Father Bird is a nerd.  There are no two ways around this fact. 

There's really a lot of confusion around the two terms for people like him.  The term "nerd" always seemed to me to be less derogatory than "geek", but looking them up on dictionary.com shows otherwise.  (And gives me reason to scratch my head.)  Here's what I get:

Because my dress form wasn't happy enough....

My children made it happier.

~MB~

In Costco last night, my 4-year-old asked me what would happen if he opened "that door". 

"Well," I replied, "that door says 'Emergency Exit.  Alarm will sound when door is opened.'"

"Oh!" he said delightedly, "Den will everyone go running away yelling, "Aaaahhh, I am so alarmed!"?"

Well, yes, I expect that we would.  But only if we're all as articulate as a 4-year-old.

~MB~

I sat, today, under a tree in my backyard, trying to read a book.  My dishes were done, the drying laundry flapped in the breeze (I do not, at present, have either a working dishwasher or clothes dryer.)  I'd steal this moment, I thought, and slip away into the alternate universe of a novel.  I dove in, and it was lovely, like stepping out for a moment, without the inconvenience of explaining to a babysitter how the DVD player works.  I lay back in the current of the story and let it take me downstream with it.   

My boys fluttered around my peripheral vision, distracting me like gnats, and I swatted at them distractedly.  Couldn't they see I was reading?  Did they not understand what it meant to connect with a story? 

Then something made me look up.  My 8-year-old was asking me a question about motors I couldn't hope to answer, my 2-year-old was dangling from a tree branch and talking (in a menacing voice) about what a "dangerous guy" he was, and my 4-year-old was climbing into my lap and laughing his beautiful, joyous laugh. 

And then--how does this happen?--everything switched and I saw this moment as it was, saw a mother whose children wanted to be near her, to talk with her, to sit with her, to enjoy being in the same space with her.  Suddenly they were no longer annoying, but precious for their desire to share my personal space. 

I put my book down, because for some reason I didn't need to step out so badly anymore.  What was real, what was worth floating away into, was there under the tree in my backyard this afternoon. This afternoon, my personal space was filled with dappled shade and laughter, with dimples and curls, with gratitude and joy over a perfect moment.

~MB~

The bathroom cabinet was entirely empty.  I'd gotten every half-empty shampoo bottle and (ick) used razor out of it, and had a tidy box of "stuff to pack" and "stuff to throw away".  I was ready to wipe down the shelves and sign off on the bathroom.  Just to make sure there was nothing left, I grabbed the top of the cabinet and heaved myself up to look in the very back of the top shelf. 

There in the dim darkness at the back of my bathroom cabinet, covered with a thick layer of dust, was the last pacifier.  My baby is two-and-a-half, and hasn't used a pacifier in over a year.  When I saw the lonely pacifier a wave of gushy nostalgia swept over me.  Oh, I thought, my babies!  Oh, pacifier, do you remember them?  We took care of them together!  I love you, pacifier, because you belonged to my babies....

But wait.  But....wait!  I hated pacifiers when we were using them.  I hated how vital they were to the well-being in our home, and how small, how...lose-able they were.  I resented the countless hours that Father Bird and I, exhausted at the end of the day, tore the couches apart and dumped out toyboxes while a sleepless baby screamed.  So why, when I met, not an old friend, but a longtime foe, did I hold it cupped in my hand and tilt my head that way?

Immediately I thought of the trip we took when our first baby was about three months old.  We were driving across the Mojave desert in August, listening to the Pet Shop Boys, when the engine began to overheat.  There was nowhere to stop for hundreds of miles, so Father Bird turned on the heater, rolled down the windows, and we pushed onward.  The shocking-pink cheeks of the infant in the backseat showed that the engine wasn't the only thing overheating, so I took a receiving blanket, soaked it in the dirty melted ice at the bottom of the cooler, and draped it over his carseat handle. 

For those several hundred miles we drove that way, our sweaty hair pasted to our faces, soaking and wringing and draping that receiving blanket...and listening to West End Girls and Domino Dancing.  Now, every time I hear those songs, I remember with bizarre fondness that little trip that the three of us took across the burning desert with the heat on.  How does this happen?  How can we love, later, things we abhorred at the time?

You've heard, I suppose, of Stockholm syndrome, wherein someone held hostage begins to show concern or affection toward his captors.  When I first heard of it, I admit I thought it sounded twisted and ridiculous, but there I stood, cooing over the pacifier, an item which had definitely held me hostage.  No, I told myself.  You do not love this repugnant piece of plastic.  If you had back all those hours you spent looking under the seats of the car with a maglite, you would be a much younger, much less bitter human being.  That hour you spent looking all over the front yard in the dark while Father Bird followed you around with the car headlights?  That was below the belt. 

I think there's some alternate pacifier universe, and the barrier between this universe and that one is very thin.  So when we're stumbling around the house in the dark looking for the hated plastic fiend, it really has just popped back into its world for a while to say hello to its family.  Then they pop back in the strangest places, and at the strangest times, usually with a nonchalant yawn, and an innocent, "Did you miss me?"

And so the pacifier in the dust at the back of my bathroom shelf had.  I don't recall the very last time we looked for it until we felt like going mad, but I do remember rejoicing when our baby slept through the night without it.  I remember throwing pacifiers away, deep in the trash so they couldn't be retrieved, and singing a song of freedom each time.  I knew this when I found the last pacifier, but all I felt was "my baby!"

It gives me hope, in a way, to think that our brains act in this silly fashion.  Because the things that I think are hard to bear today may, in the future, become my fond memories.  What's not to like about a mind that works like that?

But in the end, I did have to decide whether to lovingly place the pacifier among my things to keep, or whether to throw it away after all.  And I am glad to be able to say that I threw that sucker straight in the garbage.  I'm not that forgetful.

~MB~