Goddess of the Shoes: A Ma'am-Hood Story

In my house I am the Goddess of shoes. Bearer of canvas, Provider of lace, Locator of socks. (I also have a minor specialty in locating all lost items if I've been properly worshipped. Or if we're late.) Each morning I hear the cry, "Moooom where are my shoes?"

How often does it seem that when I find the poor child, he is circling not ten feet from one of his shoes, staring at the wall? And why is he wearing his father's socks? You'd think I am less pressured in the morning not having to get ready for work myself, but I race over to the shoe and toss them onto the couch saying "If it was a snake-arrggggg!"

I sound like my mother. No wait. My mother never said that, it would be my father I'm channeling this morning. I'd rather be channeling Martha Stewart because she probably never finds herself saying "Darling why is our son wearing your socks?" And all her family's shoes are in that cozy shelf you made per her instructions on TV. Because all good moms build shelves with painstakingly painted scrollwork for their children's shoes. (Whose bottoms are usually covered in something that makes rats afraid.)

"I couldn't find any of his so I gave him mine." Mark shrugs and heads to the kitchen to make Stephan's breakfast. I follow right on his heels. Okay I stop and search Stephan's room for socks. And proof of my female superiority. I find one and then dash to the clean laundry basket in search of another. The basket being in the garage, I pass by Mark on my way.

"But they don't fit him." Our morning conversations are like this, sporadic bursts in-between getting Stephan ready. As I lunge for the garage door I hear,

"They fit fine." Visions of Stephan circling the living room with his socks dragging behind him pop before my eyes. Maybe if he pulled them up to his knees?

"Mom do you know where my shoes are?" Stephan's head pops into the garage. I am tossing clothes out of a basket in search of a matching sock to the one clutched in my right hand. I find myself following the usual morning routine and asking the stupid question.

"Well where did you leave them?" Now that was my mother speaking. I am not digging fast enough so the clean sock goes in-between my teeth while my head lowers further into the wicker basket.

"I don't know. I checked my room and the living room." Precious minutes are passing by. The bus will be here, honking its horn any moment.

"Did you check under the couch?"

"What?"

Note to self, don't talk with socks in your teeth. I pull the sock out of my mouth and repeat my question while triumphantly pulling a matching sock from the bottom of the clean laundry basket. Martha would never have 3 baskets of clean laundry piled in the garage/laundry room. Or puddles of dirty ones by the machines. Why didn't I listen and build a shelving system for that?

Stephan wanders back in to check under the couch, I follow him announcing loudly, "Here is your socks sweetie." Mark barely looks up from pouring cereal. Stephan successfully finds one shoe and I ask him to sit down and put on the clean socks.

“But Mooom I have to find my shoe!”

“He’ll waste more time changing his socks.” Mark mutters. I ignore him and demand that Stephan change his socks. I may not have shelving units covered in dead flowers, but I was at least sending my son to school wearing his socks! Never mind that a few days before, when I had slept in, he got past me wearing the same outfit.

“I’ll find your shoe." I grumble, heading up the stairs to start with his room. Why one shoe would be in one room and the other someplace else is a phenomenon I have yet to figure out. Mark has this habit too and I often wonder if they do it for sport. Liven up the day by watching Mom hunt for shoes.

After a precursory glance over the room and a lift of his comforter, I am satisfied that the shoe is not in the bedroom. I check our room where the cable TV is. I hear Mark asking me to hurry as the bus could arrive any moment. Moving faster I look under our bed, in the two bathrooms upstairs and even peek in the nursery where Aidan and Abigail are sleeping. I thank God that they have not woken up with our shouting (Because in all two story homes you find yourself yelling downstairs whether you like it or not.)

I get myself back down stairs as fast as my body will let me, and begin searching the living room where shoe #1 was found. Kneeling on the floor I notice that it was not only a shoe being stored under the couch. Three of Aidan’s plastic toy balls, a rubber duck, and Mark’s socks. I try not to scream. I yank Mark’s socks out from under the couch and race to the garage door. Just as I toss the socks into the dirty pile I simultaneously see Stephan's second shoe and hear the bus.

Grabbing the shoe, I slide back across the garage, fling myself through the door and, stop Mark from putting Stephan in his own shoes. The last thing i need is him clomping about in huge shoes.

“Here it is!” I toss it up the stairs from our living room to the kitchen where Mark catches it and hands it to Stephan. “Why was one shoe in the garage and the other under the couch?” The two giggle. I’ve asked the “why” question. Mark teases me mercilessly about my habit of wandering about the house saying things like “why are there dirty dishes down here?” or“why was the door left open?” You get the picture. It's a mom curse.

Stephan shoves his shoes on, without untying the laces and heads off for the bus. I look at Mark. He heads off to take a shower. I go back up to our bedroom to rest a bit before one of the babies wakes up. I’m may not be Martha but I can find a pair of socks and shoes with a time limit! I’m not that bad of a mother after all. At least this time Stephan's clothes matched.

My eyes are closing; I’m curled under the sheets, and just as I begin to drift off to the sound of the shower, I hear :

“Hun, where is my towel?”

A Night in the Emergency Room: Finale

So now Aidan was feeling better. The Tylenol had kicked in and he was beginning to want out of the stroller. Now I was panicked. I couldn't let him roam about the tiny waiting room! What should I do? I hefted the diaper bag out form underneath the stroller and began to fish for something amusing. Diapers? No he only likes those when he's taking them off. Wipes? Don't want anyone to see his penchant for sucking on them. Bottle? He was barely taking fluids. Ah ha! The Binky pocket!

Aidan has an addiction to binkies, one we are trying to break him of. If his sister has a binky and he doesn't, guess who gets her binky stolen? Our diaper bag had a detachable pocket made to carry one binky. I had also attached a rubber duck keychain to the pocket so I could distinguish my bag from anyone else's. (As if I were going to be in a room full of mothers who had the same diaper bag as me. We all know every Mom has her own style of diaper bag. Mine is navy blue and doesn't look like much but Mark will carry it. Plus it's washable but that's another story.) I grabbed Aidan's attention and let him watch me put a binky in the pocket and close the Velcro top. Now he was fascinated. I then handed him the pocket and let him go to town. First he had to figure out how to open it and remove the binky. It is amazing how much like little scientists all children are, testing items and their parents at every turn.

Next, he learned to put the binky back in. This was accomplished first by shoving and then by handing it to me to finish. Eventually, he had it down and was happily repeating the process, committing it to memory no doubt, so he could sneak binkies from the diaper bag in the future.


At this time, I moved us to a seat closer to the door to the real ER. Where the rooms are. Now I was sitting next to the teenage cowboy and ranch owner. They were on the "fast track" because he had broken his ankle. He had ridden a bull and did fine, until his dismount. He landed wrong and he'd been in the ER from the time I came in. That was around 6pm it was now pushing 11pm. The male nurse with a Scottish accent came back out and both the rancher and I went for it. We beckoned him over and asked about cases. Told me I had two people ahead of me, I slumped back into the chair. There was no sense in yelling at him, and besides I loved Scotland. My mom was there at the moment in a house she rents and I found myself wondering what their emergency room service was like.

The next thing I knew, Aidan was called back. I looked over at the cowboy in shock. He frowned and said “so much for fast track.” I happily wheeled our mammoth stroller after the nurse as fast as I could go. I felt that if I didn’t keep up I would somehow lose my chance. It was silly, but the feeling was there. I wheeled Aidan past people moaning on gurneys in the hallways and was led into an enclosed room with a bed. The nurse assured me the doctor would be in soon. I instantly put Aidan on the bed and he, now losing the little energy he regained from the Tylenol, lay back and let his eyelids droop. I covered him with his blanket only to have a nurse come in a tell me to take it off.

“But he’s shivering” I grumbled.

“I know it seems cruel but you need to keep him cool.” And off she went

Next the Scottish nurse came back in. I told him I was baptized in Scotland and then asked where he was from.
“Ayr.” He replied. The way he said it sounded like he said “air” so, not having ever heard of Air Scotland, unless we’re talking planes, I heard “here”.

“No from Scotland. Where are you from?”

“Ayr”. I looked baffled.

“You’re from here?”

“No Scotland.”

“But where in Scotland?” About now he was giving me the look I always hate getting when I am traveling. The “you stupid American” look. He sighed.

“Ayr it’s near Glasgow.” I felt like we were Abott and Costello doing who's on first and giggled. Then I quickly explained that my mother was in the highlands, while I kept my hand on Aidan’s back. He nodded, checked Aidan over, noticed that his fever seemed to have come back and told me the doctor would be right in.

I heard that the doctor would be right in about 3 more times before he showed up. At this point Aidan was asleep, and I crept the blanket up to his knees because looking at him lying in a diaper shivering was too hard to handle. When the Dr. finally arrived, I was sitting on a chair by the bed resting my head, with my hand on Aidan so if I drifted off and he moved, I’d awaken. It was midnight.

“You have a sick little guy.” At this point I almost screamed “CUT TO THE CHASE give us our antibiotics and for goodness sake LET US GO HOME!” But I’m only that flamboyant in my mind and it was midnight, so I nodded. I didn’t take the time to point out that it didn’t take a medical degree to see that Aidan was very sick. How many toddlers do you know that lay still when awake?

“Well I looked over his chest x-ray and he has pneumonia in his right lung. You’ll need to push fluids, give him the antibiotics I prescribe and switch back and froth between Tylenol and Motrin.” I was still at pneumonia. That was a big word for such a little boy. I had heard the horror stories of people losing their child to pneumonia. (So the stories were based in the 1800’s, it was still scary.) “His fever has come back and he’s panting a little so I’m going to watch him for a little while and then you can go.”

A little while was another hour. I sang, held and rocked, petted and cooed Aidan until I felt like I was going to crash. I had not stayed up past midnight since Abby was born. When New Year’s came Mark and I were in bed at 9pm. The only time I saw midnight was if someone needed feeding. I was beginning to feel the exhaustion and knew I still had a long drive back across town to get home. I called Grandpa Ralph and told him we were almost done. I called Mark and gave him the news. He, too, had been staying awake at the show he was working to hear the verdict.

At 1:30 am we left the ER and began our trek in the now windy and cold night to the car. The ER was at the bottom of the hill and the car was around the building at the top. (Because I had parked where their old ER had been.) I bundled Aidan and quickly walked back the way I had came earlier that evening. I found the door locked. CRAP! I kept going around the back of the building thinking there must be a pathway up the hill. It was very dark at the back of the hospital and a bit creepy. Aidan was thrilled by the street lamps and kept saying “star star.”

I saw a woman as I walked past and she informed me to not come back to the area alone. I found it odd that they would think anyone would mug someone near a hospital, told her thank you, and pressed on. I found a cement pathway through some ivy and pushed Aidan up it to the top of the hill. By now I was puffing some from being out of shape. To my dismay at the crest of the hill was not my car, nor a way to it, but another building. Cursing softly I turned Aidan around and began the journey down the hill hoping to not lose grip on the stroller. The light part of this adventure was Aidan chanting “star star” each time we passed a lamppost. Down we went back around the building back to the ER entrance and then up another hill and around the other side of the hospital back to the car. (And I’d parked in the handicap spot because my legs were fatigued that day.)

Finally we were in the car. Next a security truck drove up and sat idling near my car. What was odd about the truck was that I didn’t feel he was watching because he was protecting me, I felt he was watching me because I had been acting suspicious around the back of the hospital. I could just hear them on the walkie-talkie “weird lady in the back climbing through the ivy with stroller, follow her.”

I watched him watch me as I put Aidan in his seat, collapsed the stroller and hopped into the driver’s seat. I looked at the truck which had not moved and then longingly at my pizza which was sitting next to me. I had planned to eat a few bites before heading out but it was clear the security guard was waiting for me to leave. I turned on the car and the headlights and the truck left. I snuck a bite of pizza and drove us home on empty streets.

In the next week Aidan’s fever broke and he went back to running us ragged. Everyone was proud of me for driving, in rush hour traffic, when they all knew I was nervous of it. I was proud of myself for being capable to do exactly what I needed to do which was: a mom.

A Night in the ER with Aidan Continued

At around 6:45pm Aidan was triaged and they gave him Tylenol and me some apple juice to. They told me to encourage him to drink. A male nurse came in and asked me to take Aidan's shirt off. He had a rash on his chest. Now I was running the diagnoses through my head: scarlet fever? Measles? Mumps? He was behind on his shots, due to our moving and the subsequent premature birth of his sister. I handed over his shot record and tried again to get him to drink. He turned his head into my chest.

His oxygen level looked fine. But they were still going to do a chest x-ray and draw blood. After supplying me with not only the juice but also a bottle of Pedialyte and a towel for his drool and snot, I was escorted back out to the waiting room. I sat next to a busty woman whom I swore I had met before.

"You look familiar to me." I said with Aidan still in my arms. "Do you do renaissance faires?" I was sure I had seen her there that we would strike up a conversation about them. She shook her head.

"I have gone to the one in Fair Oaks." We briefly talked about Mark's business of selling medieval weaponry and then fell silent. She asked if I went to her church. I shook my head. I asked if she attended New Age festivals, no. When I said "well maybe I recognize you because I'm supposed to be here", she looked a bit nervous. I felt as if I sounded like a weirdo. Weirdo mom in the chair to the far left.

I maneuvered the subject to other things. Like why she was there and why I was in the ER. She was there with a friend. It was her 4th time in the ER that week. Once for her and 3 times for other people. I wondered at what that must be like as I ran my fingers through Aidan's hair. Having so many friends and so many ER trips.

Soon we were called to register and while I was filling out more paperwork a tech called Aidan for the x-ray. When she saw I was busy she said "I'll come back to get you." She never came back. After registering, we sat back down with the lady and her friend. The ranch owner across the way began talking to us about how the boy had been injured, riding a bull, and how long they had sat there without even painkillers! Some people were getting rude with Mr. Coke Bottle security guard about the wait time. Their emergency was important they would complain.

I watched with sad eyes. Not because I felt sorry for them but because I understood triage. I had been to the emergency room with my MS more than once and left to sit for hours wondering if the next relapse, the next wave of feeling close to unconsciousness, might be my last, yet treated by hospital staff as if I were a hypochondriac. It would have been easy at that moment to pick and chose who looked sick and who looked in need of emergency care. I could point out if asked who had healthcare and who most likely did not. But now was not the time for judgment or opinions. I knew that screaming at the security guard or accosting the nurses when they came out to call for other people was not going to get Aidan help any faster. I also knew that if he did pass out, they would be on him immediately. Until then we had to sit and wait.

I rocked him as the Kings played a play off game on the nearby TV. I swayed side to side and even chanced a run to the restroom with the nice woman next to me watching Aidan, hoping they did not call him in those few w moments. Each time I used the rest room Aidan would erupt into whines and cries but he seemed unable to produce tears.

After his blood draw, where the tears finally spilled over, we again rejoined the boy with the broken ankle and the woman whose friend had been accosted. I am not sure exactly what had happened, it involved a sheriff taking a report and pictures, so I could only surmise and I felt it would be rude to ask.

I began to wonder at how much information we were all getting about one another. Why we were there, how it had happened, and then each of us venting frustration about the long wait and gossiping about who was on the "fast track" and who wasn't. After the chest x-ray Aidan began to perk up. He drank his apple juice and worked on the Pedialyte. He got out of my lap and into the stroller where he began playing with the removable binky pocket from the diaper bag. It had a tiny rubber duck on it which he often tried to teeth off. He practiced taking the binky in and out of the pouch over and over as toddlers will, and I began to have another worry. What if his fever broke and he began climbing everything? My god, what if he turned into the normal Aidan? He would be a handful, he would climb, throw fits, and be utterly bored! What would I do then??

A Cast of Characters: One Night in the ER

It was 4pm and Aidan wasn't looking good. He was being treated for an ear infection with antibiotics which had been switched because he seemed to have no response and just got sicker. Yet now he was lying on the floor and poking his forehead with his chubby little fingers. You know something is not right when your 19 month old is lying still on the floor.

Mark has left for his weekend job and I was alone with the kids. I had a choice to make. I have a rather unreasonable dislike of driving and avoid it as much as possible. I had the choice of asking Mark's father to come and drive me to the ER while Mark's daughter watched Stephan, age 10, and Abigail, age 5 months. However, something empowering swept over me. When Ralph got to our house at around 4:45pm he asked "well who's driving you?" I said "I'm driving."

He arrived at the same time as the pizza I'd ordered thinking to spend a night binging with the kids. Instead I shoved two pieces on a plate grabbed a water bottle, loaded the stroller and began my trek with Aidan in Friday evening traffic to the emergency room. I had no time to wait for the pediatrician's office to call me back. He was burning up and the Motrin I had given only 2 hours earlier was not breaking the fever.

He moaned as I drove and while I crooned soft reassurances to him and maneuvered the beast of a minivan in heavy traffic. Suddenly I noticed I was not afraid about the trip. Sure I was griping the steering wheel and tense about having to hit the brakes constantly due to people tailgating on a high density road, but I was not freaking out. I was afraid for my son.

As we drove, I kept trying to recount how many ounces of formula he had and whether or not he'd eaten anything during the day. Had Mark given him a morning bottle? Did I remember him eating anything at all? I hated my multiple sclerosis at that moment because in the past five years my short term memory has gotten worse. Had he had anything to drink? I didn't think so. I wondered if it was my MS or if it were a normal thing for a stressed out mother to not recall if her child had eaten anything. Swerving the car around a truck which had no brake lights, I got myself back into the correct lane and peeked at Aidan in the rearview mirror.

He was so listless, and he kept poking at his eyes which were red rimmed. There was no cough. Just immense amounts of snot and drool running down his face. Then he'd wipe his had across it and get upset as it smeared on his cheeks. When we got to the hospital I parked in the handicap spot feeling that although my legs were working this was one time I didn't need to add a hike to my evening. Inevitably I parked on the wrong side of the hospital next to what was now the "old emergency room". With Aidan in a stroller and the over stuffed diaper bag, a woman directed me down the elevator, back outside and around the back of the hospital to the new ER.

I was lost the moment I walked in the room. It was not packed, but there were at least 12 other people already there. I felt them all pause to look at me. I reminded myself that when I was done registering and sat down, that I too would look up at every person to walk in and it was nothing more than normal curiosity. But I still felt like I had a flashing neon sign over my head reading: "Beware! Mother who doesn't know what she's doing."

I went to the table laden with little fill-in sheets and tiny pencils that looked as if they had been lifted from the nearby golf course. Quickly I filed out a slip and then was presented with needing to "time stamp" the sheet. There sat a box with a clock on it. I'd seen these in movies but never in real life. I slid the paper in the slot. Nothing. I did it again. Nada. Now I really felt the neon sign above my head with a pointing hand added and a voice saying "See? She's totally clueless!" I looked around me and muttered "What am I doing wrong?" I actually gave the machine a bash with my hand while the other slid the paper back in. It stamped, I jumped and turned beet red. (Or at least it felt like I was.)

Next it was time to place this little white paper, the only thing letting the ER know about my child's bad state, into a clear plastic folder on a closed door. I did what the sign told me to do and sat down. At this point, Aidan made it clear he needed to be held. I tried to pull him from the stroller but the front wheels would not lock so the stroller rolled forward with him and his feet caught. He groaned and I jabbed my foot against one wheel to hold the stroller steady. Again I heaved and out he came. We both flopped back into the chair and I looked about me wondering if anyone was noticing that I had absolutely no experience with this type of situation. Sure Stephan my 10 yr old had been to the ER before, but always I had Mark with me. The one time previously when I had taken Aidan to the ER after he fell off the bed (bad mommy points); my father had driven because I was in hysterics, overridden with mom-guilt.

As I sat with Aidan draped over my chest, his head on my shoulder, his legs wrapped about my waist like a chimpanzee, it was my turn to look around the room. There was an area with benches in between the outside and the room I was in. Most of the parents seemed to be there with babies. I wondered if I was supposed to be out there, but was content to be as close to the door with the form folder as possible. I wanted to make sure someone knew my son was ill but I also was not about to go banging on windows yet.

Next to me was a girl. Possibly 20, who told me she had already been there for 4 hours. Across from me a boy in a cowboy hat with his swollen ankle propped on a chair. Next to him and the ranch owner, a very nice woman whom I later became acquainted with, was and old couple. The older lady was feeding her husband bits of apple and she smiled at me. "It's hard when they're so sick." I nodded and turned my face into Aidan's. He nuzzled against me while I peeked at a man with coke bottle glasses and a security badge. He was informing a very irate woman that the wait for each person would be an average of 4 hours. I looked at the evil time stamp machine for the time. My eyesight has increasingly become worse since my many bouts of optic neuritis. (My MS' favorite way of telling me it's time for a flare-up!) I could not make out the numbers but it looked to be 6pm now. I'd left my watch at home. In fact I was in lounge pants and an old white maternity tee shirt because I felt baggy was better for covering my mommy belly. (Instead it only draws more attention to your belly.) My hair was held back by a purple bandana that matched my pants. That was my only nod to an attempt at fashion as I'd not thought I'd be leaving the house that evening. I immediately berated myself for even thinking about my looks and clothing because it was the friggin hospital not a London fashion show!

I had dressed Aidan in his pjs that were shorts and thin material because I knew he needed to stay cool. One person asked why he was wearing tennis shoes and I relayed to them a story of when Stephan went to the ER and I was criticized by a nurse that "all children needed to have footwear". Later I was to find this hospital didn't care and I switched him from his shoes to his fuzzy slippers. (Thankful I'd remembered to pack those shoes.) I went back to worrying about Ralph, my father in-law being with Stephan and Abby for 4 hours. Abby had been asleep when I left, but I knew she would wake up and need changing and feeding. Stephan would be fine and I had already asked him to help grandpa with Abby.
(I truly had nothing to worry about in that arena as grandpa and Stephan found a video game they liked and played it in the master bedroom while Abby watched enraptured until she went to bed for the night.)

Four hours average. I prayed that Aidan would be seen quickly. Sure enough in about 30 minutes he was called for triage. This is where they decide how important your emergency is and when it will be treated. The nurse looked him over and then had me lay him across my lap for a rectal temp. Although he was a limp noodle, Aidan still had the ability to look at me as if to say "you're putting that where?", when the nurse inserted the thermometer. His temperature was 104.5 and he was refusing to drink. I was now frantic.

To be continued…