Poop & Privilege

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

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Nobody likes a poopy diaper.

   Nobody, that is, except me.

   As strange as it sounds, I’ve always considered it a privilege to change my children’s--and now my grandchildren’s--diapers.

   Other kids? Not so much.

   Being a man, since nature has so effectively kept men out of the equation when it comes to baby-raising duties that bond a parent with their child--such as breastfeeding--I had to take my bonding moments where I could find them.

   Now, briefly, this isn’t a dissertation about gender stereotypes or male-female roles, it’s a discussion about poopy diapers, so let’s leave social politics out of it, although, now that I think about it, poopy diapers and politics seem to go hand in hand.

   Poopy diapers, besides being unsanitary, are uncomfortable. Once soiled, babies have no other recourse than to sit in their own waste until someone notices, and I’ve always considered it my job to notice. Sometimes I’ve noticed too well, and changed diapers that were perfectly clean.

   “Don’t you know how expensive diapers are?” my wife would chastise me.

   I gladly took the chastisement. Better a hundred clean diapers be thrown away, than one dirty diaper remain longer than absolutely necessary, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin in a way he never expected. Voltaire and William Blackstone have also been credited with saying a different variation of our founding-father’s famous quote, but, when it comes to Voltaire,  I don’t trust a man with only one name. As for Blackstone, isn’t he a magician? What does a magician know about the law, or changing diapers for that matter?

   “Alla-kazaam! The dirty diaper has now disappeared!”

   “Ahhhh! Where’s my baby?"

   In time, I became a diaper-changing expert, offering unsolicited advice to anyone polite enough to not tell me to mind my own business.

   “Always wipe away from the main event.”

   “Make sure the diaper’s not too tight.”

   “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”

   I’m not a germaphobe, but even I know that nothing good ever grows in a poopy diaper. Ever hear of salmonella, norovirus, or listeria? Neither had I, until I looked them up for this article. Besides learning where the name of the mouthwash Listerine came from, I also learned that these are a few of the germs that can be found in dirty diapers. They can cause illness or sickness, sometimes even at the same time.

   When changing your baby’s diapers, start with washing your hands first. You don’t know what you’ve touched, and you don’t want to know. Take it from me, your hands are filthy. They’re filthy because everything you touch is filthy. And what do filthy hands do? Filthy hands can spread the many germs that might cause your baby to get sick.

   You don’t want that, do you?

   I didn’t think so.

   Since we’re on the subject of things that are filthy, something you may not realize is that the convenient diaper-changing stations thoughtfully installed by restaurants and businesses, those are filthy, too. During a simple diaper change, this contamination can transmit gastrointestinal disease-causing pathogens. I’m not even sure what pathogens are, but they sure sound bad.

   You see, during the many diaper changes that occurred before you even got there, the diaper-changing table probably came into contact with dirty diapers, and the urine and feces that filled them like a calzone.

   I know I’m guilty of contaminating the baby-changing station. Whenever I’ve used it to change my baby, I’ve alway put the dirty diaper to the side, out of the way, while finishing up the job. Oh, sure, I wrapped it up tighter than a Christmas gift from Scrooge, because I just roll that way, but it was still sitting on the table until I threw it away. You can bet I won’t do that anymore. In the future, I’ll just ask a good samaritan to hold the soiled diaper for me until I’m done. I’ve learned in life that if you hand somebody something, they’ll usually take it.

   Personally, I always felt a deep satisfaction changing my youngest daughter’s diapers. It was one thing she couldn’t do for herself. When my wife would put a breast to her mouth, instinct would take over and she would suckle. What, as a man, could I do that was more important than that?

   Change diapers?

   Lucky me.

   My father, on the other hand, never changed a diaper in his life. If one of his children soiled themselves under his watch, he would wait until our mother came home to take care of the problem. It was a different time, I’ve been told.

   I suppose that’s true, but remembering how my little girl would smile and look at me with her beautiful eyes as I was changing her diaper, I can’t help but feel that my father missed out on something special.

  
  

Raising My Father

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JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene
  

Hot Day

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

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My Dad walks every day--EVERY day--rain or shine.
     Today was not only one of the shine days, but it was also one of the hot days.  The very hot days.  I try to pass along this information to him, but if there's one thing I've learned from dealing with my Dad, it's that I can't deal with my Dad.
     "Dad," I tell him, "it's hot outside."
     "No, it's not."
     "Sure it is."
     "No, it's not."
     "Dad, I was just outside.  It's hot."
     "It feels cool to me."
     "It feels cool to you, because we're inside the house.  Outside, it's hot."
     But my Dad isn't really listening to me.  He's trying on the new pair of Nike walking shoes that I've just brought him from Tucson.
     "Yeah," he tells himself, "these feel good.  It's just what I needed."
     He stands up after putting them on, and does a little high-stepping around the island in the kitchen.
     "They fit perfect," he tells me.  "I'm going out for a walk."
     I try to distract my Dad.
     "You know, Dad, my wife will be down in a few minutes.  You don't want to wait for breakfast before you go on your walk?"
     "What?"
     "You don't want to wait for breakfast first?"
     "Are you going to make it for me?"
     "My wife will be down in a few minutes.  She can make us both breakfast."
     I've learned that if I can distract my Dad long enough, he'll forget about going on his walk, and will settle down and watch TV or go take his morning nap.  But there's no distracting him today.
     "Nah," he says.  "I'll go on my walk first."  He's really excited about trying out his new shoes.  He's like a big kid.
     I'm really regretting driving to Tucson and buying him those Nike's.  No good deed goes unpunished, but no good deed also causes you a lot of inconvience, as well.
     So he goes.  Meanwhile, my wife comes downstairs.
     "Are you hungry for breakfast?" she asks.
     I have a very beautiful wife.  I look at her, and she's wearing some cotton pajamas that are a size too big.  The sleeves go past her wrists and halfway down her hand, and the pajama bottoms drag on the ground.  She looks awfully cute.
     "Well...  I am hungry," I tell her.
     She knows I'm not talking about breakfast.  
     "Where's Dad?" she asks, bringing me back to reality.
     "He went out on his walk," I admit.
     "So he can be back at any time?"
     "Yeah," I admit that, too, knowing where this is going.
     "So you let him go out on a walk?"
     "I didn't let him.  He went."
     "But it's hot."
     "He didn't think so."
     "It's very hot."
     "He thought it was cool."
     "Yeah, inside the house it's cool, but outside it's hot."
     I'm starting to get agitated.
     "Sweetheart, you know my Dad.  If there was a way I could have kept him from going out on his walk, then I would have kept him from going out on his walk."
     That's the thing about my dad.  He affects so many aspects of my life.  My wife and I are sniping at each other, not because we're actually irritated at each other, but because our lives are essentially put on hold.  I can't kiss my wife good morning without my Dad sticking his nose between us and asking if his dog has been fed yet.
     I look at it this way:  I have a window of opportunity to do certain things, and that window is closing way too fast for my taste.  By inviting my Dad into my home to live with us, I've limited the things I can do.  I can't hike every day the way I would like, and leave my wife to deal with my Dad all by herself.  He would drive her nuts.  So I hike when I can, and I wait for my Dad to come back from his walks the rest of the time.  
     "Should I start breakfast, or what?"
     "I would guess 'or what?'."
     So we make the best of a bad situation.  I make us two cups of coffee.  She likes to add sugar and cream.  I like mine black.  I grab the morning newspaper, and she picks up a mystery book that she's been dying to read.  We go outside to the front patio, where there's shade and it's still cool.
     I sit down, and single out the Sports Section.  My wife sits down, and opens her book to the first page.
     And that's the exact moment my Dad comes back.
     "Man," he says, wiping his forehead with the baseball cap he was wearing.  "It's hot out there."
     "Did you have a nice walk, Dad?" my wife asks him, trying to be nice.
     He ignores her question completely.
     "Do you have anthing cold to drink?" he asks her.  "Man, it was hot.  That sun was burning."
     My wife gets up and goes to get him something cold to drink.
     "I told you, Dad," I said.
     "What?"
     "I told you it was hot."
     "You told me it was hot?"
     "Yeah."
     "When did you tell me that?"
     "I told you just before you left."
     He ignores what I've just said.  I don't know if he doesn't hear what we say, or if he just ignores the things he doesn't want to acknowledge.
     "I should have had breakfast first," he says, shaking his head, and sitting down with me.  "I could have gone for a walk later, when the sun cooled down."
     He looks at his new shoes, and shakes his head some more.
     "You know, son," he tells me.  "I don't know about these shoes.  They hurt my feet."
   
  

Raising My Father

RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com

JimDuchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

Attack Of The Chickenbutt

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

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Kids are funny.

     My granddaughter, now five, will ask me “Guess what?” with a mischievous grin.

     Okay, I’ll bite.

     “What?”

     “Chickenbutt!” she’ll say.

     And she’ll laugh and laugh and laugh.

     It’s become a running joke between the two of us.

     As you can tell, my granddaughter has a good sense of humor, but she’s also very sweet. Earlier today, she went to the pantry and got two Fruit Roll-Ups. I thought they were both for her, so I told her to put one back.

     “But this one’s for grandpa,” she told me, meaning my father. “I’m going to show him how to eat it.”

     Her big heart also extends to her great-grandfather’s dog. Whenever the mangy creature is by himself, she’ll carry him over to join us.

     ”He doesn’t like being alone,” she’ll explain.

     Lately, she’s been watching a cute cartoon on Netflix called Chip & Potato. It’s about a kindergarten-aged puppy who has a secret friend, a mouse she calls Potato.

     “Grandpa,” my granddaughter said, lifting her head up from the iPad she was watching. She used to call me daddy because that’s what she heard my daughters call me, but now she calls me grandpa. Or by my first name. Or kid. She has a lot of names for me.

     “Yes,” I answered.

     “If I see a bad mouse, I’ll scream,” she told me, “but if I see a good mouse I’m going to call her Potato.”

     I was touched by that, so I thought I’d buy her a Potato stuffed animal. I didn’t want to drive around looking for it, so I went to the Target website on the internet. They didn’t have one, so I went to the Walmart website. They didn’t have one either. Hey, if Walmart doesn’t have one, they don’t exist.

     Only they do. 

     On Ebay, I found homemade Chip & Potato dolls. For FIFTY bucks. PLUS shipping. I checked on Amazon. Theirs was $124.00!

     I love my granddaughter, but that was way past my price-point. Which, since you ask, is five dollars. For my granddaughter I’d up that to twenty.

     “Are you going to buy it for her?” my beautiful wife asked me.

     “No,” I said. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

     You know, for such a tiny woman she sure can punch.

     On Saturdays, my granddaughter and I will go to Las Fuentes, my father’s favorite restaurant, and buy him enchiladas for lunch. This past weekend I thought he’d like something different, so we bought him menudo instead.

     “They didn’t have enchiladas?” he complained.

     I bypassed his complaint by telling him the menudo was from his great-granddaughter.

     “She always remembers me,” my father said, smiling. “You know what your brother gives me? Cookies. HARD cookies. What teeth I have, he wants me to lose.”

     The Saturday before Christmas, on our way to the restaurant, we bought my father a holiday tin of cookies for dessert. Shortbread. You know, SOFT cookies. After putting in our special order for gourmet enchiladas, we usually go over to the Friends of the Public Library Bookstore to look around. The ladies who volunteer there love to see my granddaughter and she loves to see them, plus she generally makes out like a bandit. One lady in particular is especially smitten with her. When her mother passed away, she brought some of her mother’s jewelry, necklaces mostly, to sell. When we got there, she told my granddaughter to pick whichever necklace she wanted. My granddaughter’s eyes grew wide. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. To this day, she wears that necklace whenever she dresses up like a Disney princess.

     I don’t know if my granddaughter was thinking about the kindness and generosity of these ladies, but before we got out of the car she looked at me and asked, “Can we give my friends the cookies?”

     I told her that was a good idea, and it was. I felt bad that I wasn’t the one who came up with it, but I’m usually a day late and a dollar short when it comes to things like that. 

     Sadly, as every parent and grandparent knows, children also come with their share of heartbreak. As it turns out, my granddaughter suffers from asthma. If her asthma gets too bad she could end up in the hospital, which has happened. 

     In such situations my father always has some story he insists on telling us about a child who has died. I think he means it to be comforting, but I’d rather not hear those kinds of stories. The last time my granddaughter was in the hospital due to complications with her asthma, my father told me the sad story of Laurel Griggs, a 13-year-old actress who had recently died from a massive asthma attack. I can’t imagine her family’s pain.

     “Consider yourself lucky,” my father said when OUR little girl finally came home from the hospital.

     My wife gently took hold of my arm to keep me from saying something I’d regret.

     You know, for such a tiny woman she sure leaves bruises.

     Still, it’s best to concentrate on the good things in life. I took both my granddaughter and my youngest daughter to the movie Cats when it was playing in theaters awhile back. Why it wasn’t a hit, I don’t know. Well, maybe I do. My daughter took a ten-minute nap while watching it. Me? I loved it.

     “Grandpa’s crying,” my granddaughter whispered, ratting me out to my daughter and anyone else within earshot when Jennifer Hudson sang the show-stopper Memory.

     I leaned closer.

     “Snitches get stitches,” I teased, making my daughter laugh.

     On the drive home, I asked my granddaughter, “Did you like the movie?”

     “Yes,” she told me.

     “What was your favorite part?”

     “Chickenbutt!”

RaisingDad

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