Thursday, September 26, 2013
Back to the Suburban Grind: Picking up the phone
Back to the Suburban Grind: Picking up the phone: I remember when I was a little girl that the ringing phone sent everyone into motion. My little sister and I would jump up, racing our pare...
Picking up the phone
I remember when I was a little girl that the ringing phone sent everyone into motion. My little sister and I would jump up, racing our parents to answer. This was after rotary but before cordless and long before caller ID. Answering the phone was an adventure. Who is calling? Is it someone who wants to play with me or just someone for my parents who wants to talk about boring adult stuff? The phone was the social media and everyone learned how to do it. Little kids had play rotary phones even though they were no longer the fashion or little push button phones that they could pick up and talk into for hours. "Hello? Hello? Yes, this is So-and-so" or "Hold on just a minute please. Let me see if I can find him/her (presumably Mommy or Daddy)."
My parents did not forbid us to answer the phone, but there was a hierarchy to the phone tower. Mom and Dad on the top, kids on the bottom. Don't answer if there were no adults at home because they had to "run up the street for a minute and you don't want anyone to know you are home alone, do you?" We learned and we practiced. We just answered, "Hello?" But some of our friends were taught to answer, "So-and-so residence, who may I ask is calling?" I always got a kick out of those kids. They seemed so professional and formal, like they were Ricky Schroeder on Silver Spoons. But they knew how to answer the phone and they got the job done.
By the time I was a teenager, my parents had to install a second line in the house for my sister and me so that, even with call waiting in the house, they'd actually get a chance to talk to someone and not find a message about an important call three hours later when one of us had finally finished talking to a BFF about who the heck knows what or whispering repeated sweet absolutely nothings into the waiting ear of a paramour. We loved the phone. The phone was the life line. The phone was connection, communication, community, and it was direct. You had to pick up the phone if you wanted to know who was on the other side because there was no call waiting and much less phone solicitation. So other than teenaged prank callers or appointment confirmations, more than likely someone in the household wanted to talk to whomever was on the other end.
My kids aren't getting that practice. When Lily was in kindergarten, she was given an assignment to call someone on the telephone as part of a monthly activity log. I thought it would be fun for her to call up one of her classmates and talk to them about whatever it was they were doing at home and vice versa. I prearranged the call time with her friend's mother and we all, on both sides, geared up for the momentous occasion. The prep was as much for the adults as for the children. Because dinner time, the time scheduled for the call, has now become prime time for solicitous phone calls, fundraising efforts, surveys, and other robocalls, we had to avoid those landmines. At the appropriate time, the phone was to ring on one end and the child was supposed to answer with a greeting, the other would respond, and they'd get to chatting.
And so it went. The caller nervously dialed the phone number and started talking into the receiver before the call had even connected. "Let's try again. You have to wait for the call to connect, hon. Listen for the tone, dial, hear it ring and wait for someone to pick up."
"Hello?" someone answered shyly on the other end and *click,* our caller had gotten nervous and hung up. We tried again. Phone rings and Lily answers in a near whisper, "Hello?" Silence. "Hello?"
"Hi."
"Hi."
"It's me from your class."
"I know that."
"I am calling you."
"I know that."
"OK, bye."
*click*
Not much has changed since that exchange because, frankly, the kids don't get much opportunity to set up their own play dates and are too young to gab it up on the phone with their friends. Long before they've gotten off the bus, I've texted, emailed, maybe called, possibly seen the others' parent(s) and made the arrangements myself. I don't have the girls answer the phone when it rings because the caller ID tells us who it is and gives me the chance to decide whether or not I want contact with the outside world. The lurking danger of someone, anyone assuming that my children are home alone, a learned paranoia from my childhood, has stopped me from having them pick up (I mean, why would a child answer the phone in the middle of the afternoon?), as well as the fear of all the info they might divulge when prompted. (Oh, yeah, my mom is here. She is in the bathroom and waved her hands for me not to tell you that. She's so silly.)
Mine are still small and I have heard from their contemporaries' parents that theirs also don't get much phone time. My oldest had a friend/classmate who would frequently make her own robocalls using the school directory and reach out to every person in her class she might like to play with until someone finally answered and said yes. Thanks to caller ID, I would see the name come up and expect the caller to be the parent of said little girl and would answer. I regret to inform that I fell for this okey-doke far too many times. On the other end there would be stammering, whispering, and the question, "Can Lily and I have a playdate?" Depending on how quickly I recovered she'd either offer thanks and hang up, offer thanks and scream to her mother across the house that she'd connected and what time could they get together, or offer disappointment and ask me to call her back another time when Lily might be able to play! I should call her back?
Talking to this little girl on the phone made me batty, but I admired her gumption, and though I was not sure if her parents were intentionally teaching her the ropes of phone communique, I appreciated the effort, even remarked to a friend that in a time of crisis I'd hoped that Lily would stick with that one because she knew how to get her point across, wasn't afraid of adults, and would figure out the path to safety. She had no shyness, no fear, and complete confidence.
Thanks to FaceTime and SKYPE, my kids have the opportunity to talk to AND see my parents. I imaged the conversations would be easier since they are able to see them, almost like in a real conversation. Not so. They talk on FaceTime much like they do on the phone. In monosyllables, blips, blurps, and beeps. If they do indeed find something they like to talk about, they do so in a whisper. I can see their mouths moving, am even sitting right next to them, but can barely hear a word they are saying. My parents smile at them and nod, occasionally saying, "That's wonderful, " even when the girls are saying that the guppies in class have died. Everyone is just thrilled to see each other. I suppose the real talking will come later.
Or maybe not. Do people even talk on the phone anymore? So many people have just their smartphones, having said goodbye to landlines long ago. There is texting, emailing, FaceTiming, Skyping. It seems that long gone are the days of chatting up a storm or falling asleep on one end of the phone while your best friend does the same on the other. And yet, to me, the lessons learned on the phone, communicating when you have to rely on the words, the tone, the pauses, the cracks, the muffled sound of crying, giggling, listening, paying attention, considering appear to be less important. I am guilty too of preferring a text to a call, an email to a long drawn out explanation of what and where and when and how. But when I need comfort, human contact (yes, the phone now represents human contact!) I reach for the phone and if I am able, I settle in for a delicious conversation with a friend who will calm my soul, reassure me, reinvigorate me, set me back on course. And when I say settle in I mean walk around the house doing dishes, folding laundry, general cleaning, and checking texts on my cell while talking. But that "hello," that "what's up?", that "I'm here," is worth a thousand :-) or LOLs or :-/. Somehow I feel that we are together.
Sharing yourself can be challenging. Being vulnerable, nervous, afraid, reaching out and admitting the need to connect can be embarrassing especially now that even in highly emotional states we can emoticon and air quote and asterisk our feelings in text. But we need each other, might need to make the call, might need to receive one. So we soldier on, the girls and me, one *click*, one hang up, one awkward silence at a time until talking to one another, sharing with one another, listening to one another is easy.
(c) Copyrighted 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My parents did not forbid us to answer the phone, but there was a hierarchy to the phone tower. Mom and Dad on the top, kids on the bottom. Don't answer if there were no adults at home because they had to "run up the street for a minute and you don't want anyone to know you are home alone, do you?" We learned and we practiced. We just answered, "Hello?" But some of our friends were taught to answer, "So-and-so residence, who may I ask is calling?" I always got a kick out of those kids. They seemed so professional and formal, like they were Ricky Schroeder on Silver Spoons. But they knew how to answer the phone and they got the job done.
By the time I was a teenager, my parents had to install a second line in the house for my sister and me so that, even with call waiting in the house, they'd actually get a chance to talk to someone and not find a message about an important call three hours later when one of us had finally finished talking to a BFF about who the heck knows what or whispering repeated sweet absolutely nothings into the waiting ear of a paramour. We loved the phone. The phone was the life line. The phone was connection, communication, community, and it was direct. You had to pick up the phone if you wanted to know who was on the other side because there was no call waiting and much less phone solicitation. So other than teenaged prank callers or appointment confirmations, more than likely someone in the household wanted to talk to whomever was on the other end.
My kids aren't getting that practice. When Lily was in kindergarten, she was given an assignment to call someone on the telephone as part of a monthly activity log. I thought it would be fun for her to call up one of her classmates and talk to them about whatever it was they were doing at home and vice versa. I prearranged the call time with her friend's mother and we all, on both sides, geared up for the momentous occasion. The prep was as much for the adults as for the children. Because dinner time, the time scheduled for the call, has now become prime time for solicitous phone calls, fundraising efforts, surveys, and other robocalls, we had to avoid those landmines. At the appropriate time, the phone was to ring on one end and the child was supposed to answer with a greeting, the other would respond, and they'd get to chatting.
And so it went. The caller nervously dialed the phone number and started talking into the receiver before the call had even connected. "Let's try again. You have to wait for the call to connect, hon. Listen for the tone, dial, hear it ring and wait for someone to pick up."
"Hello?" someone answered shyly on the other end and *click,* our caller had gotten nervous and hung up. We tried again. Phone rings and Lily answers in a near whisper, "Hello?" Silence. "Hello?"
"Hi."
"Hi."
"It's me from your class."
"I know that."
"I am calling you."
"I know that."
"OK, bye."
*click*
Not much has changed since that exchange because, frankly, the kids don't get much opportunity to set up their own play dates and are too young to gab it up on the phone with their friends. Long before they've gotten off the bus, I've texted, emailed, maybe called, possibly seen the others' parent(s) and made the arrangements myself. I don't have the girls answer the phone when it rings because the caller ID tells us who it is and gives me the chance to decide whether or not I want contact with the outside world. The lurking danger of someone, anyone assuming that my children are home alone, a learned paranoia from my childhood, has stopped me from having them pick up (I mean, why would a child answer the phone in the middle of the afternoon?), as well as the fear of all the info they might divulge when prompted. (Oh, yeah, my mom is here. She is in the bathroom and waved her hands for me not to tell you that. She's so silly.)
Mine are still small and I have heard from their contemporaries' parents that theirs also don't get much phone time. My oldest had a friend/classmate who would frequently make her own robocalls using the school directory and reach out to every person in her class she might like to play with until someone finally answered and said yes. Thanks to caller ID, I would see the name come up and expect the caller to be the parent of said little girl and would answer. I regret to inform that I fell for this okey-doke far too many times. On the other end there would be stammering, whispering, and the question, "Can Lily and I have a playdate?" Depending on how quickly I recovered she'd either offer thanks and hang up, offer thanks and scream to her mother across the house that she'd connected and what time could they get together, or offer disappointment and ask me to call her back another time when Lily might be able to play! I should call her back?
Talking to this little girl on the phone made me batty, but I admired her gumption, and though I was not sure if her parents were intentionally teaching her the ropes of phone communique, I appreciated the effort, even remarked to a friend that in a time of crisis I'd hoped that Lily would stick with that one because she knew how to get her point across, wasn't afraid of adults, and would figure out the path to safety. She had no shyness, no fear, and complete confidence.
Thanks to FaceTime and SKYPE, my kids have the opportunity to talk to AND see my parents. I imaged the conversations would be easier since they are able to see them, almost like in a real conversation. Not so. They talk on FaceTime much like they do on the phone. In monosyllables, blips, blurps, and beeps. If they do indeed find something they like to talk about, they do so in a whisper. I can see their mouths moving, am even sitting right next to them, but can barely hear a word they are saying. My parents smile at them and nod, occasionally saying, "That's wonderful, " even when the girls are saying that the guppies in class have died. Everyone is just thrilled to see each other. I suppose the real talking will come later.
Or maybe not. Do people even talk on the phone anymore? So many people have just their smartphones, having said goodbye to landlines long ago. There is texting, emailing, FaceTiming, Skyping. It seems that long gone are the days of chatting up a storm or falling asleep on one end of the phone while your best friend does the same on the other. And yet, to me, the lessons learned on the phone, communicating when you have to rely on the words, the tone, the pauses, the cracks, the muffled sound of crying, giggling, listening, paying attention, considering appear to be less important. I am guilty too of preferring a text to a call, an email to a long drawn out explanation of what and where and when and how. But when I need comfort, human contact (yes, the phone now represents human contact!) I reach for the phone and if I am able, I settle in for a delicious conversation with a friend who will calm my soul, reassure me, reinvigorate me, set me back on course. And when I say settle in I mean walk around the house doing dishes, folding laundry, general cleaning, and checking texts on my cell while talking. But that "hello," that "what's up?", that "I'm here," is worth a thousand :-) or LOLs or :-/. Somehow I feel that we are together.
Sharing yourself can be challenging. Being vulnerable, nervous, afraid, reaching out and admitting the need to connect can be embarrassing especially now that even in highly emotional states we can emoticon and air quote and asterisk our feelings in text. But we need each other, might need to make the call, might need to receive one. So we soldier on, the girls and me, one *click*, one hang up, one awkward silence at a time until talking to one another, sharing with one another, listening to one another is easy.
(c) Copyrighted 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Back to the Suburban Grind: Be gone
Back to the Suburban Grind: Be gone: When I disappear for huge chunks of time one can best believe that something is up. Here's what's up. Or has been up. Nits. Th...
Be gone
When I disappear for huge chunks of time one can best believe that something is up. Here's what's up. Or has been up. Nits.
The girls and I were at the pool when I got a text from a friend, the mother of a little girl with whom my girls had been spending a lot of time. Giving it to me straight, no chaser she told me, "P has lice. We are on our way to Lice Be Gone." I have to put it all out there, as a black chick, I'd never come even close to the critters. Never thought I would. Since I was a girl, when the school nurse took the tongue depressor/popsicle stick to my classmates' heads in search of the dreaded bugs and their eggs, I'd turn my head as she barely searched. All that grease, that heat, the braids had convinced us all that BLACK PEOPLE DON'T GET LICE. (Which we will soon discover is so not true. Alas, while being black is cool and has its merits, a biological impossibility of getting lice is not one of them. *sigh*) With two years of school cycles back here in the States we'd managed to avoid countless lice warnings and sightings at both of their schools. (I'd never even heard about it in Barbados, but that doesn't mean anything really.) Just to be fair, I took a cursory glance at the girls' hair, checked behind the ears, along the back of the neck, in the crown and sectioned the strands. I never saw a bug, thank God, but tucked deep into the soft, marshy forest that is the girls' thick curly hair I saw tiny little, gummy dewdrops that were not easy to get off with a flick of the brush. Nits. NITS!
With Panic as my middle name, you can best be assured that I grabbed those two cuties by the arms and snatched them away from any and all children. Their hair, now dripping with chlorinated water looked beautiful, golden from the hours spent in the pool and under the summer sun, sweet, bouncy curls tangling in their eyelashes. I whispered to them that it was time for us to go because I wanted to get to the local drug store immediately to get the kit and have these "lice be gone!" The whisper was for naught. "We have lice? How did we get it?" Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. My first time. I'd never experienced what so many others had for years prepared for after camp season, first week of school, and sleepovers. I wore it as shame and embarrassment. They as curiosity, interest, nervousness.
"We don't know for sure but we'd damn well better get you off the streets and into the darkness...I mean, home." I probably didn't swear. Probably I did. I did. Along with the lice shampoo, gel, comb, and bedding spray, I purchased Quick Nits to prevent the return, lots of candy, a movie, and a Barbie or something or other for each. Not a stuffed animal because I'd already been warned that I'd have to nearly incinerate them in the dryer to kill any lice that might be foolishly trying to snuggle into that fake hairy furriness. I washed their heads with RidX and slathered some anti-lice gel onto their heads to "aid in the combing out of nits." Unfortunately for all of us, I had no idea what exactly I was looking for. Yeah, I'd seen the pictures on line but when confronted with the daunting task of combing through a 500,000 thread count of curly, sandy hair, picking and pulling, searching for tiny whitish, yellowish stickiness strand after strand until my eyes dried shut, I knew I was up against the worst of it. Because I just couldn't be sure, even after the second course of shampoo and nitpicking, I gave in and convinced the hubby to join me on a trip to Lice Be Gone in the town over.
Lice Be Gone offers a guarantee of lice and nit removal and a follow up for 1/2 the original charge. With one treatment on shoulder length hair running $250 per head, we were looking at a new iPad, as my husband liked to remind me. Five hundred dollars for the two girls and $250 if I chose the follow up. (I think you know which option my cheap ass went with.) We were looking at peace of mind for ourselves and everyone we do, did, or might spend time with. At the initial search, Virginie was found to have about thirty-five to forty nits glued to her hair. Lily was the real shocker that just blew up my mind and I am still piecing it back together. Lily had over two hundred nits! Did I not just say that I did two shampoos and nitpicked for hours offering up gifts and snacks and good times? Two hundred? It was like I hadn't done a thing.
It appears that the shampoo renders the nits void, but it was my job to pick them out. Until shown by the staff at Lice Be Gone how to do that, I was really looking for needles in the haystack. Luckily, the eggs never hatched and we never saw a bug on the head as they could have been walking around like Pig Pen with a halo of lice swarming their dear heads. A team of two young girls worked on each of the girls' heads with a nit comb and gallons of cheap, white conditioner. They parted and searched and combed and searched some more. It took them about an hour and a 1/2 to do the entire treatment--parting, searching, parting, searching--until they were ready to shampoo, recheck, blow-dry, and finally release the people back to the world. No nits, no bugs, no lice. Instead of the $250 return trip, we agreed to put Crisco on the girls' heads every Saturday for the next three weeks, cover them with shower caps, and have them wear those for 8 to 10 hours a day. Who even uses Crisco anymore? The girls loved it except for the Crisco and the shower caps and wearing them for 8 to 10 hours a day.
We were good and we were safe. I went back to treating the girls with the kind of product usually reserved for the school year when I put their hair back in ponytails and buns and clips every day. I had gotten lax in the summer because they were swimming so much. It had seemed a waste to use all that product and then have them swim it down the drain. But we were back to product and the occasional olive/tea tree/eucalyptus oil treatment. I allowed myself to relax, to loosen the PTSD constraints that pulled at me every time I felt an itch or saw one of the girls scratch their heads.
And then the ground swell rumbling began. First a call came in from a friend whose daughter had played with Lily and Virginie just the night before. Outside. For an hour or so. Did they touch heads? Was there head to head contact? I didn't see them touch heads. Did they? Were their heads in contact? While traveling by car on a ten hour trip, my friend had noticed the itching and then bugs, lice! crawling in her daughter's hair. She had to warn me. I did the treatment. Checked their heads. Freaked and acted like a monkey. Days later, another friend called to say that her two had been sent home from school ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL because they had nits and bugs. SHE had nits too. I'd been coating the girls in olive oil since Saturday's treatment and checking their heads daily pulling everything that was small, flaky, white, grey, blue, pink and not hair so I felt alright except not really. And then my neighbor whose daughter is Virginie's BFF called to tell me that hers too had lice. Bugs. Crawling. She'd shaved her boys' heads to the quick and started checking on the girl. There was shampooing, nitpicking, oiling. It seemed that everyone knew someone who was doing the same damned thing.
I finally cracked. "Black people night not get lice," I thought/prayed, "but I'd better treat myself too." I didn't want to be trolling the house with lice, infecting the girls, especially after all that treatment. Though I'd never seen anything on my head through any of the outbreak, I itched any time anyone said lice or nits. I checked my head until it hurt. I thought I saw a little bug in the sink after one of the comb outs only to find that it was a tiny ball at the end of the spiral brush bristle that fell off. I did the treatment, scrubbed and nitpicked and found nothing. I shaved the hubby's head down to "Marine Corp." pronounced "MAH-rins Cor-P" and washed all the laundry, anything soft really, and bleach-sponged every surface in the house.
We've seen ten nits and safely removed them. They slept in shower caps and slumber caps with their hair coated in oils. I have nitpicked and nitpicked and am now convinced I may have a future as a lice checker. There is no itching. But what there is is a sadness at the shame, the anxiety, the stress that these little blood sucking creatures caused me, my friends and neighbors, and probably countless others who hid away, fearing too that they were Patient Zero, the cause of a "chicken-or-the-egg" scenario if ever there was one. Anyone can get lice. Clean or dirty, rich or poor, from any ethnic background. The owner of Lice Be Gone told me on that first visit, "If you know people who haven't had lice yet it's just because they are lucky." Reassuring. I think the outbreaks are becoming epidemic and can't even begin to guess why. For this poor OCD/PTSD mother nitpicking has been added to the color coordinated clothes hanging in the closet, playroom straightening, housecleaning, lock checking (car and house) as one of the daily rituals.
My friend told me that the search for Patient Zero is futile and invites an advanced level Blame Game that serves no one. She's right. It doesn't matter to me how it starts. It's how it ends. And so far, it's ended well. The lice be gone. ;-)
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
The girls and I were at the pool when I got a text from a friend, the mother of a little girl with whom my girls had been spending a lot of time. Giving it to me straight, no chaser she told me, "P has lice. We are on our way to Lice Be Gone." I have to put it all out there, as a black chick, I'd never come even close to the critters. Never thought I would. Since I was a girl, when the school nurse took the tongue depressor/popsicle stick to my classmates' heads in search of the dreaded bugs and their eggs, I'd turn my head as she barely searched. All that grease, that heat, the braids had convinced us all that BLACK PEOPLE DON'T GET LICE. (Which we will soon discover is so not true. Alas, while being black is cool and has its merits, a biological impossibility of getting lice is not one of them. *sigh*) With two years of school cycles back here in the States we'd managed to avoid countless lice warnings and sightings at both of their schools. (I'd never even heard about it in Barbados, but that doesn't mean anything really.) Just to be fair, I took a cursory glance at the girls' hair, checked behind the ears, along the back of the neck, in the crown and sectioned the strands. I never saw a bug, thank God, but tucked deep into the soft, marshy forest that is the girls' thick curly hair I saw tiny little, gummy dewdrops that were not easy to get off with a flick of the brush. Nits. NITS!
With Panic as my middle name, you can best be assured that I grabbed those two cuties by the arms and snatched them away from any and all children. Their hair, now dripping with chlorinated water looked beautiful, golden from the hours spent in the pool and under the summer sun, sweet, bouncy curls tangling in their eyelashes. I whispered to them that it was time for us to go because I wanted to get to the local drug store immediately to get the kit and have these "lice be gone!" The whisper was for naught. "We have lice? How did we get it?" Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. My first time. I'd never experienced what so many others had for years prepared for after camp season, first week of school, and sleepovers. I wore it as shame and embarrassment. They as curiosity, interest, nervousness.
"We don't know for sure but we'd damn well better get you off the streets and into the darkness...I mean, home." I probably didn't swear. Probably I did. I did. Along with the lice shampoo, gel, comb, and bedding spray, I purchased Quick Nits to prevent the return, lots of candy, a movie, and a Barbie or something or other for each. Not a stuffed animal because I'd already been warned that I'd have to nearly incinerate them in the dryer to kill any lice that might be foolishly trying to snuggle into that fake hairy furriness. I washed their heads with RidX and slathered some anti-lice gel onto their heads to "aid in the combing out of nits." Unfortunately for all of us, I had no idea what exactly I was looking for. Yeah, I'd seen the pictures on line but when confronted with the daunting task of combing through a 500,000 thread count of curly, sandy hair, picking and pulling, searching for tiny whitish, yellowish stickiness strand after strand until my eyes dried shut, I knew I was up against the worst of it. Because I just couldn't be sure, even after the second course of shampoo and nitpicking, I gave in and convinced the hubby to join me on a trip to Lice Be Gone in the town over.
Lice Be Gone offers a guarantee of lice and nit removal and a follow up for 1/2 the original charge. With one treatment on shoulder length hair running $250 per head, we were looking at a new iPad, as my husband liked to remind me. Five hundred dollars for the two girls and $250 if I chose the follow up. (I think you know which option my cheap ass went with.) We were looking at peace of mind for ourselves and everyone we do, did, or might spend time with. At the initial search, Virginie was found to have about thirty-five to forty nits glued to her hair. Lily was the real shocker that just blew up my mind and I am still piecing it back together. Lily had over two hundred nits! Did I not just say that I did two shampoos and nitpicked for hours offering up gifts and snacks and good times? Two hundred? It was like I hadn't done a thing.
It appears that the shampoo renders the nits void, but it was my job to pick them out. Until shown by the staff at Lice Be Gone how to do that, I was really looking for needles in the haystack. Luckily, the eggs never hatched and we never saw a bug on the head as they could have been walking around like Pig Pen with a halo of lice swarming their dear heads. A team of two young girls worked on each of the girls' heads with a nit comb and gallons of cheap, white conditioner. They parted and searched and combed and searched some more. It took them about an hour and a 1/2 to do the entire treatment--parting, searching, parting, searching--until they were ready to shampoo, recheck, blow-dry, and finally release the people back to the world. No nits, no bugs, no lice. Instead of the $250 return trip, we agreed to put Crisco on the girls' heads every Saturday for the next three weeks, cover them with shower caps, and have them wear those for 8 to 10 hours a day. Who even uses Crisco anymore? The girls loved it except for the Crisco and the shower caps and wearing them for 8 to 10 hours a day.
We were good and we were safe. I went back to treating the girls with the kind of product usually reserved for the school year when I put their hair back in ponytails and buns and clips every day. I had gotten lax in the summer because they were swimming so much. It had seemed a waste to use all that product and then have them swim it down the drain. But we were back to product and the occasional olive/tea tree/eucalyptus oil treatment. I allowed myself to relax, to loosen the PTSD constraints that pulled at me every time I felt an itch or saw one of the girls scratch their heads.
And then the ground swell rumbling began. First a call came in from a friend whose daughter had played with Lily and Virginie just the night before. Outside. For an hour or so. Did they touch heads? Was there head to head contact? I didn't see them touch heads. Did they? Were their heads in contact? While traveling by car on a ten hour trip, my friend had noticed the itching and then bugs, lice! crawling in her daughter's hair. She had to warn me. I did the treatment. Checked their heads. Freaked and acted like a monkey. Days later, another friend called to say that her two had been sent home from school ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL because they had nits and bugs. SHE had nits too. I'd been coating the girls in olive oil since Saturday's treatment and checking their heads daily pulling everything that was small, flaky, white, grey, blue, pink and not hair so I felt alright except not really. And then my neighbor whose daughter is Virginie's BFF called to tell me that hers too had lice. Bugs. Crawling. She'd shaved her boys' heads to the quick and started checking on the girl. There was shampooing, nitpicking, oiling. It seemed that everyone knew someone who was doing the same damned thing.
I finally cracked. "Black people night not get lice," I thought/prayed, "but I'd better treat myself too." I didn't want to be trolling the house with lice, infecting the girls, especially after all that treatment. Though I'd never seen anything on my head through any of the outbreak, I itched any time anyone said lice or nits. I checked my head until it hurt. I thought I saw a little bug in the sink after one of the comb outs only to find that it was a tiny ball at the end of the spiral brush bristle that fell off. I did the treatment, scrubbed and nitpicked and found nothing. I shaved the hubby's head down to "Marine Corp." pronounced "MAH-rins Cor-P" and washed all the laundry, anything soft really, and bleach-sponged every surface in the house.
We've seen ten nits and safely removed them. They slept in shower caps and slumber caps with their hair coated in oils. I have nitpicked and nitpicked and am now convinced I may have a future as a lice checker. There is no itching. But what there is is a sadness at the shame, the anxiety, the stress that these little blood sucking creatures caused me, my friends and neighbors, and probably countless others who hid away, fearing too that they were Patient Zero, the cause of a "chicken-or-the-egg" scenario if ever there was one. Anyone can get lice. Clean or dirty, rich or poor, from any ethnic background. The owner of Lice Be Gone told me on that first visit, "If you know people who haven't had lice yet it's just because they are lucky." Reassuring. I think the outbreaks are becoming epidemic and can't even begin to guess why. For this poor OCD/PTSD mother nitpicking has been added to the color coordinated clothes hanging in the closet, playroom straightening, housecleaning, lock checking (car and house) as one of the daily rituals.
My friend told me that the search for Patient Zero is futile and invites an advanced level Blame Game that serves no one. She's right. It doesn't matter to me how it starts. It's how it ends. And so far, it's ended well. The lice be gone. ;-)
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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