Crisis of Faith part 2: And then there were bongos

My crisis of faith has coincided with my first return to semi-regular church-going in many, many years. For the past month or so, the husband and Cletus and I have been trekking an hour every Sunday morning to attend the one and only liberal church within reasonable driving distance. We decided we wanted Cletus to experience the ritual of Sunday church, but without all the gay-bashing and the evolution-denying and the Sunday School indoctrination. I don't want any crazy ladies in sweater-vests telling my kid that there's a fire-pit waiting to swallow up her Muslim friends. So... to the hippies we go.

For the first couple of weeks, the husband and I were engaged in a deep and abiding love affair with our new hippie church. Everyone's so friendly!! There are so many young families!! They donated a portion of the offering plate money to Planned Parenthood!! They hosted a dedication ceremony for a little baby with two mommies!! The church is big and new and beautiful, surrounded by woods. The nursery where Cletus chills during the ceremony is swanky and filled with way cooler toys than we've got at home. They pipe the service into the nursery via a speaker system, so the kiddies can enjoy while gnawing on plastic cheeseburgers in a Little Tykes kitchen.

And then? We showed up for yesterday's service. Which was being led not by the minister, but by four women in caftans and rat-tails. In lieu of a sermon, these women sang folk songs "celebrating women's sacred stories." [Women's sacred stories, in case you were wondering, involve a lot of Native American tales about buffalo, references to inner strength and mystical healing, and assurances that "we are not alone."] The women had bongo drums. You all know how I feel about bongo drums. They also had one of those rainstick-thingies. They did hand motions to go along with their songs. And, at one moment that sent me right back to a Take Back the Night rally circa 1996, the lead bongo woman instructed everyone to stand up, hold hands, and sing a song of love to their neighbor.

You can see that I am in a quandary. On one hand: fire and brimstone. On the other hand: womyn's drum circle. Can there be no middle ground? What's a non-touchy-feely feminist to do?

No child left behind

On top of the aforementioned pukey stomach bug of doom, we are also currently up to our eyeballs in potty-training, a process that is kicking my ass in the same dramatic fashion as have most other basic parenting rites of passage. People, I ask you: what's so wrong with diapers? I mean, diapers are good, right? They're form-fitting, flexible, available in a variety of fashionable styles and colors (if you like Disney princesses and/or Care Bears -- and come on, WHO DOESN'T?). Would it really be so bad to rock your regional high school basketball championship game in some Pampers? Or excuse yourself during a business meeting to go execute a discreet Huggies change?

We are allegedly following the "no-pressure" school of thought in regards to our child's bathroom education. For awhile now, we've been offering the potty chair to her about a zillion times a day; on a good day, she takes us up on our kind offer anywhere from three to five times. Of those three to five potty parties, usually one or two result in success of the liquid variety, for which the child is rewarded with an Elmo sticker for her sticker chart and/or the visual spectacle of her parents losing their minds with glee. "YAYYYY CLETUS!!!!" we shout and wave like crazed fans in an amphitheater. "YOU WENT PEE IN THE POTTY! WOW!" Usually, she gets pretty jazzed herself. "I let the PEE out!!" she cries, jumping up to help empty her little potty into the larger toilet.

Of the other, less successful, trips to the potty chair, they generally fall into one of two categories: A) Those In Which Her Highness Perches Upon Her Throne But Produces No Results, Choosing Instead to Scratch Away At The Bathroom Wallpaper And/Or Balance Stuffed Animals On Her Feet, or B) Those In Which Her Highness Throws Herself On The Floor With Great Drama And Refuses To Go Anywhere Remotely Near The Bathroom.

Yesterday was some kind of banner day. After peeing like a pro in the morning, Cletus went to the bathroom three times at day-care, a record by far. I decided to take advantage of the momentum and, when we got home later that afternoon, whipped out the adorable and precious and much-discussed-beforehand Big Girl Underwear I had ordered for her online weeks before. I had spent hours researching the best, most absorbent training pants, scouring message boards so as to make an informed purchase, and ultimately decided on a three-pack of outrageously overpriced organic cotton trainers that had received overwhelmingly positive reviews for their quality and composition. These were not, according to Anonymous Moms Online, those cheap-o Gerber training pants that left your child drowning in a puddle of her own urine. These were Swedish-inspired.

Do I even need to tell you what happened next? Or can you just figure out on your own that about twenty minutes after inserting my super-psyched toddler into her training pants of steel, I found her sprawled on the living room rug, playing contentedly with a pile of pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks, drowning in a puddle of her own urine?

And so it is that we now own several packages of three-for-five-dollars Gerber training pants that resemble, to an alarming degree, miniature men's tighty-whiteys. Second verse, same as the first... This morning we carted the child off to day-care mid-temper tantrum, after the mere suggestion of the potty led to fifteen minutes of hysterical screaming of the "Stop shoving those reeds under my fingernails" variety. It's all one step forward, two steps back. And I know every kid gets it eventually, but dude. This is yet another one of those things that I wish came with idiot-proof, step-by-step, phonetic instructions, delivered simultaneously in written and audiobook form. With an optional live-action performance. And a tutor.

The consumption

Pardon my absence; I've come down with the plague. On Saturday night, a friend who lives a few houses down from us called to see if I could come over and watch her baby son while she drove her husband to the emergency room. He [the husband] was incoherent and vomiting uncontrollably, while he [the baby] was sleeping fitfully in his crib, having suffered his own less severe bout of vomiting earlier in the day.

I went. By the time I got to the house, my friend had joined the Puke Party herself. They left for the hospital. I proceeded to sit gingerly on the edge of a rocker-recliner, one that my friend assured me no one had rested upon yet that day, for the next four hours. I did not use the restroom; I did not quench my thirst with a glass of water. To change the channel on the television, I handled the remote control with a disinfectant wipe in hand. When the baby awoke briefly and cried out for a drink, I did everything short of handling him with tongs in order to avoid coming into contact with bodily fluids.

And yet. By Sunday evening I was riding a float in the Feels Like Ass parade. No trips to the ER so far; just a steady diet of soup and toast and the dread of what's inevitably to come: a puking Cletus, a hurling husband. I'm glad I found the initiative to do the semi-annual housecleaning (wherein I dally in tasks like changing sheets that have molded themselves to the bed, scraping months' worth of toothpaste stains off the bathroom sinks) on Saturday afternoon, leaving me with nothing to neglect but paying work and personal hygiene.

Addendum

If you were among the brave and hardy who followed the link to Cora's story in my last post and found yourself, like me, snotting all over your keyboard, here are a couple of ways you can show your support. The family's church is building a playground in Cora's honor. You can contribute to the cause directly here, or you can purchase one of the many sweet Etsy products that have been specially made to benefit the playground fund.

I'm still not always sure where my prayers go when I release them out into the world, or how they go, or if they go. But friends, clicking a Paypal button is something I can understand.

All over a baby I never knew

[Note in advance: if you plan to comment on the degree to which my beliefs make me a shitty person, rest assured I've already been informed.]

I don't think I've written much on this blog about religion. It's complicated. I was raised in a Christian home, in a predominantly Mennonite-affiliated town. I went to church every week; was baptized in my parents' semi-conservative church when I was 13, then went through the Good Girl's Version of Rebellion upon entering high school and announced that I was flying the coop in favor of a friend's crunchy-hippy congregation (they sat on folding chairs and incorporated interpretive dance into the services). I believe in God, have had (and on occasion continue to have) very real spiritual experiences that convince me of the existence of a benevolent force watching over me and my family.

That all being said, I'm also about as liberal as they come. I love the gays! I hate the Republican agenda! I rock NARAL bumper stickers and am appalled that children are forced to pledge allegience to "one nation under God' in public schools! And through a series of events and observations, including but not limited to A) my experiences with a college religious organization that left me feeling about as judged and miserable as I've ever felt in my life, B) the widespread hatred being sprinkled all over the world in the name of "Christianity," and C) the existence of James Dobson, I am not so down with traditional organized religion.

All of this is intended to serve as a lead-in for what I actually wanted to tell you about, which is this family's blog. Only visit the link if you are feeling exceedingly emotionally stable, as it follows the story of a ten-month-old girl who, just a month ago, was diagnosed with cancer. Baby Cora went in for a routine doctor's visit, came out with a tumor on her kidney, was admitted to the hospital for a month of surgeries and chemo. Early Sunday morning, she died.

I've been following this blog for weeks, at the recommendation of a friend. The family posted lots of pictures throughout Cora's hospital stay, photos of a plump little baby, unconscious, covered in a knitted blanket, hooked up to a million machines. They updated frequently and were steadfast in their religious convictions, listing things for which they were thankful (improved oxygen levels, a day with no surgeries), asking for prayers. I am telling you -- I don't know what it was about this family, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that I could not pay a visit to the blog without crying. And so I prayed for them. Maybe not in the same way or through the same channels that they were praying, but I prayed all the same.

But then, here's the thing: Cora died. She died, from cancer, at ten months old. The post announcing her death bears a simple family photo: mom, dad, and baby. When I saw it, I'm not even kidding, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I can't explain how or why this has wrecked me in the way it has. Maybe it's because I have my own little girl, and I'm projecting. I don't know. But I'm having one hell of a hard time with it. I can't stop looking at her photograph. I can't stop thinking about her.

Sunday's post on the family's blog has, at the current moment, over 1,400 comments. I paged through them yesterday, and I'm ashamed to tell you how upset they made me. Most of them seemed to come from people with similar religious convictions, and many of them bore a variation on a theme: Cora is with God. God has a plan. I pray that God will heal your pain. Praise God for Cora's life. Judging from the family's previous blog posts, these are all comments that will bring them comfort, and for that I'm thankful. Even as their only child lay dying in a hospital bed, they found daily reasons for praise. These are amazing people.

But me? I'm not there. Because no matter how hard I try to interpret it differently, all I can see is that God, that same God we're praying to for healing and praising for the miracle of life? Gave a ten-month-old cancer and then let her die a slow, painful death. What kind of "plan" could possibly necessitate that? And why would I want anything to do with it?

Yours and mine

Having just returned from four days of visiting with a good friend and her newborn daughter, I announce to you the following indisputable fact: there is a kind of boundless joy in snuggling a baby who is not your own. You get all of the softness! All of the warm baby skin! All of the smooshed-face-against-your-chest cuddlesome deliciousness! Wiiiiiiiiith none of the corresponding responsibility, sleep deprivation, or post-childbirth aches and pains! My boobs are neither sore nor leaking, thank you very much; now pass me that behbeh and I'll be on my way.

I did suffer some serious Cletus the Former Fetus withdrawl while I was away, particularly on Saturday, when my attempts to engage her in conversation via speaker-phone resulted in her bursting into indignant tears and demanding that her father put the phone receiver "back on [his] ear!" It felt like rejection, which is hard to swallow from your toddler. Especially when we've been having so much fun together lately. Earlier in the week, before I'd left on my trip, Cletus and I had shared what must have been our first moment of genuine reciprocal hilarity. She had been eating a snack and, between bites, commenting on the process: "I eating this fruit bar! I chewing it!" I took the opportunity to tell her a little bit about how her body works.

"That's right," I told her. "You chew your food and swallow it, and then it goes down your throat and into your stomach. Then your body uses some of that food to make you strong and give you energy, and then the rest of it comes out in your..." And here I faltered: do I say it? should I go all technical and say bowel movement, or BM as my husband's mother had done for him? or should I just go with what she already knows, what we say every day? "... the rest of it comes out in your poop!"

There was a brief moment of silence while the child stopped chewing to contemplate, and then? The loudest, most hysterical peal of laughter I've ever heard took over her little body, spraying half-gummed fruit leather all over the room and dissolving the Former Fetus into a puddle of giggle. She fell over onto the floor. "Comes out in my POOP!" she squealed, reaching over to grab and pull at my hand. "Say it again. You say it again!"

I'm pretty sure a responsible parent would have refused, would have stopped the hilarity in its tracks, perhaps with a gentle "now, now" or a bemused "Mommy should've used a different word; that's not something we shout about." But this here parent happens to enjoy a good poop joke herself, and as such I spent the next fifteen minutes tickling my two-year-old while she rolled around on the floor, all the while repeating again and again, to her utter delight, "You chew it, you swallow it, and it comes out in your POOP!"

I guess, in turn, that this is the kind of boundless joy you get primarily from your own kid.

Isn't that why God created Tivo?

I just wanted to state publicly that I do not understand people who watch the Superbowl for the commercials.

I mean, I get it: the guy wanted free Doritos, so he threw the snow globe at the snack dispenser. Madcap hilarity! But sitting on the couch with a plate of nachos for the sole purpose of watching... commercials? Really? Like, on purpose? On any other day you would either hit fast-forward on your DVR, change the channel, or get up to use the restroom. But on Superbowl Sunday... you don't like football, but you'll voluntarily sit through four hours of it just to see Coors Light debut its most recent meditation on the theme "Women Have Boobies"? Some corporate focus group throws 5 million dollars at the screen and suddenly Taco Bell is providing the evening's entertainment? I endorse some truly ridiculous forums for televised crap, but even I refuse to believe that this has become a Thing.

That is all. I hope we can still be friends.