At the still point of the turning world

Two weeks ago today we flew from the misty cool spring of Portland to this humid splotch of land in the Pacific to start up this lovely adventurous (read here maybe totally insane but trying to be upbeat) chapter of life. We are raising three boys age two and under who are each in their own way adjusting to transition with varying levels of patience and grace. Finn is two in all of the lovely ways that two is. He seems to be finding hawaii quite a bit confusing (this is our car? no mandy and cott's car. no maybe grandma barbara's car.) and often frustrating (no jakie the cakie not awakie, mommy color with finny!) but also really thrilling (we go a beach, no maybe go a pool or no maybe take a rest and play trucks). Henry seems to think pacific time was working just fine for his schedule so why change it now and so wakes fully ready for the day at 3:30 am. And Jake is finding this onslaught of new people both fascinating (he sits enthralled in the playpen on the back porch slowly scooting in circles to watch finn lapping around him on his tricycle) and slightly traumatizing (the first time James went in to re-plug Jake with his pacifier in the middle of his nap, Jake screamed quite loudly in surprise--probably thinking this strange bearded man looked nothing like anyone he knew).

It's been a rocky first week for me too now that Mandy has officially flown overseas and James is working. Most days are purely reactionary, changing diapers, feeding and putting children down for naps when it becomes blatantly clear that full blown melt down is approaching or already arrived. And for the most part, I'm starting to work things out and settle in. But we still have our moments of total mayhem or hilarity or beauty and mostly combinations of all three:

Tonight when giving all three boys baths at once, Finn conked his head on the faucet and started to cry making Jake cry and both cried harder to outdo the other until both of them were screaming in sobbing gulps. Henry lay between them in the tub grinning from ear to ear.

There are few things more cruel to a toddler than the small space on the porch where a tricycle might almost but does not actually pass through and which allows him to enter and get wedged but then somehow shrinks, chinese handcuffs style to keep him from getting back out again and which requires an adult to pick him up and wrangle the trike out from between the couch and the wall only for him to try again and yes, get stuck in the same place to cry and scream in complete exasperation.

Between the swallows and squirming that qualify as feeding Jake his bottle, I propped him up to pat him on the back and had the lucky reward of projectile spit-up launching from his mouth, ricocheting off the side of the leather chair in his room and drenching my entire left side from ribs to mid calf. I plopped him down on the floor, sopped up the mess with a blanket and picked him up again finding his back thickly frosted with poop that had pushed its way out of his diaper and nearly up to his hairline--this all within ten minutes of the bath mentioned in the first point.

During a salutory cocktail party given for mandy by her lovely next door neighbors, I added another person to the list of likely faces I will see when floating towards the light of heaven. Ralph, the sixties-ish math proffesor who hosted the event, found Finn a plastic sippy cup from his store of grandkids paraphernalia, filled it with juice and herded him to the backyard with a fist full of fancy whole grain crackers and once the sustenance had settled, picked Finn up, turned the sprinklers on and dashed around the yard in a previously determined path that left them both miraculously dry and noticably exhilerated.

At this same cocktail party, the huddle of women gathered on the wicker settees discussing a number of topics, had the unfortunate collective urge to discuss all manner of Hawaiin pesks leaving me for a number of nights following, laying in bed fearing the biting centipedes known to show up in people's beds, the scuttling rats along the back walls of the yard and the stinging man-of-war jellyfish that often entangle the appendages of helpless swimmers on the beach at the end of the road. As is probably supposed to be forgivable about these types of conversations, all stories were supplemented with some sort of dissmissal like, "oh, just watch for the blue bubbles in the surf that come after the trade winds have passed, 2-14 days after the full moon, and otherwise, it's perfectly safe to swim" making me feel less comforted than confused.

In a spurt of energy uncharacteristic of the last two weeks in general, I waited for the perfect moment of the morning to pluck Finn from bed just as he started to wake up, changed him, dressed him and loaded him into the front seat of the stroller, moved on to Jake's room and repeated the process, snapping him in behind Finn and then with baby bjorn cinched to my chest, scooped Henry out of his closet bedroom, fanangled his limbs through the grace-less holes of the bjorn, misted us all in a cloud of spray sunscreen and walked the mile to the Safeway down the road to buy nothing less cliched than baby food. I sort of preened to see the number of people who gawked out their window in awe of me or perhaps dismay at my circus-y looking caravan in the high heat of hawaiin 10am. The walk home was long and hot and slightly more circus-y as I balanced an iced coffee and favored a developing blister from my plastic flip flops.

The other day, when James got Finn out of bed, our son took James' face in his hands and said, "daddy, are you sad?" and James said, "no, I'm not sad buddy" and then Finn said with alarming clarity about the really densely emotional landscape that made up Mandy's week long leave ending with another trip to the airport for an unknowable time of separation, "just Mandy and Cott and Jakie sad." James said, "yeah, Finn. Mandy and Scott and Jakie are sad."

I'm sad too.