Good Morning and Hand Me the Crack Pipe

Not today, anyway. That is a Facebook status I’m planning. Yes, I sometimes plan my Facebook statuses. Oh, and if you were planning on attending the Minger quit FB circle jerk, it’s been canceled because she rejoined.

I’m planning it for the day Holden is finally weaned. Ya’know ‘cause I’ll have my blood stream back for the first time in over eight years so obviously, I’m going to start smoking crack.  

Except that he will NEVER be weaned. By the time he decides to wean himself, social networking sites will have fallen by the wayside, the internet will be obsolete; I might even have to move to a desert island for it to happen. He loves boobies. For a while he was soothed by Beatles songs in the middle of the night, but last night he just shouted, “I need something special.”

Tonight, he was nursing, and when Robinson Crusoe found the gun powder in the old ship, he sat up and said, “Guy Fawkes used gun powder.” Um, you’re old enough to discuss gun powder and you’re sucking on my boobs? Really? (Subtext: a three year old just made a reference to Guy Fawkes. What a genius. Clearly, Mama Minger is THE BEST mother in THE WORLD).

But anyway, I don’t mind too much about the nursing because it’s Holden. And in a lot of ways, I credit him with saving our lives, and that’s probably too much credit to heap on a three year so maybe he does need something special.

The moment Holden was born was unequivocally, the best moment of my life. There I was naked on my hands and knees in a birthing tub. I had just pushed out his head, and although I couldn’t see it, I imagine that the head swaying under the water between my large butt cheeks was pretty amusing. I said, “I’m done. The last one came out in one push. Thank you.” And the nurse said, “No, you need to push the rest of him out.” I said, “I’m too tired. Couldn’t you just pull him out.” Then, I made a super funny joke about repopulating the world with my least favorite demographic category, white males, and I pushed the little fucker out.

…

He was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

No words can describe how I felt, but even thinking of it makes me close my eyes, stretch my back and tingle all over.

It was amazing.

We named him Holden which means keeper of the deep valley. Holden Caulfield suspends his cynicism and shows a serious longing for goodness when he says he wants to stand at the edge of the rye field and stop the children from falling over the edge of the cliff. Keeper of the Deep Valley.

We went home, The Man went back to work, and my mom came to stay with us. On day five of milk drunk baby bliss, my mom took Boy 1 to the grocery store because my dad had told her not to leave us with empty cupboards. Boy 2 who was almost three then and Holden and I took a nap.

I woke up to the sound of panic. Without thinking, I rushed out of bed with Holden in my arm (which is where he stayed for at least a year), and I expected to see Boy 1 dead in the living room. It was that kind of panic.

But my mom was on the phone, and she said, “Brad’s dead.”

…

And that was the end of my dad. It was pretty shocking.

We went to Colorado. There was a funeral. I inherited his socks. I cried every time I folded laundry for six months, maybe nine. Somewhere between the funeral and the sock inheritance, we moved to Colorado.

There was more, a lot more that happened in the next two and a half years. But there was Holden, quiet, in my arms while I screamed in rage-full fits at the other two as we packed to move across the country. There was Holden, walking, smiling, keeping all of us a little happier while we were in that horrible house in the suburbs where we had no friends and no jobs and nowhere to go besides the dark places in our heads.

I really do believe that he kept the deep valley for some time so if he wants to nurse until he starts Kindergarten or whatever it is that he’s doing, I guess I can give him at least that.

I mean, it’s good enough for the chimps.     

“What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all." Holden Caulfield