Helloween

It’s that time of year again.  The smell of pumpkin scented candles, the crisp, vibrant leaves, the fact that I weigh ten pounds more than I should from eating candy – Halloween!  Halloween is typically not one of my favorite holidays simply because I’m not much of a dresser-upper.  Also, I’m not crafty or creative so I can’t really do much to help the girls with their costumes.  We always have to go with something store-bought rather than something I piece together or, even less likely, make.

But, as the girls have gotten older, I have enjoyed Halloween more and more.  Our neighborhood always has a get-together and there are always lots of other families to trick-or-treat with.  It’s fun to watch the girls happily race from house to house in their silly costumes with their friends.  There is no shortage of festivities – even for the parents – and I was actually looking forward to it this year.  This was the first of many of the night’s major miscalculations.

To start things off, we had some issues with our costumes this year.  Meg first declared she wanted to go as Satan.  Not a devil – specifically Satan.  I told her that no, she couldn’t do that.  It was inappropriate.  She then went to her back-up – a caterpillar.  I suppose if your mom won’t let you be Satan, the next best thing is a caterpillar…  The trouble is, there aren’t very many caterpillar costumes for six year olds out there.  Most of the ones that are available are bunting-type costumes for infants.  So, we punted that and decided that, given her love of 101 Dalmatians, she should be Cruella DeVille.  The trouble with that one is that Cruella isn’t exactly a current Disney character.  I could not find a single kids’ Cruella costume and I certainly wasn’t capable of making one.  They did have some sexy looking “Naughty Dognapper” costumes for adults, but nothing appropriate for her, so we were back to square one.

We landed on a clown costume – clowns are a good costume.  You know as soon as you see it that you’re looking at a clown.  I’m not wild about those costumes out there that are “Rainbow Fairy” or “Ice Princess”.  What the hell is a rainbow fairy?  What does ice have to do with being a princess?  I don’t like ‘em.  It’s not obvious what they are at first glance.  So, I convinced Meg that she wanted to be a clown.  I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be a horrible, horrible decision.

Meanwhile, for the second year in a row, Kate announced – I’m going to say back in April – that she was going to go as “a little girl on crutches”.  Last year I managed to talk her out of it.  “But Kate”, I reasoned, “How will you trick-or-treat on crutches?  How will you hold your candy bag?”  She acquiesced and went as a black cat last year.  This year, I explained all of this to her again but to no avail.  I found a cheap pair of children’s crutches that I actually had some guilt about buying.  Somewhere there was going to be an injured kid hobbling around without any crutches so that my strange child could pretend to need them.

I also purchased gauze and fake blood spray thinking that I’d wrap her head and other body parts so that people would understand that the crutches were part of a costume and not the result of a playground injury.  It occurred to me that Kate going door to door looking like an accident victim might be offensive to someone but I felt badly about squashing her dreams a second year in a row, so I reluctantly got on board.  She was excited so I didn’t have anything to be concerned about.  Oh how very wrong I was about this, too.

As I was putting the clown make-up on Meg’s face, Mike was “helping out” by wrapping Kate’s leg and foot with gauze.  Mike wanted to be part of getting them ready which is so sweet.  The girls cast him aside sometimes.  He can’t do hair.  He doesn’t know which clothes match.  They just don’t have any confidence in him when it comes to those kinds of things.  So, he was happy that Kate allowed him to wrap up her leg. 

As I would put one part of the make-up on Meg’s face, she’d turn around to the mirror and look at herself.  At every opportunity, she’d catch a glimpse.  She was growing more and more excited as I did her eyes, her mouth, etc.  The more she looked like a clown, the more excited she became.

Kate was excited too.  The gauze was looking more and more like a real cast.  Meg, Mike and I even signed it with get well wishes to make it look authentic.  I wrapped more of the gauze around her head but she decided against the bloody spray.  We were ready to go.

Except… Right when she stood up, Kate began experiencing pain in her wrapped leg.  First it seemed minor.  Then, within seconds of mentioning a slight discomfort, she was bawling.  She was so uncomfortable that she knew she’d never make it trick or treating.  Mike was visibly dejected.  All of his hard work and he still couldn’t get it right.  She was losing feeling in her leg.  I looked and it was wrapped about as tightly as was humanly possible.  Poor Mike.  He can’t win with them sometimes.  We decided he needed to unwrap the gauze and just start over. 

Here’s the funny thing: Mike hadn’t used gauze at all. He had used medical tape.  Therefore, he was going to have to rip it off of her tightly bound leg (which actually might not be that bad given that she didn’t have much feeling left in her leg).  The feeling came back, though, as he began to pull off the first few layers of her skin.  She was screaming and crying throughout the grueling process.  I was standing there DYING to tell her that I told her that this would be a horrible costume choice but of course, I couldn’t do that to her.  I’ll do it later.  Remind me to.

Mike felt terrible that he was hurting her.  She requested that I be the one to re-wrap it and he sunk quietly into the background and took to getting Meg loaded into the car.  Once she was wrapped with gauze instead of medical tape, we got into the car.  Her eyes were red from the crying but we all knew that a fun, festive night was on the horizon.  Or at least for the next 2&1/2 minutes.

We arrived late to the hotdog dinner due to the experience that we’ll now refer to as “Tape-Gate”.  Most families were already there with the children admiring each other’s costumes and the parents looking proudly on.  Almost instantly, one little girl gave Meg a funny look and my precious clown burst into tears and immediately demanded we go home.  What she didn’t know at the time that we found out later was that the little girl’s mother is petrified of clowns.  When her daughter saw Meg, she ran to tell her mother that there was a clown there just to tease her.  All Meg saw was that a girl had a look on her face that indicated something other than what she had wanted and it ruined her entrance to the party.

With the tears flowing, it dawned on me that if I was going to get a picture of the two of them, it was going to have to be soon or she would cry all of her make-up off.  I grabbed her big red nose and shoved it onto her face and told them both emphatically that we were going to get a cute, happy picture.  I let Meg know that she was free to go back to crying once I had captured the staged moment of festive fun.  That poor child literally would bawl and then flash a quick smile for my camera and then cry out again.  What a horrible mother I am. 

 One of many shots like this

And finally a good one!



 

Meanwhile, as soon as the last picture was snapped, Kate ripped off her head wrap saying that it was too uncomfortable.  This left her only with crutches and a wrapped foot.  There was nothing that looked “costumey” about her ensemble.  I didn’t like it, but the more pressing problem was the sobbing clown, so I let it go.

Meg began hiding at the back of the building where everyone was gathering saying over and over again, “I don’t want to be a clown for Halloween!”  I felt awful because it had been my idea for her to be a clown.  She looked adorable to me, of course, but also a little ridiculous.  She had a painted face and a rainbow-colored afro for crying out loud (Crying out loud - that’s exactly what she was doing.)  Normally I can talk some sense into her, but she was clearly embarrassed.  Self-conscious for the first time that I can remember.  She was begging me to take her home.  Begging.  I thought back to that morning when I woke her up and she happily jumped out of bed and shouted, “Happy Halloween!”  She had been so excited and now she was devastated.  She had loved how she looked when we left the house and now she didn’t want to be seen.  It was heartbreaking.

After some begging of my own, I managed to convince her to come inside and eat some dinner.  She and Kate sat together at a table and I had to forcibly extricate my arm from her grasp in order to go fix her a plate.  I was looking around for Mike because I needed him to stay with her in my absence because she was still very upset.  I couldn’t find him so I went about fixing them a plate.  I returned and only saw Kate.  Upon further inspection, I noticed the rainbow-colored scraggles of her wig peeking up from underneath the table.  She was hiding.

I was trying to reason with the despondent clown by telling her not to let someone else make her change how she feels about herself and blah, blah, blah but it wasn’t working.  Her carefully drawn make up was now slowly dripping down her tear-stained face until she began looking like one of those horror movie murderous clowns instead of the cute, silly circus kind.  As I was giving my best parenting “be proud of who you are” speech, I caught a glimpse of Mike outside with his buddies, beer in hand, blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding inside.  He, of course, had no idea she was so upset.  Had he known, he would have been inside helping me.   He didn't; so he wasn't.  I had to go it alone.  I found out later that he was able to enjoy two hotdogs while I only managed to get a few sips of a glass of wine before pouring it all over myself trying to wrestle with the forlorn clown. This was not my night.

Finally, we took off Meg's wig and hat and that seemed to make her less self-conscious.  I told her if she wanted to go home I would take her but that I really didn’t want her to miss out on a fun Halloween.  The lure of candy proved too much for her and she reluctantly decided to stay out and trick or treat.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that she wanted ME to go up to each house with her bag while she hid behind her dad.  I wasn't going to allow that.  Instead, I went with her to the first few houses until she felt more comfortable doing it on her own.  We ran into the mom whose daughter inadvertently started all of this, and once she found out all that had transpired, she had a good conversation with Meg and managed to single-handedly save the evening.  Of course, I had an empty stomach and a now-full glass of wine, so I was happy as well.

As I suspected would be the case, Kate realized at about the third house we went to that she couldn’t get around as quickly as the other children.  She was, as you’ll recall, on crutches.  She began picking them up and sprinting to the houses.  Then she just handed them to Mike and me so that we could carry them to each house along the route.  She also discovered that, lo and behold, it was too cumbersome to carry crutches and her candy bag, so guess who got to tote around her bag?  I felt confident that somewhere along the way I had mentioned all of these things as potential problems, but Kate acted as though this was a new discovery.  Grrrrr. 

Her costume was puzzling to people, too.  They’d see her coming and they’d say, “Oh, we will bring the candy to you.”  Or, “Sweetie, what happened to your leg?"  I’d have to explain that this was, in fact, her costume and then read the “what kind of a weird-ass family ARE you?” expression on their faces.  She was happy, though, so what did it matter?

We did eventually have fun trick or treating.  All of us.  We have great friends/neighbors to go with so once all of the crises were out of the way and my own feelings of embarrassment over the psychotic clown and limping weirdo had subsided, we managed to enjoy ourselves.  We went to a friend’s house toward the end of the evening where I was finally able to get some food – and boy did I eat.  The problem was that we stayed out so long that we only ended up getting three trick-or-treaters once we got home.  That means that I have about 37 pounds of candy still in my house.  Calling me.  Begging me to eat it.

The drama surrounding Halloween really surprised me.  It seemed to come out of nowhere and when it hit, it hit hard.  We have never had a fun event turn into such a stressful experience like that.  Other parents have shared their own stories with me over the years – spoiled holidays, ruined vacations.  I’ve always felt bad for them that their children were not as well-adjusted as mine.  Well, reality has hit the McCallie household and I now have the knowledge that my children are as crazy as everyone else's.  There is some comfort in that, I suppose.  Safety in numbers.  And now that Halloween is successfully behind I us, I can look forward to a nice, peaceful Thanksgiving.  Right?

RIGHT?????!!!

 

 

Duds

About two years ago, I wrote about our dog, Dudley, who was aging and was beginning to play upon my nerves.  He was 14 at the time; a good and loyal friend who was beginning to show his age.  That sweet boy died last month at the age of 16.  Our whole family is a little bit pitiful without our faithful friend and family member.  The house is quieter; vacant without him.

What could I possibly say about dogs that hasn’t already been eloquently said by countless writers?  Quite simply, dogs are better than we are.  Kinder in a lot of ways.  More loving.  More open and inviting.  What you see is what you get.  They don’t judge.  They just love.  They treat you like a rock star when you come home after having only been gone ten minutes.  They are fiercely loyal.  They forgive.  They offer themselves completely.  True, they sometimes offer gifts from their bowels in unexpected places, but it’s a small price to pay for what you get in return.

Dudley became the standard by which Mike and I will forever judge other dogs.  He was in our lives for our most important life events.  Our wedding.  Our move to Chattanooga. The births of our daughters.  The purchase of our lake home (which I still contend Mike bought specifically for Dudley).  He was the constant.

 Our girls loved him very much – he’d been with them their whole lives.  But our next dog will be the one they will more identify their childhood with.  We will get a puppy at some point and the girls will be involved in his or her life from the beginning.  Duds was grumpy in his later years.  He didn’t love the girls as much as they wanted him to.  About a year ago, Kate was talking about the fact that Dudley wouldn’t be here forever and would we get another dog someday.  I told her yes and she suggested that we get the type that “doesn’t bite at me”.  He was simply growing tired and they were rambunctious.  A puppy will LOVE that rambunctiousness and that will bind them to a new puppy to a bigger extent than they were to Dudley.  But Dudley will be the dog Mike and I talk about for the rest of our lives.  Sure, we will love other pets, but not like Dudley.

In his absence, I am finding that we talked about him all the time.  We would give him this elaborate back story on pretty much a daily basis.  We’d be watching a movie and one of us would say, “Remember when Dudley did that?  Remember when he was the head of that drug cartel and killed all of those people?”  Or I’d put his little Christmas jingle bell collar on him at the holidays and Mike would fuss at me: “Maggie, why do you do that every year when you know Dudley is Jewish?”  We did this EVERY DAY.  Our girls did it too.  “Guess who had to go to the principal’s office today.  Dudley.”   If we couldn’t find him inside the house immediately, one of us would suggest that he was outside smoking with his “bad seed” friend, Robert.  I didn’t really realize how much we talked about him or somehow inserted him into a story or event but I find myself about to do it now and I get that little pang of sadness.

He had too many nicknames to count.  He was, of course, Dudley.  Duds.  But early on in our relationship, Mike thought he looked like a goat due to the scruff under his chin, so he became “The Goat”.  Then Goatey.  Then, in some intricate tale I don’t even remember the origin of, Goateres Banderas. He was Buddy Budders.  Buddy Butter Bean.  Smallest Friend.  Señor.  And the list goes on.  In fact, we called him so many things that it has occurred to me that maybe he didn’t lose his hearing as soon as I thought he did.  Maybe he just didn’t have any idea we were talking to him.

 We also incorporated him into songs.  All songs and TV themes could and would be routinely Dudley-ized in our house.  We also had some songs we had written (not written down, mind you - that would be pathetic and not “cool” like the rest of this that I’m sharing) and continued to sing over the years.  I’m not saying they were great songs, but certain occasions called for a good homespun Dudley ballad.  Again, I didn’t realize how often we would do this but now that he’s gone, I catch myself doing it all the time. 

 It makes me profoundly sad that he is not here anymore.  Sixteen years is a long time to have a pet.  I was 24 years old when I got him.  His routines were my routines.  There is a void there now that he’s gone.  I now fix the girls’ lunches for school and expect to hear his little nails scrape across the floor as the scent of the lunch meat proves too hard for him to ignore.  When I roll over in the bed, I expect to hear the tired little grunt he would let out when I was disturbing him.  I feel like I still need to let him out at night before bedtime.  I don’t quite remember life before him and I’m having a hard time adjusting to life without him.

We had known for a while that he was not long for this world.  He had been in decline as you would expect a 16 year old dog to be.  That said, he was very healthy right up until the time he… wasn’t.  It was not a long and dragged out process, thankfully.  It was basically one bad weekend and then I knew.  He wouldn’t eat the scrambled cheese eggs (his favorite) I had put in his bowl on Friday morning and then I cried for the rest of the weekend with the knowledge that he was coming to his end.  On Monday morning, we made an appointment for that afternoon.  I drove him there.  I took him out of his crate.  I carried him in.  There was something so personal about it.  I was the one carrying him to his death.  That’s the worst part about it.  With a dog, you have to determine when it is time.

We had decided to have the doctor examine him just to be sure we were making the right decision.  If he was simply sick and we could give him some meds and get a good 6-12 months out of him, we would do that.  But if there would be no quality to his life, we would not put him through that.  I knew when we took him in that he was more than likely not going to be coming home.  I had prepared the girls and they got to spend some time with him before I left for the vet.  Mike was coming in from out of town and was trying to get me to put off the appointment until Tuesday morning.  I was against that because I didn’t want to go through having a “last night” with him.  I felt like it would be too painful to go through a big production of saying goodbye.  So, he met me there at the vet’s office.

The vet examined him and found several large masses in his intestines and possibly in his liver.  It was bad.  It was time.  That actually made me feel better.  We had no choice but to let him go.  I had always pictured holding him – being there with him in the end.  I wanted to do that, of course, but now he was as much Mike’s dog as he was mine.  I didn’t want to rob Mike of the opportunity to also be a part of it, so he and I held him together.  A few times, Dudley looked around; searched for my eyes.  We told him to relax.  We pet him.  We told him we loved him and would miss him.  I’m not sure what all we said to him, but we just wanted him to feel loved - cuddled - in those last moments.  They first gave him a shot to make him peaceful.  Then they gave him THE shot.  He closed his eyes.  We cried.  The doctor put the stethoscope up to his heart and she looked at us and nodded solemnly.  He was gone. 

People have been very kind since we lost him.  Most of them simply understand what it feels like to lose a beloved pet and can relate to our grief.  But the people who knew him – or us – (to know us was to know him) recognized how quirky and silly he was and what a huge part of our lives he was.  We have been told by many people that it was obvious he lived a good life.  He had a lake house.  He slept in a king-sized bed.  He went to the beach, the mountains, and everywhere in between.  And he had a family who adored him.  In truth, he may have had the best life of any dog ever in the history of pet ownership.  Mike and I were fairly obnoxious about him.  It’s kind of embarrassing.  But we loved that boy.  If you think about it, our family started with Dudley.  We simply added on from there.

Yes, he had a good life, but we were the lucky ones.  He brought so much joy to us.  His sweet little face and his silly little personality – he really brightened our day.  I know he was “just a dog” but to be just a dog is to enhance the lives of the people who take you in.  And he certainly did ours.  Will Rogers said, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”  The girls have heard that dogs don’t go to heaven and so they are sad that they will never see him again.  I told them that I believe that heaven is where you are reunited with the people and things you cared about in life.  That said, I believe he is there, waiting for us.  I picture him in a big expanse of water, swimming after his racquetball.  Snarling at his brother Bailey.  Napping and then waking up only to eat some steak (medium rare, of course). 

Take care, Duds.  And thank you for loving us as you did.  I’ll throw the ball for you when I get there.

 

 Dudley McCallie

1997-2013