The Doctor Visit
The Holidays come with a lot of lists. Last year’s list included:
0) hang up Hanukkah decorations
1) run to Target for gifts and also because Target is (expensive) tylenol for the soul
1.5) finish grading school stuff
2) pack to see family
3) remember the white noise machine!
4) clean fridge before leaving to see family
5) throw trash out before leaving to see family
6) white noise machine!
7) remember bathing suites clothes
8) remember a line of August Wilson to impress people on the plane when they see me carry on a whining child
This year, my list was much smaller but the items were fatter:
1) How do I get my 2 year old to stop growling at the baby who now mostly growls because she thinks that’s our language
1.5) Maybe fly that kite I bought back in September?
2) How do I get the “sea of M&M’s” as our teachers have been calling what they see on their remote learning screens, to turn their cameras on in 2021?
3) How do I find some “en-tall-phins”?
**“endwarfins” worked decently in “the before” as my friend Tom calls the pre covid era, but they are too small to do the job during this insanely difficult pandemic. I’ve tried the things that bring on endwarfins like a bit of exercise, an even bittier amount of self care and hefty amounts of salty snacks. And with all due respect, the endwarfins are not up to the task of sending enough positivity through my system in this time of no child care, full time work while hearing said children cry in the background of my cool zoom lesson on Luis Alfaro’s play Mojada, and dark cold winter with little outdoor time.
In my search for entallphins I have made a discovery which I’d like to share in the hopes that it brings you some tools to make it through this time.
Entallphins, just like small children, don’t show up when you utter or even think the word, “agenda.” I didn’t know this in early December and gave in to my Anne of Green Gables complex which usually includes making a grand plan, completing it, and maybe having a tree whisper poetry throughout.
I thought it would be a good idea to hype up Maya’s 9 month doc appointment by making it a group outing. This is something Anne and I are famous for. Seeing something rather ordinary or even bleak, and imagining it as something else. So, I called and asked if Solly could join us with the same energy one has when dialing up a restaurant to add another seat to the reservation. Since I have very little interaction with other adults besides wonderful Rob, I have fewer people to bounce horrible ideas off of, so this one slipped through the cracks and I went ahead and loaded my 9 month old and two and half year old into the car thrilled to be going somewhere. ANYWHERE. We’ve been pretty covid conservative and haven’t gone in buildings (aside from some newborn doc visits) since March 10th when I left the hospital with two day old Maya.
Solly and I practiced how today’s doctor visit would go with some Daniel Tiger episodes and pretend doctor kit play. I was crushing the preparation stuff or what British audio book narrator Noel Janis-Norton calls “think throughs” from the book “Easier Happier Calmer Parenting” which by the way, has no pandemic chapter... My mom heart soared when Solly exclaimed, “Wow! This is amazing!” as he got out of his carseat and stepped into the gray parking garage. He carried out all of his “think through” items like a champ. He walked next to the stroller, and held my hand getting on the elevator. We entered the office building and he raced up the entry ramp with all the vim and vigor of a kid about to enter a playground he has been banned from for the last year. I was so proud and smiled extra big behind my mask at the tired nurses as they walked by because Brene Brown says that people can see you smile with your eyes. “Look at the joy we’re giving the good heroes at the hospital!” I thought to myself, a little too smugly.
We got off the elevator on the ninth floor and turned left to suite 900. We had to wait outside the snowflake decorated door while someone came to take our temperatures. Solly said “While we wait we can play, sing or imagine anything.” “Yes!” I said, my parenting pride levitating me a few inches off the white linoleum. “How about a game where you have to hop from square to square!” “Okay!” said Solly, who then hopped with the joy of a two year old whose idea has been elevated by a grown up.
The door opened. Solly peaked in. “That’s like the waiting room in Daniel Tiger and then Doctor Anna will come get us!” said Solly. “Well, yes! Almost!” I said with a laugh to the receptionist who didn’t think the three of us were as brilliant as I did.
She brought out her temperature gun. She pointed it at my forehead and it beeped. “Seems good,” she said like a teenage six flags worker who doesn't even look at the switch they flip to start the next group of cars down the roller coaster. Anyone who is carrying around some specific kinds of traumas would be dealing with so much more than I was right now because it’s a strange feeling of violation to have someone temperature check in this way.
“Noooooooo!!!” screamed Solly who dropped his red hat down around his dinosaur face mask to make himself invisible. The receptionist showed him how good Maya was at having her temp taken this way, which is something I would tell folks not to do because demonstrating that the younger child can do something while the older is not willing just makes the older angrier. “Remember the cookie at the end of our visit?” I said. “NOOOO!!!!” he screamed louder. The receptionist looked flustered. “If we don’t take your temperature now, they’ll have to take it another way in the office,” she said. Which I kind of resented because she works in a pediatricians office and she should have more tricks or candy up her sleeves rather than threats of rectal thermometers. She looked at me briefly and finally let us in with this nod like she was making an enormous allowance. “Thanks” I muttered under my mask, sending her a non smile behind my mask.
Well, just like season six of every show, it got much worse. The story line became one note and extra two dimensional characters came in with weak through-lines.
Solly refused to let the doctor (a sub for our regularly warm, fun Dr. Narayan) touch him with a scowl and a toddler superiority that would’ve made me laugh had I not been sweating while bouncing a mostly naked Maya who was eating puffs and smearing them on me by grabbing hold of my skin in chunks like my arms were those train ceilings with handholds everywhere.
“Hey kiddo!” the doctor said - executing his two dimensional role very well.
Solly sat up tall, folded his hands on his puppy pajamaed knees I couldn’t get him to take off that morning and said, “Only my DAD calls me kiddo.”
“Would you like a book?” asked the doctor, trying another tactic.
“No,” said my book-loving yet obstinate child who would not let the sub doctor win.
“Well, we’ll do your sister first then!” said the doctor while Solly nodded like a satisfied villain.
As the doctor checked my normally cheery 9 month old, she began to wail because he didn’t warm up the stethoscope before plopping it on her chubby tummy and then she writhed on the exam table like babies who are related to the Hulk do.
“Wow! She’s strong!” he said as she flip flopped and wiggled out of his grip, “Your cheeks are droplets of.. What big cheeks!... so heavy!” he said because his season six writer had become dispassionate about this job while searching for new gigs to start once the show wrapped. I hate when people aren’t tasteful about babies that have “beautiful rolls” as our regular doctor would say. That’s when Solly decided to scream “I want to go HOME!” on repeat for the next 10 questions I tried to answer about Maya’s growth and health. I shoved a cookie at him during question five, but he was finished before question six.
Finally, my two year old just couldn’t be left out of the action anymore and switched his attention seeking tactics.
“I read lots of books and my Dada has two eyes because Lightning McQueen is a famous race-car” he said. “Because” is like this new toy he hasn’t figured out has batteries and actually moves stuff forward.
Though not the best, the doctor was aware enough to utilize Solly’s offering of connection, to check his eyes, ears and sort of mouth. The job of a two year old is to do slightly not the thing being asked like when I said, “Solly, open your mouth for the doctor” and he made a tiny circle with his lips big enough for only a whistle to fit through.
Just as I was feeling relieved to have gotten that part over with, I remembered what was still to come. Flu shots. The doctor left and said the nurse would be back with the flu vaccines.
“Maya should go first” Solly kept saying with a generous ‘I’d like to sacrifice my sister to this experience first to see how it goes …” kind of smile. I was desperately thinking of ways to convince him to go first because once he saw her cry, there was no way he’d go through with the shot.
The nurse came in and said something about Thomas the Train Engine stickers and “Do you like to climb Solly?” as she pulled out the step to the exam table and all the sudden he was on the table and I was holding his arms but making it a kind of silly hand game and she goes “Done!” and I was like, “Bless you for the rest of time infinity plus one,” which was a third grade phrase I picked back up in that moment. Solly didn’t even KNOW he’d gotten a shot. I’m worried he might not have thighs with feelings but oh well... Then it was Maya’s turn and she wailed from her shots while Solly picked up bits of cookie off the floor and I kept swiping to knock them before they made it to his mouth. I then tried to stuff her back into her onesie which is hard because she has “foot-kles” which is when your cankles are so intense they fold over your foot.
I could feel the whole office breath a sigh of relief when we walked out and I was still sweating and frazzled with a baby still crying and a two year old who whined that he wanted to lick the smooth shiny hallway floors. We walked into the cold gray parking garage, Solly in a bent position resisting my arm as he tried to get his tongue down lower. Then he whined the whole way home that he wanted to go home which I told him we were doing, but he had turned off the part of his brain that had logical input. I pulled up in front of our apartment two minutes before I had to lead a meeting online, so Rob ran down to park the car and unload kids.
I had hat hair and an uneven grin as I gave my theatre staff Friday announcements and took note of any questions or concerns they had. I signed off and tried to get stuff together for my remote lessons. I usually become very international when looking for items around my desk, “Hmm I cahn’t seem to find my rulah…” I’ll say to myself. But today, there was no Brit there to make finding lost things fun. I paused. I grabbed a soda. I usually make sure to snip the plastic thing that makes little collars around the 12 cans but I was just too tired and sad to care if I was killing three sea turtles and I pitched it intact.
I know. That visit could’ve been so much worse. But I was sad that my kids were the “hard” kids at the doctor’s office. Life is a struggle and I want random people to be brightened by myself and my family, not thankful when we leave! I shed some tears later for getting my Anne of Green Gables hopes up that the doctor’s visit would fill the connection/experiences hole that had been dug by the pandemic. If I’d have only seen it for what it was - a good ‘ole dysfunctional doctor’s visit, I probably would’ve been able to shrug it off. If I’d have been like, You took two little kids to the doctor in a pandemic by yourself and survived, good job! I would’ve made space for the entallphins to enter. They’re tall. So you have to make space and rid yourself of expectations.
I still can’t knock out my current Holiday list like other years. I don’t know how to get Maya to stop growling, I don’t know how to get sad students to turn on their screens to learn and I am not great at lowering the expectations I have for wanting things to feel better than they do right now. I do know that next time we go to the doctor, I’ll have Rob wait in the car and I’ll take one kid in at a time (both adults can’t go in right now due to covid). Tip credit, Jantre Christian - amazing artist/mother of three. I do know that I’ll keep trying to fly that kite in winter and not worry if it doesn’t get off the ground. And if it does, that’s cool too.