There are mice living in our backyard. We often catch glimpses of them scampering across the patio, hiding in the grass, running between those trees we planted across the berm on the other side of our fence one hot Saturday afternoon two Septembers ago.

John and I are afraid the mice will attract snakes like the one I discovered on our front porch last year, like the one that surprised me this spring as I was unfurling the garden hose and turning the spigot on to fill the little plastic pool the neighbor had dragged across the grass, into our backyard. But Archie, Kit and Jack are simply excited to see those mice running from here to there, and then back again.

“I saw another mouse on your porch,” my mom told me this morning when I got back to the house. She’d been watching Kit and Jack while I was at the gym.

I sighed and rolled my eyes before I answered. “I know. John told me to call our exterminator.”

That’s when Kit, who was standing in the kitchen and looking out our patio doors into the backyard, spoke up. “Excuse me, Nana?” My kids never address me when my mother’s around. They prefer her attention to mine when it’s theirs for the taking. “I have a good idea.”

Kit still stutters when she’s got a complex thought to share, so it took her a while to get the next little bit out. “Why don’t we make a pie and put it outside and when a mouse comes to eat it we can just get ’em?” She jumped up in the air as she finished her sentence, my daughter did, and pulled her arms and hands in close to her chest as if she were plucking something out of the air right there in the middle of our kitchen. She laughed, and Jack laughed, and my mother and I nodded at each other with our eyes opened wide before we agreed aloud that Kit’s idea was, in fact, a good one.

Although Kit and Jack still have a couple weeks before they begin their new school year, Archie started classes last week. I gave both Kit and Jack one of those snack packs of pretzels to eat in the station wagon this afternoon as we left the house to pick up Archie from school. Sometimes they’ll fall asleep on our drive across town, and when that happens it usually means Kit and Jack will cry and whine and throw their flailing bodies all over the hallway while we’re walking to Archie’s classroom to bring him home from school. But those snacks, sometimes they’ll stave off the sleep.

So today I’m driving and the twins are eating their pretzels, and I’m stopped at an intersection when Jack holds up a pretzel in a way he knows I’ll be able to see it by looking in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Mom. This pretzel looks like a letter B.” A beat or two later Jack spoke again, correcting himself, “No. I think it really looks like a number 8.”

Later, when we’re home again, Archie retreats to the kids’ playroom upstairs, turns on the television, and then closes the room’s double doors. A little later I go into the playroom to check on him and that’s when I find that Archie has tossed the trains and trucks to and fro, dumped the dolls across the floor, and toppled the table in the corner of the room. When I look to him for an explanation, before I’m able to utter a word, Archie says, “Is it funny?”

“The mess?” I want clarification.

“Yeah,” he answers.

“No, it’s not funny.” I am not laughing, but he is so hard that his sides are shaking.

Before I leave the room I want to know how his day went at school. I’ve read the teacher report in Archie’s folder and saw that he “had trouble following directions today.” But all Archie has to say about my inquiry is, “I don’t wanna talk about it.” Would someone please tell my oldest boy that he’s going on six, not sixteen?

Kit and Jack’s birthday is on Sunday. They will be four years old. We were at the beach, on the Isle of Palms, a few weeks ago and I wondered where my babies had gone while watching my youngest two children play in the sand. Jack played swamp wave with his cousins in the surf, and Kit made friends with a little girl who was swimming in the same tidal pool we’d discovered. “These are my parents,” she told the girl as they made their way around the edge of the water together. “And this is my grandma,” she introduced my mother, too, moving a cupped palm in her direction.

And Archie… My God, Archie. He faced the sea like its fearless foe. He’d stand in the surf, staring out toward the horizon, walking forward, and when a wave managed to knock him down he’d get right back up and charge on again. I don’t know what he was doing, or where he thought he was going, but he was committed and courageous and humored by it all to the point of hilarity.

My parents rented the beach house we stayed in, and John cooked our meals, and we moms and dads, aunts and uncles, my parents, too, shared childcare responsibilities. The kids were mostly happy, and Jack kept asking again and again where John’s parents were. He wanted to know why my parents, his grandma and grandpa, would do all these things for him, but why he didn’t know John’s parents at all.

“Because they’re dead,” John tried to explain to Jack, but still Jack didn’t understand.

“What does dead mean?” he pressed.

So one afternoon John and I piled Archie, Kit and Jack into our station wagon and drove over the bridges and down the roads that connect the Isle of Palms to James Island. John showed the kids where he lived, where he played, where he went to school. And then he told them stories all the way to the cemetery where we got out of the car, where we took our children’s hands, and picked our way through the headstones until we found the ones we were looking for. John explained that this is where his parents were, where Archie, Kit and Jack’s grandparents are, and John showed them his grandparents’ graves, too. The kids had questions, of course, and John and I tried to sum up those questions with a simple explanation, “Well, they’re with God now.”

“You mean they’re in our hearts?” Kit wanted to know. That is what she’s learned at school about God, after all.

“Oh! I have them right here in my heart!” Jack hollered, his hands against the center of his chest as he jumped up and down, up and down. His excitement was palpable.

Archie repeated quietly, “Heart.”

Where have they come from, these children of mine? The babies they were are long gone and we are marching forward, moving on. Thank God, wherever He is, whoever He is, we are still here, the five of us, putting each foot in front of the other.

Posted by: anne
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Morning with the Moores

Archie, someday when you are older and are confronted by a situation neither you nor I anticipated, I hope you remember how nearly every night this summer you’ve insisted on wearing one of Kit’s nightgowns to bed and how your sister has graciously shared her clothing with you and how your father and I smile so wide that our eyes crinkle up at the corners as we watch you twirl, and twirl, and then twirl some more in our bedroom across the floor at the foot of our bed before you run to me, your arms open wide, your fingers splayed open and reaching up, before I bend over to lift you into my arms, meeting you halfway.

I wonder if you’re aware, Archie, that your dad and I always check on you every night before we crawl into our own bed. Sometimes we stand in your doorway together, the both of us moving this way or that so our bodies won’t block the light from the hallway, the one that cuts through the dark stillness enveloping your room and falls upon your bed where you lay soundlessly breathing through an open mouth.

Sometimes, on the nights I go to bed earlier than your father, I check on you alone. Those are the times I straighten you as you slumber, moving your head from the foot of your bed to your pillow and then tucking your blankets in all around you. This summer I’ve straightened your nightgown, too, pulling it down from your armpits and untwisting it from your torso.

It doesn’t matter, though, how we check on you at night, Archie, because the question your dad and I ask each other is always the same whether one of us calls up the steps or whispers across the hallway. “How’s my Archie girl?” we both want to know these days, and what I want you to know when you are older, Archie, is that your dad and I will always allow you to be the person you want to be, the person you are, that we’re letting you show us the way.

Jack, someday when you are older and confronted by a situation neither you nor I anticipated, I hope you remember the time you bit your brother on the back so hard that your teeth cut into his skin because he was playing with a ball you wanted, and how your dad and I punished you by not permitting you to eat sweets for a whole week. You cried and whined every time your sister got a cookie or candy and you didn’t, but your dad and I didn’t waver in our resolve. I even sent a note to school in your lunchbox so your teachers would be informed and have patience with you as you gnashed your teeth and rolled your eyes while your classmates, your sister included, got a treat from the ice cream truck that comes on Wednesday and you didn’t.

It wasn’t easy for me, Jack, to watch your heart break every time you missed out on dessert. I wanted to give you a cookie, too, to pull a popsicle from the fridge for you like I did for your sister, but I hope you know I remained adamant about following through with your punishment for your own good. When you are older I hope you’ll remember what your dad and I are teaching you about actions and consequences. Life is chockfull of gray areas, Jack, but I want you to know that there are unwavering truths that make up the black and white spaces with which we all define our own silhouettes.

Kit, someday when you are older and confronted by a situation neither you nor I anticipated, I hope you remember that one weekend long ago your dad loaded you and your brothers into our station wagon so you could help him run some errands before picking up breakfast at the bagel shop, and that on your way home, in the middle of that road that crosses in front of our neighborhood, you passed me as I was running along the shoulder, underneath the tree branches that hung out over the asphalt.

I hope you’ll remember how your dad slowed down and how he rolled down your window because your car seat was closest to me out there on the road, and I that I waved at you when you passed and then lifted my legs higher so I could run faster and chase our car up the hill, all five of us almost home. Your blonde hair blew in the wind as you strained against the chest straps of your car seat to look as long as you could out the car window at me, to turn your face in my direction until I fell too far behind.

I’ll remember how your eyes flashed and how your smile started at one end of your face and didn’t stop until it reached the other, and how flattered I felt to know you were awestruck watching me, how it felt to feel your pride reach from our backseat to the side of that road. And I’ll remember, too, how later that morning you insisted on wearing your sneakers, the ones that you think look like my running shoes, because you wanted to be like me, you said. I’ll know how that made me feel, and how I think it made you feel.

I’ll remember that morning and those things and I hope you will, too, when you’re older so you’ll know a little bit about what it takes to get a job done and how to do it well. Because if there’s something you’re going to have to know, Kit, it’s going to be how to preserve no matter what. That’s a promise I can make and keep, one I anticipate you’ll know intimately someday out there in this world of unknowable things.

Posted by: anne
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Archie
Jack
Morning with the Moores

I’ve thought about this blog every day, many times a day, for the past three weeks. I’ve wanted to write something, anything, but each time I had the opportunity to sit down here and write there was always another thing demanding my attention.

Like maybe Archie, Kit and Jack were non-stop hounding me to take them to the pool, or maybe the little boy up the street rang our doorbell and I had to go outside and sit on our front stoop while my kids played with him. Or maybe Archie wanted me to read another book to him, or maybe Kit asked me over and over again until I finally agreed to color with her, or maybe Jack talked me into building another parking garage with the three tubs of wooden blocks sitting on the rug outside my office door.

And then there’s the laundry, and the housework, and the yard work, and that ear infection I had. I’ve had butts to wipe, and errands to run, and some days it’s just so hot and humid all I really want to do is sit on the couch with Archie, Kit and Jack tucked in around me and watch cartoons on television.

There was that holiday, too, and John was home and we had things to do, and I’ve got e-mails to answer and web sites to read, and then there’s always facebook with its endless list of status updates that usually just serve to piss me off so why I waste my time reading them I’m not entirely sure, but… there it is…

Yesterday was the first day all three kids had something to do away from home at the same time since school ended in May. Archie’s enrolled in summer classes at his school, and Kit and Jack are enrolled in summer camp at their school, but with all the breaks and staggered starts neither schools were in session at the same time until yesterday.

When I dropped Archie off he was downright gleeful to see Miss Janelle, one of the assistant teacher’s in his classroom, when she came out to the parking lot to help him from our car. When I took Kit and Jack to their school they were immediately put to work making lion faces out of paper plates for safari week, their classes’ theme for the next few days.

I watched them painting their plates from the window after I’d left, those twins, before I got into my car. Kit, who calls herself an artist, appeared to be thoughtfully working. Each meticulous stroke of her paintbrush looked deliberate, well planned. But Jack was making a face as he painted, his nose scrunched up into his eyes, his lips pulled back far enough to lay his teeth bare. At first I thought that face meant Jack would rather not work on the project, but when I noted the ferocity with which he pressed his brush against the plate I suspected that he was actually affecting his best inner beast for inspiration’s sake. I shook my head and laughed as I walked the rest of the way to the parking lot.

When I went back to school a few hours later to pick Kit and Jack up, I got to laugh again as both kids held those lion faces in front of their own as we walked from the classroom to our car. All three of us roared a few times, and one of the other mothers we passed along the way feigned fear for fun, and I’d be lying if I told you that the little things like that walk to the car yesterday afternoon didn’t make up for the three times I had to put both kids in timeout two mornings ago.

Then there was this morning’s drive to school, too, when Archie called out the names to the songs from my iPod that I played over the car stereo. “That’s Human,” he said first. And then later, “This is Airstream Driver.” But Walcott received his most enthusiastic response. “Oh! There it is!” he proclaimed before he placed both palms atop each of his knees and began shaking his head from side to side in time with the beat. I’m unsure from where Archie’s proclivity for music comes, but knowing he likes the same music as I do makes those shortcomings over which he has no control feel like less of a kick in the teeth.

Yesterday afternoon, after we got home from school, I sat beside Kit on the couch in the playroom. She watched me write in the notebook in my lap, her head resting on my shoulder. “What’s that spints?” she wanted to know. When I asked Kit what she was talking about she pointed to the word I’d printed across the top of the paper.

“Did you read that word?” I wanted to know and Kit answered by shaking her head up and down, up and down.

To be honest, I’d written spinx, not spints as Kit had said. But still.

Brian, my trainer at the gym, knows that Kit floats when she runs so when I told him today the story of her reading that word in my notebook Brian remarked about how awesome it’ll be if one day Kit tears it up out there on the track and I can tell her that the first word she ever read was the first entry in my training log for my next race, the Spinx half-marathon in October.

Do you know what else is awesome? On the Fourth of July Kit woke up and declared that she was done with her pacifier. Finished. As in, “Please throw them all away, Mommy.” She was only allowed to use her pacifier at night, in her bed, and Kit knew that John and I were going to make her give up her collection of pacifiers on her fourth birthday, ready or not. Kit wasn’t enthusiastic about that deadline, I know, so it surprised me when she declared her independence from that little plastic nub on Independence Day. It surprised me, but I was happy for it and all together amazed when Kit only cried for a little bit that night at bedtime before she fell asleep. She hasn’t mentioned those pacifiers since.

Finally, finally we are moving forward around here.

Posted by: anne
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Archie
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Morning with the Moores

1.) John and I went to Charleston for John’s nephew’s wedding. Or maybe I should write for our nephew’s wedding? The truth is that I’m not really sure what to write because although the second choice is technically correct, it doesn’t feel true. The truth is that there are a total of twenty nieces and nephews between John and his siblings. I’ve only known John for nine years, so all but five of those nieces and nephews existed before I ever came into the picture.

Together with their Uncle John those nieces and nephews manufactured a lot of memories surrounding family trips, triumphs and tragedies. My arrival heralded a new dynamic in John’s relationship with his sister and brothers, his brother-in-law and sisters-in-law, and all those nieces and nephews. The brother and uncle everyone knew disappeared and was replaced with someone who had to consider his wife, and in short order his children, too, before he could carry out the sort of commitments he once did. Maybe this is why only some of John’s siblings’ children occasionally refer to me as their aunt, and I don’t have the type of relationship with them that their other aunts enjoy.

Whatever the case may be, the truth is that it took me a long time to feel comfortable around John’s family, and that eight years into our marriage and three children later I still don’t feel like a true part of the Moore family. That may be my own misinterpreation of our family’s relationship, I admit, but I’m just saying.

I’m telling you all of this as a round about way of explaining that while we enjoyed our weekend in Charleston with John’s family, it was still a weekend in Charleston with John’s family. And I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying that, although I suspect everyone who knows anything about it all would expect me to say exactly this kind of thing.

2.) My parents took Archie, Kit and Jack to Charlotte to spend the weekend with my brother, my sister-in-law, Camille, and my nephews Hayes and Rhys. If you click on that link you’ll see that my children enjoyed their weekend wholeheartedly. And because it was Hayes’s third birthday, Archie, Kit and Jack’s time with their cousins was extraordinarily special.

3.) When John and I got back to our hotel on Friday night after the rehearsal dinner, we rode the elevator up to the rooftop bar and holy cow was that place packed. We ordered a drink, found an open spot along the wrought-iron railing lining the roof’s perimeter, and enjoyed our stories-high view of downtown Charleston.

It didn’t take very long for John and I to agree that we felt old and out-of-place and entirely not cool enough to hang with the bar’s late-night crowd so we finished our drinks and called it a night. Before that happened, though, I had an opportunity to take a long, hard look at the Ravenel Bridge over the Cooper River, and from my spot on that roof I could finally see how damn steep the bridge’s incline really is. “I ran that mile in about eight minutes,” I reminded John, pointing to the steady climb on the Mt. Pleasant side of the bridge.

“That’s ’cause you rock,” my husband replied, and I’ll confess right now that it took a beat or two before any sort of self-depreciating thought crossed my mind.

4.) I think there’s something wrong with me because I still woke up at six o’clock Saturday morning even without my children there to coax me out of bed. I thought about walking down the hall to the coffee urns and plate of pastries I remembered the hotel staff sets up outside the elevator on each floor of the hotel, but decided against it when I realized I was still dressed in my pajamas.

So I turned on the television instead and discovered that TNT airs back-to-back episodes of Angel on Saturday mornings. You better believe I was all over that, and you ought to know, too, that when John woke up and saw what I was watching on television he rolled his eyes and moaned, “Oh, God. Don’t get obsessed with this again.”

5.) It took a little doing, but I convinced John to run with me Saturday morning. Before we left for Charleston he was all yeah-I’d-be-happy-to-run-with-you, but when it came right down to it John had a last minute freak-out and snipped at me for a while before I started to act like he had no choice and changed from my pajamas into my running clothes. That nearly backfired when I realized the bellhop had left my shoes, all wrapped up in a blue plastic BI-LO bag, in the back of our station wagon when he’d unloaded our car upon our arrival at the hotel.

6.) We did eventually get outside to run, John and I, and I promised John I’d run his pace, no matter what. So I did even if while doing so I longingly watched a pack of guys pass by us, headed in the opposite direction, running at what looked like my pace, and I managed to stay just a few steps in front of John even when another couple passed us on our left and I knew I could surpass them in no time at all if I could just take my foot of the breaks for a few blocks.

Once while we were running beside Battery Park I dropped back behind John, matching my stride to his cadence, and said, affecting my best brogue, “I don’t enjoy breathing like a pregnant walrus.” I was reciting a line from this commercial, and John knew it so he started to laugh which only made it more difficult for him to catch his breathe. That commercial is part of a joke John and I share so when I said it I knew what would come next.

7.) Later that morning I went to the bridal luncheon which was hosted at the home of a close friend of the bride’s family. The house was old but regal, situated at the end of an unpaved stretch of Coburg Road, lined on either side with live oaks. For a moment or two I wondered if Scarlet O’Hara would answer the door, but she didn’t, obviously, and before the luncheon was over I found myself seated to the right of a woman I didn’t know who was gossiping with the woman seated to her left. Maybe she didn’t see the place card marking my spot at the table, and maybe she didn’t care, but somehow she’d entwined my life with my sister-in-law’s, insisting that, “She adopted all those kids because, you know, she lost that Down’s baby…”

Um, no and not really, I thought about saying, but instead I lifted my chin way up high and smiled hugely at my sister-in-law seated across from me on the other side of the table. A few years ago I would have eaten that woman for dessert, but I’m happy to have finally learned who’s worth contradicting, and who is better off ignored.

8.) John and I spent the remainder of the afternoon visiting the shops along King Street. Before we went back to our room to get dressed for the seven o’clock wedding ceremony, John and I went to Magnolia’s on East Bay where we ordered appetizers and a drink, or two. We probably wouldn’t eat until late, John and I assumed, and if this wedding reception was like most Southern wedding receptions with seven hundred guests and appetizer-lined buffet tables we probably wouldn’t have much of an opportunity to eat anyway.

Our assumption was correct after all, but John and I wouldn’t know as much until after my husband squeezed my thigh, hard, during the wedding ceremony as the bride’s vows included the word obey, hot on the heels of at least two readings that asserted a husband’s dominance over his wife, and I breathed aloud, “Really?” Because, really?

9.) At the reception I ate two pieces of wedding cake, and danced to a big band with John whom I’m reminded each time we’re required to dance together learned a lot during his days in Cotillion and you have to believe me when I tell you that something about that always, always, always makes me laugh.

10.) My father answered my mother’s cell phone on Sunday morning when I called to check on Archie, Kit and Jack. My grandmother had died Saturday night, he explained.

When I talked to my mother Saturday morning she’d told me that Grandma had been transported from the nursing home to the hospital and that no one expected her to last much longer. John and I offered to come back early so Mom could catch a flight to Pennsylvania, but she asked us to leave when we got up on Sunday morning instead. I checked in with my mother a few times on Saturday, but her request remained the same.

Grandma turned ninety years old last week, but she didn’t look a day older than sixty at her funeral. They’d painted her face with make-up, and put her in a push-up bra, too, even though no one can remember Grandma wearing make-up or a any sort of supportive undergarments. Her daughters, my mother and her sisters, couldn’t believe how gorgeous Grandma looked. The priest called her stunning.

I bet she’s stunning now, too, wherever she is, wherever we go when we die. She was smart, and strong, and beautiful, and I will consider myself a fortunate woman if I am those three things myself when I’m ninety years old and leaving this place to find out what it is that comes next.

Posted by: anne
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Morning with the Moores

It is five o’clock in the morning and I am writing this while I’m waiting for John to get home from the gym. When he does I’ll surrender my watch of the three children upstairs, each of them swathed in blankets as they slumber on, and then I’ll leave the house to run three miles up the road one direction before I turn around and run those three miles home again, down the other side of the road.

I wanted to begin writing this post two days ago as I was waiting for the plumber to knock on our front door, but when I sat down to share my thoughts with you Kit and Jack announced that they were hungry and wanted a snack. The plumber arrived before I had an opportunity to sit down in front of this computer again, when I had to stand sentinel at the bathroom doors to keep my children out of his way as that plumber worked to fix our toilets, one upstairs and another downstairs, because it is always two things at a time that break around here.

And I wanted to begin writing this post on Monday afternoon as I was waiting for John to call me, to tell me it was time for Archie, Kit, Jack and I to pick him up from work. His car was in the shop and he’d need our help to pick it up, to bring it home.

We were driving around Friday night, John and I, scouting out the course for Saturday morning’s race when I told him I smelled something burning. I’d rolled down my window, my elbow resting on top of the glass, and the fiery smell was so acrid it filled the car before I was able to finish my sentence. “Whoever’s car that is, is gonna be in trouble!” John replied, nearly shouting.

By the time we pulled into our driveway there was smoke billowing out of the car’s right wheel well. A neighbor walked across the street to help us. John pulled the green garden hose from the side of our house, from underneath the blooming hydrangea bushes, and turned its water on the smoke.

I tried to write this post again yesterday, but I was tired and the kids were whiney and I had clothes to iron and Archie wanted to finger paint the Kraft-colored paper we’d bought earlier in the day to wrap my nephew’s birthday presents. So I did what I needed to do instead of what I wanted to do, and suddenly it was bedtime and I was tucking Archie, Kit and Jack into their beds, under their blankets, and I was done. I was done.

I know I won’t finish writing this by the time John gets home.

I hope I’ll find the time to finish it today.

Yesterday morning Rachel came over with Sophia. Our children played upstairs in the bonus room filled with toys and children’s books and all sorts of nonsense while Rachel and I huddled around the island in the middle of the kitchen and talked about all sorts of things. I tell Rachel things I’ve traditionally kept to myself, but she never balks so I just keep telling her. She’s my failsafe that way, offering her opinion when I need to hear it, setting me straight again.

The other day Rachel was talking about Sophia’s lose tooth, her first, and told me that her mother kept all the baby teeth belonging to Rachel’s siblings and herself in a jewelry box. I told her that I have Archie’s hospital identification bracelets in my jewelry box, every last one of them.

“They are treasures,” Rachel replied. She understood what I meant.

Encouragement often comes from friends, but sometimes it comes from unlikely places, too. On Friday the man who came to clean the rug underneath our kitchen table, the ottoman in our family room, talked to me about his uncle who has Down syndrome. Last week an older woman sitting on the front porch of her house, watching her cat leap through the tall grass from one side of her lawn to the other, pumped her fist in the air as I ran passed. “You go, girl!” she shouted as I waved back. I’ve never seen that woman before even though I cross in front of her house every time I run. I hope I see her again.

While we were cleaning up the dinner dishes on Saturday night John turned to me and said, “Happy anniversary.” I stared at him and blinked hard. A few beats passed as I ticked off all the important dates that bookend our lives together inside my head.

My bewilderment amused John, but he left me off the hook when he explained what he’d meant. “Remember when you said all you wanted for our anniversary was for me to run the 5K?” he offered. “I gave you more than you asked for, and you got your gift a little early, too.”

A few months ago I told John the best gift he could give me to celebrate our wedding anniversary in October was to prepare for and race in the three-miler at the Spinx Run Fest. He took my request to heart, found a beginner runners’ training program, and got himself up to speed in time for the Sunrise Run 8K last weekend. Along the way John improved his base fitness level, lost a significant amount of weight and discovered that he, too, really enjoys running. John’s success showed when he crossed the finish line in 51:49.

My parents kept Archie, Kit and Jack while I ran the race as well, crossing the finish line in 38:26. I was the 20th female finisher of 618 runners, and was the seventh fastest runner in my age group.

John’s run was one unexpected gift, but I have another one to tell you about, too. I was sitting with Archie one afternoon last week when he asked me to rub his hand. This is something we do, he and I. He asks me to rub his back, or leg, or neck as he cuddles into my lap, against my chest, and I always oblige.

If you know anything about Down syndrome, then you’re aware that there are a handful of physical characteristics common to children and adults with the diagnosis. One of these characteristics is a single, deep crease across the center of the palm of the hand. Only one of Archie’s palms has this crease, and that is the one he offered me on this particular afternoon last week.

I’d forgotten about Archie’s crease so it surprised me anew when I saw it again. “Oh, Archie! Your sweet hand!” I exclaimed as I traced that crease on Archie’s palm with my finger.

Jack was in the room, too, watching us and he wanted to know what I was talking about so I showed him Archie’s hand and told Jack about Archie’s special Down syndrome line. Jack insisted that he wanted one as well, a Down syndrome line, but I told Jack that the line was something unique to Archie that makes him extra special to us, and then I reminded Jack that he has characteristics that make him extra special to us, too. Jack went away then, and Archie, who’d already tired of our time together on the chair, followed his little brother out of the room.

A few days ago on our way home from dropping Archie off at school Jack announced, out of the blue, that Archie isn’t human, he’s Down syndrome, and then added that he wished he had a hand like Archie’s so he could be Down syndrome, too.

I corrected Jack’s syntax, as well as his reasoning, but that exchange Jack and I shared in the car on our way home has left me thinking these past few days, filled as they have been with chores and obligations and bills and realizations, that maybe we are doing something right around here after all.

Posted by: anne
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Morning with the Moores

John’s mother was a keeper of things. Although I never met her, I’ve learned about her from the houseful of furniture she left behind. When she died John’s father, Bill, sold their James Island house on Jim Isle Drive with the backyard dock on Ellis Creek and made his six children cleanout the home’s attic and bedrooms, kitchen and den, before he made them help him move into an apartment in a retirement community. That was how Bill was, always making everyone around him do things by the sheer force of his own will. I imagine John’s mother, Ann, was softer than her husband and more sentimental, too. Her legacy of leftover stuff tells me as much.

Last week John’s sister, Kate, rearranged the rooms in her house again. She lives in a ranch-style home behind her business on busy Haywood Road with her husband and six children. Kate needed to make more space for growing boys, she explained, so she had an auctioneer’s lot of family heirlooms that needed a new home and she wanted to know if anyone wanted anything. This is what the Moore’s do when they’re ready to part with a piece of that houseful of furniture Bill made them carry away; they offer it to each other first before they give it to someone else.

Nearly each piece of furniture has someone’s name written on a scrap of tablet paper taped to the back or bottom of it. John’s mother made the labels when she knew she was dying, and with them she took great care to divvy out her things to her children so they wouldn’t have to do it themselves. I’m not sure where Bill was while all this was happening, but I know he honored her decisions and left those scraps of paper on all of Ann’s things until their children came to take them away. We’ve done the same here in our home. Everything we have that belonged to Ann still has its label with John’s name written in her hand affixed to its bottom or backside or base.

So this time Kate’s rearranging brought us a small collection of things including an old clock John remembers from the fireplace mantle in the James Island house on Jim Isle Drive. Right now that clock is to my right, in the bookshelves in our office, and it’s tick-tick-ticking, tick-tick-ticking. John winds that clock with its tarnished brass key every morning, and even now after all these years it still keeps good time. Before it was his mother’s clock it came from a grandparent, or maybe one of the great aunts who lived on that farm in Wisconsin, and it smells a little like the musty plough mud lining the marshes of Ellis Creek, the same dark, soft stuff John and his siblings played in during the summers of their childhoods.

I listened to that clock as it marked this morning’s five o’clock hour with its old gears creak-creak-creaking before they softly ding-ding-dinged. I was drinking coffee while sitting on the floor with ice packs resting on my shins, all the while lacing up my running shoes and waiting for John to return from the gym. I was thinking of what I could do today with Archie, Kit and Jack, and I was remembering the fun my children had last night when they, dressed in underwear and white t-shirts splattered by dripping ice cream, stood on the slope behind our neighbors’ house and counted backwards from ten to one then jumped forward, down the slope, landing in the grass at the bottom of the hill on their hands and knees.

Lying in the grass at the bottom of the hill Archie, Kit and Jack would laugh and loll about, sharing their fun with Sophia and William. Sophia’s backyard is caddy-corner to our own, and William’s backyard sidles up to hers making these five friends neighbors, too. I was thinking this morning that watching all those kids have fun together last night reminded me of summer evenings when I was small, the ones when my brother and I played outside with our neighbors until bedtime had come and gone. I remembered how I was then, watching them last night, and it occurred to me how they may someday be. When Sophia’s father took a photo with his camera of the five kids on top of the hill I mused out loud, “Someday one of them will get married and that photo will be included in the collection displayed at the rehearsal dinner.”

By the time John and I collected our kids and brought them inside again the gears inside our new old clock were grinding into place, creak-creak-creak, and then the chimes ding-ding-dinged to mark the half-hour, one full hour passed Archie, Kit and Jack’s bedtime. I tossed a load of laundry into the washing machine downstairs as John took our children upstairs to give them a bath and put them to bed all soft and all warm just like the characters in one of Archie’s favorite storybooks.

The melting ice cream and the lolling in the grass, all that laughing while game-making-upping, those are the sorts of things Archie, Kit and Jack have been enjoying these first few weeks of summer. In the mornings Archie sits in the leather chair in our library and recites aloud a pile of storybooks with characters so familiar they feel like family while Kit paints with watercolors at the kitchen table while Jack stands sentinel at the window, waiting for the black birds to swoop into our vegetable garden, or perch atop our bird feeder. When they do Jack surprises them by banging on the glass and hollering through it, “Go away, black birds!” just like John taught him to do a few weekends ago.

In the afternoons Archie, Kit, Jack and I play something or play with someone or go to our neighborhood pool. They’re learning to love the water, these three children of mine, and I suspect this will be the year they begin to swim. When we get home from the pool I pick up around the house or mop the floor or fold the laundry while I listen to the clock in the office mark our hours in fifteen-minute increments. It seems silly to say as much, but this is the first summer I’ve spent with Archie, Kit and Jack that feels familiar to me, that seems like the ones I knew myself when I was young. Saying as much is the sort of admission that both surprises a parent and puts things into perspective at exactly the same time. My children are growing up.

Each time John and his siblings swap their mother’s furniture some sort of squabble transpires. Someone thinks it’s unfair that one sibling should get Helen’s table, or the drop leaf that belonged to Mary Mills. Someone else says another sibling shouldn’t be given both Gigi’s spindle-back rocker and that grandfather clock he made from the kit that one summer in the garage out back. Phone calls will be made, and e-mails will be written, and sooner or later everyone will agree that the furniture belongs with someone who will take care of it. This time, the one that brought us the old clock, Kate summed up the dialogue when she wrote an e-mail that read, “I think it is neat that the pieces keep traveling around, like Mom is visiting us all.”

Archie cried when I dropped him off at school today. He takes summer classes in the morning and then comes home to play with me, with Kit and Jack, in the afternoons. My boy who loves his teachers and classmates and school-time activities preferred he stay home instead. Kit sleeps late in the mornings and when she wakes she tells me that she’s tired from all the things we did the day before. Jack explodes in professions of adoration for me at least four times a day. He’s the kind of kid who does this when someone captures his attention with a novel activity, the kind of kid who loves you best when you’re engaging him and he mistakes it as getting his own way. Right now our days feel full and fun, but I know they’re fleeting, too.

These summer days that run together, the ones that leave my children drunk on the season’s humidity and heady with its absence of routines, their minutes are collected here in my office in creaks and dings. We carry on and an old clock marks our time together when someone remembers to wind it with its tarnished brass key.

Posted by: anne
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Archie
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

Where was I?

It’s hard to remember, really, because it feels as if there’s no time now for reflective thoughts.  Archie, Kit and Jack are all finished with school and so far this summer vacation we’ve enjoyed picnics, and pool parties, and play dates.  It’s time consuming, all this fun, and our comings and goings have left me with little time to sit here, in front of the computer visiting with you.

On the last day of school Kit and Jack took bouquets of fresh cut flowers to their teachers, Katie and Melissa.  I tucked a gift certificate for a lunch date into those bouquets’ cello wrappers, too, and included a personal note to each teacher, written on pieces of paper folded in half that had been decorated by Kit.   “Last night as I was taking apart your bouquet so I could place all the flowers in water, Kit insisted I allow her to set up her paper and crayons right there, right next to the vase on the counter, so that she could draw what she saw,” I wrote in Katie’s note.  “I’m telling you this because when Kit and Jack started class with you and Melissa last fall she didn’t draw like this, and neither she nor Jack could write their names.”   

And then I continued, “But last night Kit drew your flowers in a vase, and beside it she colored the two plastic bowels I placed on the counter to hold the stem reservoirs until I needed them again this morning when I’d reassemble your bouquet.  She drew in the rectangular kitchen cabinets above the counter and the circular jars on the counter, in the corner, right behind the vase of flowers.  ‘This is for Katie,’ Kit told me when she finished, all proud and pleased with her work.” 

I wrote another paragraph in Katie’s note, too, one about how much I appreciated all she’d done for my children this year.  I did the same for Melissa as well, but tailored my notes’ introduction to the drawing Kit created specifically for her.

My note to Melissa began similarly, but I ended the second paragraph of the note like this: “Kit took great care to draw your flowers in a vase, each and every one of them, and then she printed her name in the upper right-hand corner of her picture.  ‘This one has good flowers and it’s for Melissa,’ Kit explained to me, and so it is.”  

Archie delivered hand-tied bouquets of pink roses and yellow gerbera daises to his teachers on his last day as well, and he also took Nardia, his classroom’s lead teacher who is getting married in a few weeks, a gift from her bridal registry.  Archie told me he wanted to give Nardia a Backyardigan toy, but I suspected she’d appreciate something of her own choosing that she could use for a long, long time and each time she did the piece may remind Nardia of her time in the classroom with Archie.

I didn’t write Nardia or the assistant teachers in Archie’s classroom a note of appreciation.  I’d just done as much a week ago as part of a thank-you note writing initiative celebrating staff appreciation day at Archie’s school.  I wrote those notes to Archie’s teachers and therapists and then Archie made them his own by signing each one with his distinctive letter “A.”  In those notes Archie and I thanked each staff member for her patience, and confidence, and love.

So school is over, our teacher gifts have been delivered, and we are home, the kids and I, and together we’re marking our days in little things like shared walks to the mailbox and big things like the one last Thursday that put my parents on an early flight to Pennsylvania Friday morning.  My eighty-nine year old grandmother had an awful day on Thursday that culminated in her being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. My grandmother lives with my Aunt Peggy, and when she called for that ambulance my aunt wasn’t sure my grandmother was alive.  

Grandma is wearing out.  She knows this and she’s made peace with her place in this world, so she and her doctor wrote a living will with specific advance care directives not too long ago and what Grandma wrote and how she wrote it kept my aunt from calling for that ambulance until she finally did.  After she called the ambulance Aunt Peggy called my mother, who then called me.  When my mom called she was crying and our conversation that followed was a variation on a theme my friend Rachel and I discuss often, the one about us becoming grown-up’s who occasionally find ourselves in the position of parenting our own parents. 

In the case of my mother’s phone call the roll reversal felt right.  It felt like the normal turn of events, much like I’m sure it feels for my mother and aunt today in Pittsburg where they’re caring for my grandmother who yesterday was moved from the intensive care unit to her own room.  “Great Nana just sat in a wheelchair and rode up and down the hall,” my mother reported to me a few hours ago during a phone call.  “How about that?” 

The notes I wrote to my children’s teachers, they marked the passage of this past year.  That note my grandmother wrote with her doctor’s help, it marked the passage of her life.  My mother taught me to write, and her mother taught her to write.  Now my children are learning to write, too.  All this writing makes me think about what may come next, of what each of us may mark down this week, this month, this year. 

If my children become parents I hope they’ll write notes on behalf of their sons’ and daughters’, too.  My mother may write a note like my grandmother’s one day, and I may also do the same.  But whatever we write, all of us, I hope we won’t do it to benefit ourselves.  Instead I hope we do it for each other, in the interest of what is right, as an impetus for forward movement.  How about that?  

Posted by: anne
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Archie
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

Maybe you’ve already seen it? If you live in the Southeastern part of the United States you may have. It was in your Wednesday newspaper, the local one, and it’s stacked in the circular stands right inside the front doors of every single BI-LO Supermarket. The dairy guy, and the produce guy, and the checkout lady, and the girl who works in the pharmacy all told me they’d already seen a pre-released copy when I dropped by the store on Verdae Boulevard after I left the gym on Monday, before I went about the business of picking my kids up from school.

“I saw my buddy Archie!” Albert hollered at me across the apples and oranges and tomatoes and sweet potatoes. “He’s famous!”

Albert is the produce manager at our grocery store, and when he called out to me he was talking about the BI-LO weekly circular that hit the newsstands this morning. Albert knows Archie as the little boy who once plucked his mother’s Venti-sized-Breve-Latte-with-one-shot-of-vanilla-please out of the cup holder on her cart and threw it on the floor, right in front of the peppers and prepackaged lettuce. Albert was the store employee who got a mop and bucket to clean up the spilled coffee after I took Archie by the hand and marched him to the front of the store to explain what he’d done, to apologize for the mess he’d made. I remember that Albert listened patiently to Archie’s explanation. I remember, too, that he allowed Archie the time he needed to find his words, and that Albert waited for me to interpret Archie’s stumbling sentences only after he tried a few times to do so himself. So that is why I smiled hugely when I replied to Albert, calling out back over the fruits and vegetables, “Or maybe infamous!”

This week, beginning on page seven, the supermarket chain’s circular celebrates the BI-LO Charity Classic, an annual charity golf tournament that has raised over $44 million in its twenty-five year history to benefit charitable organizations located in the South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee communities served by BI-LO grocery stores. I didn’t know Archie’s photo and story would be used for this advertising circular when I took him to that photo shoot in February, but I’m happy to tell you how surprised I was when John called me over to look at his laptop a few Friday evenings ago and showed me a rough draft of the circular, one a friend of his in the charity’s department had attached to an e-mail. The friend wanted our permission to run the ad, and John and I were so pleased and proud that we granted it immediately.

It turns out that Archie’s image is also being used on the tournament’s golf ball sleeves, and that the photo of Archie on the swing, in the park, was placed right up front in the player’s book alongside a quote from the Meyer Center’s executive director.

John was asked to have Archie and Kit, whose photo also appears in the publication, sign those player’s books that would be presented as keepsakes to a few very important people. So one evening not too long ago I sat at our kitchen table watching Kit effortlessly pen her name in each book next to her own photo, and then stood up to reach around Archie’s shoulders, to steady the page while he worked long and hard to mark his photo with a letter “A,” scribble-scrabble style.

When John came home from work the next day he told me a friend in the charity’s department told him one of those very important people got more than a little choked up when they saw Archie’s signature, right there on the page beside his photo. That touches me in a way I find difficult to explain here, but at least it reminds me that I’ve got company. The truth is that when I saw the rough draft of the ad circular on John’s laptop that Friday evening my throat felt full, too, and I had to put my hands against chest, right over my heart, to hold in all my joy.

I also wanted to write something about all of that joy here, before I close this post. You may remember that John and I attended the Charity Classic’s President’s party last year and that I shared with you how talking with Archie’s oncologist that night granted me an insight I hadn’t yet perceived. Turns out that Archie’s involvement with this year’s Charity Classic has offered me another opportunity to write a new definition for another frame of reference affecting my life.

I recently shared the news about the ad circular and Archie’s involvement in it with a friend. She wanted to know how I felt about Archie’s image and story being used this way. “Great!” I told her unabashedly. But she persisted, explaining that she wondered what it was like for a mother whose child is being used in an ad pertaining to disability and the necessity for aid. I stumbled over my own words trying to answer her question that day in the park, but what I should have said was this: It doesn’t bother me at all.

Archie is what he is, and his needs are what they are. I don’t want to live a life filled with denial. It’s true: Archie is disabled, but not unable. I believe that by acknowledging Archie’s strengths and weaknesses I’m ultimately empowering him. I believe that celebrating who Archie is grants him the confidence he needs to be his best self. I don’t define Archie by his diagnosis; rather I strive to accept it as an undeniable part of his identity.

I understand that each family of every child with a disability has their own outlook and that those outlooks differ greatly. I respect our different opinions and am happy for them. After all, we are all trying to do our best by our babies. In the end, through our own, individual efforts we’re only helping each other move forward one day at a time. And I guess that’s why in our home we’re so enthusiastic about this circular.

My oldest son, my first child, has Down syndrome and attends a special education program at a preschool for children with disabilities. For now, he rides the short bus. I’m not ashamed of that, and it doesn’t bother me like I feared it once would. I never expected to be glad for it either, and I never anticipated feeling as grateful as I do, every single day, for a school that celebrates Archie’s abilities but also works to help him overcome his disabilities, and for all the organizations and individuals who support his school.

He is my biggest boy and I’m so grateful for who he is, for who he’ll become, for each extra chromosome in his body.

Posted by: anne
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Archie
Morning with the Moores

Posted by: anne
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Categories:
Archie
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

Posted by: anne
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Categories:
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

This news is week-old by now, but I wanted to chronicle it anyway. If you’re not interested in reading about my running exploits then you probably should skip this post and scroll down to the next one, something I wrote earlier today about Archie’s advances catching up with his appearance. But if you do like it when I write about running, or if you’re as amazed as I am how tied together we all are no matter where we are or what we’re doing then you should consider hanging in there for a few more paragraphs.

Last Friday night I ran the inaugural Greenville Hospital System’s Swamp Rabbit Trail 5K in Travelers Rest. This event was the first official race on the newly-paved trail, but I ran a few miles on the trail’s stretch through downtown Greenville when I competed in the Spinx Run Fest’s half-marathon last October.

The first thing you should know is that I haven’t run in the evening since I finished the Greenville 5K Candlelight Run last June. I train in the mornings, usually beginning my runs around 6 o’clock, and I prefer to compete in the mornings, too. That said I realized last Friday evening early on in the race that I hadn’t eaten or hydrated properly to ensure I was prepared for optimum performance. And then there’s the fact that caring for three little kids all day long drains a mother’s energy even if that mother is doing her best to “take it easy” before her evening race.

The other thing you should know is that nearly 2,000 people showed up for the race. That was a large number of people to funnel down a footpath. The race’s start was congested, and it took much longer than usual for the crowd to thin out as we made our way down the trail. Weaving was inevitable, and then there was this one turn when the girl two footfalls in front of me completely stopped in her tracks when she realized she’d cut the cone and had to double back to avoid being disqualified. I ran right into her back.

It didn’t help either that more than one runner pushing a double stroller positioned him or herself close to the starting line, in the middle of the six-minute milers. Sure, the corrals were informal, marked only by cardboard signs with handwritten titles like, “6-minute milers,” “7-minute milers,” and “8-minute milers,” but I’d hoped the race organizers would have at least asked the runners with strollers to move back, please.

So the first mile was congested, the second mile included a sharp, steep climb up a hill in Grandview Cemetery, and the third mile sent us runners back the way we came, down the same trail we’d already traveled and into the runners and walkers who were still working their way toward the cemetery. That made for a special kind of congestion, for sure.

My first mile split was 7:51. That wasn’t ideal, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I did the best I could under the conditions. There was no two-mile marker so I didn’t get a split, and I don’t have a three-mile split either. I have ordered another Garmin, however, since my husband recently commandeered the one I bought last summer so I shouldn’t have these sort of record-keeping issues in the future. By mile three the heat and humidity was really bothering me, and I found myself repeating the lyrics from one of the Yo Gabba Gabba! song Archie likes so much, “Don’t stop, don’t give up. Keep trying, keep trying. Never stop, never give up.”

I finished the race in 24:10, which is the slowest I’ve run a 5K in a long time. There were no timing chips, though, and it was a gun-start race so who knows what my personal race time really was anyway. I did end up placing third in my age group, which is encouraging, and I finished 154th overall out of 1,606 runners who completed the course.

I also want to confess that this 5K was the first race I’ve ever run without earphones and music. I did so purposefully because I felt confident in my ability to cover the distance without needing the music’s distraction, and I’m glad I made the decision I did. The race took on a new dimension for me, and it was a true treat to hear the cadence simultaneous footfalls can keep when similarly paced runners find each other and hang together out there on the trail.

So there’s that, but then there’s this, too. I’d planned to forego the gym the morning before the race so when my alarm sounded I took a shower, dried my hair and dressed for the day. I chose something nice to wear, too, because I was expected at Kit and Jack’s school around lunchtime for a Mother’s Day celebration.

Most mornings I’m walking in the front door from a run before my children see me for the first time each day. I’m sweaty and smelly, and I’m wearing running clothes. I’ll exchange those clothes for another set of workout clothes before we leave for school, the kids and I. If all three kids have school I’ll go to the gym and workout with weights before I go home and shower. If only Archie has school I’ll wear my workout clothing until I have an opportunity to shower. I never know when it’ll come, that opportunity, since my day’s accomplishments are often dictated by my children’s play dates and appointments.

The Friday morning before the race I was emptying the dishwasher when Jack spoke up and wanted to know, “Where’s my other mommy?”

“What do you mean, your other mommy?” I asked in response even though I could anticipate Jack’s explanation.

Jack got embarrassed then and stumbled over his answer, stringing together words and mumbles that only halfway made sense but still I understood what he was trying to say.

“Do you want to know where your stinky mommy who wears old workout clothes and doesn’t comb her hair is? Do you wonder where this mommy who’s clean, and who’s wearing make-up, and who smells good came from?” I laughed as I spoke and Jack did, too, because what I said, that’s exactly what he’d meant.

I’ve been thinking of that conversation I shared with Jack in terms of what I’d write about here pertaining to last Friday’s race. We parents are all people will multiple interests. Some define us for our children, and some pass them by unnoticed. We find friends to compliment each of our life’s endeavors. It isn’t until our children are older that they can see how their parents parse out their personalities in so many ways. It takes a while for our children to learn that we’re the same person in all aspects of our lives, but yet we’re different, too. But some days, like last Friday, we get to show our children how we overlap.

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Archie woke up with dried gunk clogging his left ear canal this morning. He has tubes so leaky ears are commonplace for him. They mean that Archie’s so congested his ears are draining, too, or that he’s brewing an ear infection. Only time will tell what’s going on, but while we’re waiting for whatever comes next I know to clean away the gunk, to put three eardrops prescribed by Archie’s ENT doctor into his drippy ear three times a day. I’ve learned the drill.

When Archie was small I’d have to catch him before I could clean his ear with a warm washcloth, before I could put those prescribed drops into his ear. I tried to schedule the doses for times during the day when I knew I’d have another adult around to help me. One of us would have to hold Archie down while the other one made quick business of his treatment routine.

If I was alone I’d try to lay on top of Archie, or pin him between my legs while I finished what had to be done, but that never really worked because Archie, in spite of his muscles’ poor tone, would break free of my stronghold every, single time. It’s true: No matter what approach we used to administer Archie’s medicine, I’m sure we wasted more eardrops than we used. The whole process frustrated me, and it terrified Archie. During the days or weeks his ears were gunky, I’d often find myself standing in our kitchen and picking at my cuticles, wondering at the value of it all.

But this morning Archie came to me without complaint when I asked him to, when I told him it was time to clean his ear and do his drops. “My ear is gunky,” he told me, searching my eyes for confirmation.

When Archie looks at me that way, the one in which he locks his eyes onto my own with an intensity that seems nearly palpable, I always feel as if Archie is looking way down deep into the truest part of me for a sort of assurance he knows he’ll only find there. If I say it’s so he’ll believe it, no matter what. And I think I should admit right now that sometimes Archie’s unwavering trust feels like a heady sort of power, but that sometimes it feels like a heavy weight to bear.

“Yes, your ear is gunky,” I answered this morning when Archie inquired, and then I waited for what would come next. To my surprise Archie didn’t protest at all; instead he laid his head in my lap, turned to the right so that I could look down into his gunky ear. As I cleaned Archie’s ear he whined a little, but that was all. He whined a little more loudly when I put the drops in his ear, but he held his head still and didn’t fight against the weight of my hand against his shoulders, or the way I tugged his earlobe to encourage the drops that had pooled in the top of his canal to drain in towards his middle ear.

Yesterday afternoon I marveled at how big Archie looked as he walked toward me in my friend’s driveway. She and I were standing beside each other, watching our children play. He’s grown tall, my Archie, and I find that I’m regularly struck by what a boy he’s becoming when he, dressed in shorts that accentuate the length of his legs, ambles around outside with his siblings, his friends. When that happens I can see that Archie’s baby-self looks as if it’s long gone now. I can see that he’s growing up.

I write that, but then there’s this, too. Archie may always look like a big boy, but he doesn’t consistently act it. The comparison creates a cognitive dissonance, I know, and sometimes it’s challenging to determine how to strike a balance between Archie’s appearance and his actions. As his mother, I struggle to find a way to help Archie fit together all of his personal parallels.

But then time rolls on and suddenly, without pronouncement, there are mornings like today’s when Archie’s actions defy my expectations and I find myself encouraged and hopeful. My biggest boy is showing me that we’re moving forward. Here’s the proof, I acknowledge silently way down deep inside the truest part of myself. He’s closing the gap.

Posted by: anne
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Archie
Morning with the Moores

On mornings like this one the sun shines so brightly against the back of our house, right into the windows, and drowns our rooms in light that is so brilliant just seeing it is uplifting.

We just took Archie to school, Kit, Jack and I. While we were there we collected gift baskets from the PTA president, ones we’ll distribute tomorrow morning to the school’s teachers, therapists and staff in celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week a week late. It’s the thought that counts, I say, even when you think it a little late.

On our way home from school we stopped by the grocery store so I could buy myself more yogurt and so Jack could collect a hug from his friend David, one of the baggers. I mean it when I tell you that man is always, always, always pleased to see my children. When we’re missing a child, any of the three, David will always ask about their whereabouts if he doesn’t already know where the absent one is. “Is Archie at school today?” he asked this morning even though he already knew the answer. David has memorized our schedule, I’ve concluded, and there’s something comforting to my children and I in the intimacy that familiarity brings.

The twins rode their tricycles ’round and ’round the driveway when we got home from the grocery store. I was carrying the gift baskets from the back of my station wagon to our dining room table where right now all thirteen are lined up side by side, wrapped in clear cellophane. I’ve made little piles on my sideboard, too, of thank-you notes penned by parents. Each pile represents a department or classroom and it’s kind of sad, I think, that every therapist or teacher isn’t represented by at least one note. We’d asked all the parents to send in thank-you notes and they should have even if they didn’t.

As I type this I’m listening to Kit and Jack chatter, chatter, chatter. They’re sitting at the kitchen table, using markers and crayons to fill coloring books they remembered Santa brought them for Christmas. One of my favorite things to do these days is initiate an activity with Archie, Kit and Jack, to get all three children interested in something and started on a project, then disappear to eavesdrop on their conversation from a room a wall away.

When they’re coloring they talk about sharing crayons; when they’re playing with dolls Kit calls Jack the brother daddy and together she and he occasionally leave one particular baby in Archie’s care. He’s the babysitter, they say, and it’s gratifying to observe how thoroughly he cares for his charge.

Last weekend I found all three children sitting atop Archie’s bed. Kit and Jack were listening intently as Archie recited One Duck Stuck, word for word, page by page. I reveled in the twins’ attentiveness, and marveled at Archie’s careful annunciation of each pages’ animal sound.

Standing there in the doorway I felt like a single person split in two. Part of me, the analytical self who has sat through conferences with teachers and therapists and reviewed the research and dealt with the doctors and their diagnosis’s, wondered how it is Archie does that, why it is he can do that. The other part of me, the illogical self that is mostly a proud mother, felt sorry for my first self, the one that was searching for some sort of clinical explanation. The answer is simple, this second self wants to believe. It’s just because he’s smart.

Right now in the other room Kit has abandoned her crayons and is leaning against the couch, her two feet still on the ground, watching television. Jack, who is walking in circles, has a plastic yellow kazoo in one hand and a rubber chicken in the other hand. He’s mashing the chicken’s inflated belly with the kazoo and every time he does the chicken emits this asthmatic expiratory wheeze. It’s funny, really, to hear that bird’s comical squawk juxtaposed against Jack’s expressionless face.

Later today, after school, I may take Archie, Kit and Jack to the park. While we’re there we may play monster. When we do we four stumble around lock-kneed, rocking from one foot to the other, our arms stretched out in front of us affecting our best Frankenstein impersonations. Archie delights in this game and I can’t help but think that’s because he’s discovered this particular pretend play is one in which his success is predetermined. Archie has discovered that he’s chromosomally predisposed to move speedily on shaky legs, and he’s learned that this game is one that celebrates that tendency.

We’ll take it, of course, the twins and I, and all three of us will laugh and squeal at Archie’s impeccable impersonation until his feigned growls become rolling guffaws, the kind you only get to laugh when you really get it after all.

Posted by: anne
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Categories:
Archie
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

We nearly had an incident at the bookstore Saturday afternoon.

John and I had struck a deal with the kids: Good behavior in exchange for a new book of their choice. Archie, Kit and Jack had made good on their promise so it was John and my turn to uphold our own.

But when we arrived at the bookstore Archie was overwhelmed by the rows and rows of brightly-colored books, or the shoppers who got a little too close when they passed us by, or the low hum of voices bouncing off the stacks and shelves. He was overwhelmed and it was beginning to show so I decided not to stop Archie when he dove to the ground in front of the Step Into Reading book display and began pulling all the books with characters he recognized on their covers off the shelf, then stacking them in a pile between his legs.

I could see that Archie intended to hoard the books, to find comfort in their familiarity as he shuffled through the pile one book at a time, reciting aloud the titles he’d already memorized and asking me to help him learn the titles he didn’t yet know. Experience has taught me that this behavior of Archie’s, the repetitious stacking and shuffling of books, the way he insists that either he or I say it each time he picks up a new book with a new title, will at best allow him to alleviate his anxiety. At worst, I’ve learned, this self-stimulating behavior is just a precursor to an impending meltdown. So there at the bookstore I tolerated it because I was hoping the moment would pass, that Archie would find his equilibrium again and I wouldn’t end up dragging my oldest son out of the store as he carried on and on, turning heads as he and I made our way from one end of the building to the other.

While I was watching Archie’s constitution unravel before my eyes, a lady was sitting on the stage at one end of the children’s books section reading a copy of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. There were parents and children sitting on the benches arranged in front of her, all of them pressed up against each other, and I knew they could hear Archie as he recited the books’ titles loudly and hemmed and hawed, but I hoped that they wouldn’t mind, that they’d understand I was doing what I could to help Archie over the hump.

I was thinking that when Archie saw them, too, and that’s when I knew it was all over. Just the other day my father took Archie for a haircut and when they got to the barbershop and walked through the door Dad and Archie found themselves in the middle of a crowd of waiting customers. My father said that Archie looked at the people on one side of the room, and then he looked at the people on the other side of the room. After he finished all that looking Archie took a few steps forward before he declared loudly and with authority, “I’m nnnnnneeeeeext!” He’s just that way, this oldest boy of mine. He thrives on spotlights and audiences and I can’t say I blame him for it because it isn’t as if that apple fell too far from this tree.

At the bookstore, in the children’s section, Archie collected his books and lurched, arms full, toward the stage. When he got there he sat down, front and center, then began shuffling through his stack. He looked at me and I held my finger to my lips to make a shushing face. Archie smiled and then, in deliberate defiance of my request, lifted a book over his head as he insisted loudly and with authority, “Momma, say it!” That’s when I excused my way through the crowd, grabbed Archie’s arm and then dragged him, kicking and hollering, from the stage.

I put Archie’s stack of books back on the shelf, and then I hollered to John that our time was up. He was with Kit and Jack and the three of them were just feet away from us in the opposite direction of the stage, but somehow that husband of mine was oblivious to Archie’s outburst. John what and how’d as he turned his head this way and then that way, blinking hard in both directions, before he shrugged his shoulders and acquiesced to my assessment.

At the front of the store, in the checkout line, Archie was still yeah-yeah-yeahing with one hand shoved all the way inside his mouth. He wasn’t kicking and hollering anymore, but his legs had gone wet-noodle and I was holding him up off the floor by his other hand, the one not stuffed between his teeth. That’s when I remembered that there was a magazine I wanted to buy so I lifted Archie onto John’s feet and deposited him there, all limp and floppy. “I’ll be right back,” I promised.

I could still hear Archie’s whining when I was standing in front of the magazine rack, scanning the titles for the one I wanted. He was loud, for sure, but his vocalizations were controlled, nearly rhythmic. What I mean is that by now the noise Archie was making really wasn’t that big of a deal and if it bothered the other people waiting in the check-out line they weren’t making their discomfort known. But the woman standing next to me in the periodicals section wearing rolled-up Capri jeans and talking to her daughter, she was.

“Do you hear that?” she asked her daughter who couldn’t have been any older than ten. “It’s soooooooo annoying! What an awful noise that child is making!”

When a child is acting out in a public place and we mothers look away, ignore the tantrum and forego passing judgment because we knew we’ve been there, too, that our own children have acted out like that before as well, that’s what my friend Rachel calls the mommy pass. I guess the woman wearing rolled-up Capri jeans knew as much about the mommy pass as she did fashion because it was obvious: She was judging the child; she was judging his parents.

I weighed my options as I listened to her complain. I don’t think the woman’s vantage point enabled her to see that Archie has Down syndrome. I’m not sure if knowing as much would have changed her mind about speaking out; I don’t know. I do know that she, up here at the front of the store, had no knowledge of the back story behind Archie’s whining, and I wondered if I could set her straight about it all without sounding as if I were making excuses. I was angry. I was hurt. My mind whirred and I thought of several things to say, but in the end I said nothing. I just walked away.

But I was upset enough when I got back to the counter at the end of the checkout line to loudly announce, “That woman over there near the magazine rack is saying rude things about Archie.” I wanted more people than just John to hear what I had to say.

John wanted to know if I’d said anything to her, to the woman filled with rude comments. I told him I hadn’t because I was too flustered and afraid of what may come out of my mouth. The cashier listened to all of this and then offered to say something to the woman, and I hope he did, too, after we left.

It has been a few days since we’ve been in the bookstore, but what happened there is still bothering me. I’m not entirely sure why, but this I do know: Once upon a time I was such critical person that my comments often earned a chastisement from my father to keep my opinions to myself unless they were kind. He’d warn me as much, and then he’d preach tolerance over and over again. But back then I rarely listened to him.

In the end it took an extra chromosome for me to understand the value of my father’s advice. Children change their parents, I know, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that Archie’s effect on my life is more profound, more pronounced, than any other influence I’ve ever known. I may have arrived at this place in my own good time, but for sure Archie hastened my pace.

And I guess that’s what bothers me the most about the woman standing next to me in the periodicals section wearing rolled-up Capri jeans, talking to her daughter. I hate knowing that I used to say things like she did, that once I thoughtlessly hurt people with my words as she hurt me the other day in the bookstore. I can’t change the past, I know, but I hope to change the future.

See, there are these three little kids I know and I’m not biased, or anything, but they’re the most receptive learners…

Posted by: anne
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Categories:
Archie
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

“You didn’t tell me you were Anne Moore’s husband.”

That’s what Coach Dan said to my husband Tuesday night during John’s No Boundaries beginning runners’ clinic. When John shared his and Coach Dan’s exchange with me over his cell phone after the clinic was over, during John’s drive home from Cleveland Park, I was stunned. “How does he know me?” I wanted to know.

John replied that he’d asked Coach Dan that same question, and that Coach Dan had told him that he knew how I finished in my most recent race. “Really?” I asked my husband incredulously because, to be honest, I didn’t know anyone in our running community knew my name, or even really noticed me at all.

“Really,” John answered matter-of-factly.

I suspect Coach Dan may have made the connection between John and myself because I had stopped by the running store where the coach works weekends to pick up my age-group award earlier that day, and in doing so I did have to tell the store’s co-owner my name. That co-owner may have recognized my name as the girl who kinda-sorta accosted the other co-owner Saturday morning before the run when he was walking out of a door I was walking into and I stopped him, stumbling all over myself as I declared, “Hey, you ran Boston!” and then blurted out like some sort of groupie girl, “How’d it go?”

He wanted to know my name, that running store co-owner who ran this year’s Boston Marathon, which I told him before I explained that my husband ran with him up McDaniel Avenue during Coach Dan’s clinic that Thursday before the race. And then, later, I saw that this co-owner drew that connection again, the one between John and me, when I high-fived him after crossing the finishing line, before tearing off the bottom part of my bib to hand to the race officials at the end of the finisher’s shoot.

And maybe that co-owner saw me approach the finish line with D. J., who I heard took a client to the running store later that day to pick out a pair of shoes. Everybody at the running store knows D. J., and maybe Coach Dan was working that afternoon and someone said something to someone else and the connection was drawn again, from John to me, and then between the two of us and back again to D. J.

I don’t know how Coach Dan figured out who I am, or who I was in relation to John, but he did and he mentioned it and when he did he said my name as if I were someone and I’d be omitting an important part of this story if I didn’t admit that Coach Dan’s recognition made me feel at least a little important. Everyone at the Meyer Center, or the doctor’s offices, or the hospital may know me as Archie’s mom, and everyone at St. Mary Magdalene’s, or the park, or the reading group at the bookstore on Tuesday and Thursday mornings may know me as Kit and Jack’s mom, and there’s a whole other group of people who know me as John’s wife, and another group still who recognizes me as my parents’ daughter, but there aren’t many people left who acknowledge me for my own accomplishments anymore. I’m not sure where it’s gone or when exactly I lost sight of it, but sometimes my own identity feels so far off that I have to strain to see it again.

But now I’m going on and on.

So I’ll tell you that I’m thinking about all of this because today at the gym as I was on the parallel bars counting out twenty-one dips and the rest of my class was out the door, running a lap, my trainer Michael laughed and then said to me, “You’ll be a legend by the time I’m finished with you.” He was talking about how my knee bleed when I nicked it with my fingernail Friday while I was doing dead lifts, and how I didn’t notice the blood until he’d said something, and how he’s now exaggerating the whole story by telling everyone, including the rest of my class, that I lost a pint of blood. He was talking about that, but what he said makes me think of something else.

On Thursday I had an appointment at the hospital with a radiologist. The appointment had been scheduled for early in the morning, during my doctor’s rounds, and since it involved the x-ray department I knew I couldn’t bring Kit and Jack along with me. John would take Archie to school, we decided, and I would drop the twins off at my parent’s house where my mother agreed to watch them.

Because my parents live near an elementary school, I wanted to be sure I left our house early enough to avoid the traffic associated with the start of school. I’d have to pass the school on my way to my parent’s house, and then again on the way to the hospital, so I’d do well to err on the side of early, I estimated. This meant that Kit, Jack and I left our home an hour and a half before we usually do. The sun had risen by the time we walked outside, but the day was still brand new. When we left the house to get into my car, parked in our driveway, Jack asked, “What’s that smell?”

“It’s six eh-em,” I answered, just like that. It wasn’t until later, during the drive to my parents’ house, that I realized Kit and Jack had never been outside in this world so early in the morning. Their world during the six o’clock hour involves Mister Roger’s, breakfast bars and peanut butter, getting dressed and waiting for me to walk through the front door, fresh from a run. Until that day they didn’t know about all of this, the cars, the kids waiting at the bus stop, the runners along the side of the road, the scent of the climbing roses over our garage wafting like a perfume’s top note before it evaporates into the warm-weather musty smell of our lawn, the one that rises up from the roots way down deep underneath the thick, top thatch of our Bermuda grass.

Those runners we saw alongside the road, they made me think of this. Even from the front seat of my car I could tell that they were beginner runners, like John and his classmates in Coach Dan’s clinic, and seeing them reminded me that it’d been about a year ago that I started running with commitment. I didn’t run in high school, and I didn’t run in college, so everything I know now I’ve learned since then. I’ve learned so much, and those runners like John along the side of the road need to learn so much like I did, but still I have so much more to learn.

I thought about how much I still need to know, and I remembered how Kit and Jack sauntered to our car that morning, parked in the driveway. They don’t know a thing about being on time or being late, about sitting in traffic or avoiding the hassle altogether. I rush through my days, from task to task, minute to minute, and I forget that the little boy holding my hand and leaning into my legs so much so he slows my progress, thinks we have all the time in the world.

Someday that little boy may let his hair grow long or dye it black, and someday he and his brother and sister will probably wear clothing riddled with intentional holes. They’ll slam doors, all three of them, and each of them will probably tell me that they hate me during some argument we’ll share with such an intensity in their voices that I’ll be tempted to believe them. They’ll do all these things and I’ll wish them young again before they learned so much, before I learned so much, when there was still so much in front of all of us to learn.

That will come to pass, I know, but now Jack asks me to make little houses for him on our couch with throw pillows and baby blankets Kit takes from her dresser drawer while he watches his television shows, and Kit asks me to help her dress in her princess costumes in the afternoon after school and when I do she declares herself beautiful, and Archie runs down the upstairs hall in the morning from his room toward mine too early, before anyone’s bedside alarm has sounded, his arms thrown wide from side to side and he is nearly singing, Good morning, Momma! What are we going to do today?

And that is what I was thinking about when Michael mentioned my legendary status this morning. He was joking, but in a way he was right. I wonder where my identity’s gone, but really it’s right here in front of me. I am all of these things wrapped up together, a series of selves overlapping each other. A part of me can’t exist without the other, and all these parts tossed together make me who I am.

When my children are grown they’ll remember how we are together now, and it’ll shape who they’ll become then. They’ll know what people have said about me, and they’ll know what they’ve said, too. Somewhere in these years ahead of us a switch will flip and they’ll stop leaning on my legs and instead they’ll begin to push me in the right direction. I wonder when that will happen, when the little houses, and princess costumes, and carefree mornings will dissipate like the scent of those roses into the trodden ground, and I wonder what they’ll think of me then, what my legend will be after all?

Posted by: anne
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Categories:
Archie
Jack
Kit
Morning with the Moores

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Jack
Kit

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Categories:
Archie

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General

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