How We Do It, Part XLVI : The Real Story

The Commons at Calabasas

I wasn't going to write about it, but I think I will. Yesterday, I had to drive out to Calabasas again for Henry's lacrosse practice. It takes at least an hour to get there, the practice is two hours long and there's another hour to drive back. Basically, I could drive to San Diego and back in that amount of time.

Oh, these kids. Our choices.

Last night, I had to take Sophie with me because I had no childcare. I planned on dropping Henry off and then taking Sophie to the fancy pants grocery store out there in Upper Middle Class Whiteurbia to feed her some dinner. We drove up the 101 and got there early, so I offered to buy Henry one of those coffee drinks from Starbucks. I pulled into a handicapped space and reached for my wallet. My purse wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere in the car, either. I had forgotten it at home, a careless mistake that, to tell you the truth, I rarely do. Honestly. I don't make careless mistakes very often. It's a personal strength. I can't believe I did that, I told Henry. I might be completely losing it! Henry said, What if you are losing it, Mom? I told him to be quiet and then we tried to figure out our options. Should I drop him off and then drive one hour home and then drive another hour back? No, obviously this was not an option. Should I just let Sophie not have any food for the next three hours? No, this could not be an option as she hadn't eaten since lunch. Should I go up to someone and tell them that I had a disabled kid in the car and no wallet or money on me, that she needed to eat, could they give us some cash? This made us laugh. Should I borrow some from one of Henry's coaches, whom I really don't know at all since he plays on a team that might as well be in a foreign country? Henry didn't like this idea, but I thought it was the best one, so I approached one of the coaches, told him my loopy story, gesturing to Sophie in the car, and he was kind enough to give me $20.

Are you still reading? If you want to go, that's fine. There's nothing really great that's going to happen.

I drove off with Sophie to search for a place to eat other than the fancy pants grocery store I'd taken her on Monday. While we drove around (have I ever told you that I have a horrible sense of direction and never go straight anywhere but am always turning around, backtracking, getting lost yet remaining fairly amiable while doing so?), Sophie had a giant seizure in the back seat. I glanced up in the rear-view mirror to keep tabs on her, but I couldn't change lanes or pull over and just had to helplessly make my mouth into a straight line of determination and periodically call out to Sophie that it's ok, it's ok, it's ok. When I finally found a place to pull into, she was finished and hanging limp and clammy in her seat. I looked around and saw that I had entered a fancy Upper Middle Class Whiturban outdoor shopping mall called The Commons, so I pulled into a handicapped spot, got out of the car, popped the trunk and hauled the wheelchair out of the back. I set it up and rolled it around, went to lift Sophie out of the car and realized that she was soaked through her pants. Her backpack was in the back of the car, and I'd already pulled her out of the car, so I lifted her up and put her back in the car and put the seatbelt on her so that she didn't fall out or try to get out. I retrieved the backpack and returned to her seat, unbuckled her, helped her to stand outside of the car and then gently lifted her back in and pushed her down so that she was lying down across the back seats. I wedged underneath her head an ice-cream sandwich pillow that just happened to be in the way back  (that I've probably told those boys of mine to remove from the car countless times, score one for them!), so her head wouldn't fall down in the space between the seats. Do I need to remind you that Sophie had just had a rather large tonic seizure and was in a sort of post-ictal state which, for her, means a lot of twitching and twisting?

Are you still reading? If you want to go, that's fine. There's nothing really great that's going to happen.

I had to pull off Sophie's shoes in order to get her pants off to change her and realized that she wasn't just wet (sometimes, during a seizure, the bowels just -- well -- empty). I also realized that I had forgotten to pack a change of clothes because I am indeed, perhaps losing it, but I did have diapers and wipes and after nineteen years of doing this sort of thing, even in an airplane bathroom (sitting on the toilet with her between my legs, removing a messy diaper), I managed to do it while preserving Sophie's dignity in the parking lot of a place called The Commons in Upper Middle Class Whiturbia (another reason why being not exactly thin comes in handy -- I make a pretty wide shield).

You're still here? I so appreciate your support and patience. I honestly don't have anything much more to report. I put Sophie's soaked pants back on her (with profuse apologies) and wheeled her to the nearest place to eat. Because I didn't have my purse with me, I clutched the borrowed $20 bill in my hand. Because I was out so deep into the valley, it was about 95 degrees with zero humidity, and I was feeling, at that point, a tad disheveled. My hair, too long, was sweaty and stringy, and I needed to clip it up, but I had no clip because I had no purse. My lips were cracked and dry, too, but I had no lipstick because I had no purse. It's amazing how many times I probably reach into my purse a day, pulling from its depths the essentials that I'd go so far as to say are life-affirming. Identity-revealing. Money, hair clips, lipstick. The accouterments of living a certain life in a certain country in a certain millennium. I'd almost feel like a cliche if there hadn't been that seizure, that changing a young adult's diaper in the back seat of a moderate-sized vehicle, that putting soaked pants back on the young adult, heaving her into a wheelchair and then rolling through a phalanx of staring individuals who couldn't possibly know the real story.