right to do so. A few months ago, my boy confided that the post-divorce years spent in our new home were the happiest of his childhood.

This was an amazing thing to hear. Because after the divorce, I always imagined that under his happy,content and loving facade, my son was permanently damaged, and harbored great resentment towards his parents, over the destruction of his family.

But it just wasn't so. He's just a sweet, easy going, magically resilient boy. Er, man. Now. Even more amazing; I can't take credit for any of it. It's how he came to me. A sweet package deal.

::Snip emotionally encumbered self-absorbed tangent.::
::You’re welcome::

Well, most of you know the rest of the story, as depicted here last year. After weeping through, around and in between every significant milestone of his senior year of high school, I successful launched my boy off to university last fall. Although he is not blazing any amazing, academic trails ::Au contraire, mon frere. It did not go well, that first term report card. But I think/hope he hit his head on the freshman year learning curb and from here on in, it'll be all good.::

In the event of the academics going down the toilet, he does show promise at the Texus Ho*ld Em table, and is actually earning a pretty decent living at it. And if that doesn’t work out, there’s always the PIBLFSSBG(Professional Intramural Basketball League for Short Skinny Blonde Guys). The boy’s got skills.

I could go on all day. But since we’re only into the second week of this alphabet adventure, I better save some things for the rest of the year. Later this weekend we'll be getting testical and there will also be a knitting knugget.

Stay tuned.

Food, love, careers and mothers, the four major guilt groups- Cathy Guisewite

*I started calling my boy “My Boo” just after he was born and billions of years before it became Coo’.

**I could write volumes on this experience, but I won't. I will say that it took a long time to get over this one. How hard can it be to feed a baby, for rice cakes?

***I had it bad. Suicidal/homicidal bad. Afraid-to-drive-on-bridges-or-stand-on-hotel-balconies-because-I-might-drive/fling-self -over-bad. Of course, the bad perm that left rows of 2nd degree burn scars on my scalp wasn’t much of a mood enhancer, either. But I digress.

Labels: ABC