our babysitter got tuberculosis

Who even gets tuberculosis any more, besides characters in Emily Bronte novels?

Apparently, babysitters who spend the majority of their day breathing all over my kid. That’s who.

It was January of 2009 and Tenzin was sick with that flu everyone seemed to have. She had missed a few days of work, and had a startling cough of the lingering variety.  It was the icy morning of Obama’s inauguration and I had a 10 a.m. job. I sat at the kitchen table in my coat with my 2-year-old daughter Z, drumming my fingers and waiting for Tenzin to walk in the door. The phone rang at 9:20 a.m. Her voice was thin and she sounded like she had been crying. She had collapsed on the subway and couldn’t move her legs.

I knew she had been putting off dealing with how sick she was, hoping it would just go away because she didn’t have health insurance. But hearing her voice at that moment, I must have known something was really wrong and that it was no longer acceptable to rely on her to take care of herself. I called an ambulance and headed over to the subway station near our house in Brooklyn. I found her on a bench inside the turnstiles, sitting with a cop. I remember I deliberately tried to avoid having her breathe on me.

We spoke later that day. She had spent it in the ER waiting for doctors to tend to her. She was given a head x-ray, some blood work for who knows what, and several other tests.  They found nothing, disregarding that death rattle-cough, and gave her a piece of paper that encouraged her to rest and to follow up with a doctor in several weeks. We decided together that she should take the rest of the week off.

Back at work, Tenzin still wasn’t feeling better. She had lost weight on an already tiny frame, and seemed exhausted and worried. So on a Monday, two weeks after she collapsed, she went to the hospital as instructed to follow up on her care. We were taking a few days of vacation and I texted her to see how it was going. They had admitted her to the hospital, she said, which I thought was strange. Hospital beds are not easy to come by in a country where women are kicked to the curb days after giving birth. They certainly don’t give them to the uninsured – unless it’s serious. Or contagious.

Unless.

The following day we got another text. In her broken English she texted: “The doctor thinks is 85 person (sic) tuberculosis.”

I went immediately to Google, and found this:

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that is spread through the air when people who have the disease cough, sneeze, or spit.  People who breathe TB bacteria into their lungs can become infected; close contact for a long period of time is usually necessary for TB to be spread. Most of these cases will not develop the full-blown disease; asymptomatic, latent infection is most common. But, about one in ten of these latent infections will eventually progress to active disease, which, if left untreated, kills more than half of its victims.

The hours between when we found out Tenzin’s status and then our own were the most fraught, stressful moments I can recall since Z was born. Who could be more intimate, more of a “close contact,” than a fulltime babysitter to a baby? I couldn’t stop picturing Z on a respirator.

After a frightening flight home from our vacation, during which we were unsure whether we could be infecting others, I went straight to the hospital to see Tenzin and get some answers about what we should do. It was challenging to get information about her status as a patient, mostly because she was not a blood relative, but also because her case had become a public health situation to be managed by a New York City Department of Health caseworker.  There were privacy issues involved, I was told by several emotionless nurses, as my frustration mounted.

Eventually I located a compassionate intern who seemed to understand my daughter’s intimate relationship to Tenzin and that it was important to understand the severity of her diagnosis in a timely manner. The awkward, red-headed, young doctor took me to her room, which was under extreme isolation for airborne diseases. I put on a mask and went in.  I’ve never seen anyone look more ill.  She was shockingly thin and her skin was an unbelievable shade of yellow.  Her cheeks were bony to the point of skeletal.  With a strange, inappropriate half laugh, the doctor said, “Go ahead Tenzin, tell her what you have.” In a tiny voice, she gulped “I have active TB.”

During this confusing time of information gathering, our own physicians and pediatrician were of little help, mostly because it’s extremely unusual for anyone in our community to contract TB. The disease can usually be traced in origin to other countries, where people develop the latent disease and years later bring it into a active “cluster,” like the one in Tenzin’s community in Queens. There were only 895 reported cases of TB in New York City in 2008 and seven of those were children. While medication is an effective option for some people, many of these cases have become resistant to the drugs they use to treat the disease, complicating the danger of spreading.

By a strange stroke of luck, a dear friend of mine happened to work at the time for the Department of Health TB Division, where they had expertise dealing with this situation, but not so much with little people patients. But she and her colleagues were able to guide us, and we were tested that same afternoon after finding out Tenzin was positive.  We got the results a few days later, and all turned out to be negative for the latent disease.  However, there is a two-month incubation period for TB, so we couldn’t be sure whether we had been infected until the second test eight weeks later. And because of the weakness of a child’s immune system, Z would have to take the medication prescribed for TB preventively. That meant chasing her around with spiked apple juice for the next two months.

All the people who Tenzin had been in close contact with had to be notified, tested and in some cases medicated, including the children, parents, and babysitters in Z’s classes andplaygroups. I was forced to navigate a tricky path, intersecting the NYC Department of Health, the “worried well” parents in my Brooklyn neighborhood, the private and passive personality of the Tibetan culture, plus my own conflicted relationship with Tenzin. Calling up those preschool directors and telling parents and babysitters that they may have been infected was not an easy thing to do.  Most people were supportive and grateful for the way I handled the situation – at this point I had almost become a de facto Department of Health caseworker myself.  Several parents were angry and panicked, but ultimately, no one was infected.

Tenzin spent five weeks in the hospital in isolation, and an additional five weeks confined to her home. For the next seven months, she took drugs every day, and each week was visited by a caseworker to have her lungs examined. She was unable to work for that entire nine months, as she continued to be contagious until she completed the treatment. We talked at the time, every few weeks, mostly by text message, but it was hard to know what to say. I would tell her about what Z had been doing, how she was talking about pirate treasure, how she had a haircut, was wearing new pink Converse sneakers. I did not tell her that Z had not asked where she was, or if she was coming back to us.

In early April we got the results of our second test and found we were TB free. In May, we hired a new babysitter.  It felt terrible not to wait for Tenzin to recover, but I needed stability for my daughter and to get back to work with confidence in her care. I was discouraged by the communication breakdown that had led to such a dramatic situation.  Tenzin’s judgment in dealing with her own health – tragic because her choices were so limited – made me question her fitness as a caregiver.

Today Tenzin is healthy and working for another family. We have recently gotten back in touch and it relieved me greatly to hear she is well. Z has a little brother now, and as I watch them together, spinning in circles and vamping to “The Fresh Beat Band,” I am filled with love, pride and fear that around the corner lurks another danger I can barely fathom.

We try and protect our children from the dangerous world. We buy organic peanut butter and expensive car seats. But we are thwarted in an instant by an errant germ, borne by a hard-working woman who has come to this country and been undone been by an impenetrable health care system. As parents, our illusions of control – our attempts to master a messy and terrifying world with money and gadgets and Purell – are just that.

happiness means living in the moment…and having an awesome babysitter

I’m a parent of two young kids. I love my life and am grateful for my blessings, but I wouldn’t describe myself as euphorically happy all the time. I laugh and I have genuine joy, sure, but I’m often impatient with my kids and husband, and downright grumpy and frustrated with time management and not being able to think straight. And I’m overwhelmed at times by the small and big picture components of being a mom. In other words, I feel lucky but fairly anxious the other shoe will drop any minute. So… happy? That’s an elusive and slippery conversation.

That’s why I was willing to give the book The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, a look. You’ve probably heard the name – it was a big deal a few years ago when it came out: New York Times bestseller, author appeared on Oprah, and lots of book reviews debated the right of the author to selfishly pursue a year devoted to being happy.

The premise is that author feels she should be happier, given her good marriage, two daughters, health and a satisfying career as former high-powered attorney turned bestselling author. (A real slacker!) She wants to be more satisfied, less grouchy and more grateful, so she sets out to maximize contentment by paring down her life and spiritual clutter. She researches happiness with the zeal of gold star desiring child and tenacious goal-oriented adult. She makes endless lists, charts, official sounding resolutions, checking them off one by one.

It’s easy to mock this earnestness and gag slightly at her overachieving. I was surprised at myself for even buying the book – having worked in book publishing, I am usually suspicious of these sorts of gimmicky self-help jobbies, and I sincerely doubt I’d be friends with someone who can’t figure out what she likes to do without making an Excel spreadsheet. But it’s also easy to understand and admire her tenacity in trying to make a good life better.

Ironically, I couldn’t even read one page of this damn book on our “vacation” because I had no babysitter and turns out two kids at the beach is a crazy amount of work. When we got home and went back to work, I finally had a chance to read it on the subway and at night when I wasn’t catching up on sleep from the week away. And what hit home for me the most is how money and time are the luxuries that would most make up my pursuit of happiness. If you have unlimited reserves of both and can hire someone to watch your kids while you master an intensive five day self portrait art class or even shred paper from five years of filing, you too can be happy! With the drudgery that accompanies parenting young ones, the constant cleaning and feeding and fetching, there’s honestly not much room for personal happiness, unless someone else is doing the drudgery part.

So it really bothered me that with all the details Gretchen includes in the book, down to the type of containers she purchases to keep memories of her kids’ art projects and toys, she does not once say in a clear and straightforward way that she has childcare. She has a seven-year-old and a one-year-old the year she decides to devote herself to officially pursuing happiness. And while being a better partner and parent constitute two of the 12 chapters of the book, I have to ask: Where are her kids all day while she makes scrapbooks and photo albums online, reorganizes her office and kids’ toys, and writes a novel in 30 days?

So here’s how to make your project more accessible and less enviable, at least to other parents: mention your babysitter loudly and proudly. Admit that it’s a lifesaver that she comes every day and the many nights you and your husband go to dinner parties and lectures and work events. Don’t gloss over the fact so much that money doesn’t help someone to feel happier. Go deeper there. Money probably doesn’t completely make one happy, as you do say in your chapter devoted to money, but if you have a work deadline, you certainly can’t meet it while taking your kids to the playground. You need focus to write and complete projects. And someone to take the kids to karate and fix dinner and keep that apartment organized.

A week after finishing the book, I’m away for the weekend without the kids for the first time ever. Finally, I have a minute alone without feeling guilty, and also the time to muse on happiness with a clear mind. I’m thinking back to my vacation with the kids, where I had several hyper-aware moments of “I’m happy.” My kids were belly laughing on the beach, eating sand, having pancakes for lunch. And once they were sleeping, I felt full because I knew I had worked hard to give them a fantastic time. I was so aware of their sheer joy, just being five and one, and how each new experience they were having was simply rocking their young worlds. My husband and I cracked up when we remembered what our pre-children beach vacations had been like and wondered how we possibly filled the days. And while I was tired, damn it, I was happy.

And I can say that though I had some problems with this book and wouldn’t pursue happiness in the same kind of style Gretchen did, one of her defining mantras upon completion of her project is that “The days are long, but the years are short.” I actually find this very moving, true, comforting, and spiritually in line with my exhausted contentment at the end of a full day with my kids.

So I’ll try and use that as my mantra and as a useful way to remember The Happiness Project, rather than, “I can’t wait to see my babysitter.”

feeling confident? don't get excited, it won't last

Life with kids can be like the opening credits to Sex and the City. You’re walking along, feeling sassy because you finally overcame some hurdle and made it through a difficult parenting life lesson, when all of a sudden you get splashed by sludge from a bus.

Oddly, that image of Carrie Bradshaw getting hosed always resonates whenever I’m feeling sure of my parenting skills. It’s like some higher power – the Goddess of Hubris – sees you get the hang of nursing, figure out a nap schedule or stand up to a school administrator in a way that feels authentic, then all of suddenly she strikes you down as if to say, “Suck it lady, you think you know something? You don’t know crap.”

I had this experience recently when I made it through my son’s first birthday and he was starting to sort of sleep through the night with my older daughter in the same room. I was finally feeling good, like maybe I was beginning to figure out this two-kid thing. I was no longer nervous to take both of them to the playground and didn’t feel dead tired and insane and out of control like I do 95 percent of the time (more like 80 percent – an improvement!)

Then we took a family trip and when we returned home everyone got sick and small people were feverish, lethargic and yelling in the middle of the night for a straight week. It sucked. During those middle-of-the-night fests of woe, holding one or the other while they cried, I cursed myself for feeling cocky the week before.

Ebbs and flows. Ups and downs. We know this about parenting. It was in the brochures. It will be this way for the rest of our lives. Having young kids is the easy part. And all the other things your mom or mother-in-law says when you complain about how hard it is having kids. But I’m convinced it’s the confidence that will kill you every time, especially if you say out loud that you feel like you’ve got it going on.

It’s the keinena hora syndrome. If you’re Jewish you might recognize this Yiddish phrase as something older people, or actors in Woody Allen movies might say, sometimes while spitting to both sides. The idea of keinena hora, which translates to “no evil eye,” it is to protect yourself and your loved ones from, well, evil. And to remind you not be boastful, because the evil eye loves to screw over those boastful people! My grandma Jeanie used to say it whenever she bragged about my sisters and meet: “L. got into Brown (keinena hora), A. just won a medal in gymnastics (keinena hora), M. has such beeyootiful hair (keinena hora).”

I don’t think I’m the kind of parent who brags about my kids explicitly. Too old-school. Obviously they are gorgeous and creative and gifted (keinena hora). But the mechanics of parenting, of taking two kids on the subway, of getting my daughter to say please and thank you, or having the rare weekend day where my husband and I both get to exercise, grocery shop as a family, and the kids are happy at bedtime, I certainly have allowed myself to feel triumphant about those types of days on occasion.

And you know what? I’m never victorious for long because the minute I say to my husband, while snuggling into bed after staying up too late watching television for the first time in months, “Last night was great. I bet M. will sleep through again,” or even, “Z. has been amazing about getting out of the house in the morning ….” Splash. Puddle on the tutu. Keinena hora, baby.

how facebook fills the mommy void

What a weird universe is Facebook. A carefully curated place of likes and dislikes, chosen images and words, contrasted with the most stream of consciousness, walking down the street and thought I’d share it with you kind of randomness. It’s Look at my band, Look at my kid, Look at me in a bikini, Let me tell you what I think about the Middle East. It’s profound, ridiculous, sentimental, political, existential. Nothing and everything. Art and commerce. Hit and miss.

My new parent status dovetailed with my embrace of social networking, and I wonder sometimes what life with young children would be like without Facebook. In some of the darker and duller moments of parenting, connecting with people online was the most I could hope for. And, some days, it was much more satisfying than the awkward playground chatter that so often left me underwhelmed.

My kids have enriched my life in ways I can’t list, but I’ve also felt a loss since becoming a parent. I’ve felt sucked dry of the brain space I used to engage to think about art and culture; a lack of intellectual or creative spark I’ve traded in for the rewards of raising rugrats. I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but Facebook has helped to fill this space again. I’ve craved a way to read and write and discuss, and Facebook has given me an unexpected community of people who feel the same way.

I used to think it was odd or embarrassing when people constantly posted pictures or details about their kids with so little self-awareness. Or, for example, when they’d post their sonogram pictures . I would internally rant, sounding like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes: “What ever happened to intimacy or privacy?”

Recently a relative of mine lost her newborn son and posted the details on Facebook. It seems like such an intimate thing shared in such an unprivate way. But it made so much sense for her and her husband and their community, who embraced her posts about the loss with prayers, love and beautiful support. It was really moving! And it made me realize that there is no inappropriate etiquette in this evolving social media land. Just as in real life, Facebook and Twitter can be messy, awkward and jarring, as well as helpful, connecting and surprising.

In his “Facebook Sonnet,” recently published in The New Yorker, Sherman Alexie describes Facebook as a bizarre repository of lonely people typing away toward recreating their childhoods. Here’s a sample verse:

“Welcome to the endless high school

Reunion. Welcome to past friends

And lovers, however cruel or kind.”

I think Sherman Alexie must have just joined Facebook and he’s having that initial freakout people have when faced with the oddness and inanity of seeing names from deep in our histories. Plus he’s a busy (and famous) novelist, screenwriter and poet, so he probably hates himself for wasting time hanging out there. Maybe he’ll get over it. Clearly its giving him material.

Facebook is like a giant bar, where everyone you know is hanging out. Some folks are always there. Some are noncommittal. Some you haven’t seen for 20 years and don’t necessarily need to talk to. You can initiate conversations, chime in to others or get cornered by someone who wants to talk about their juice fast or show you a million pictures of their new couch. But usually you have a good time, realize it was good to get out, and remember that the world is made up mostly of people who want to connect. And if the reality of our lives means it has to happen in front of a keyboard, I just can’t get bent out of shape about that. I’ll take what I can get.

one mom’s quest for order – at the container store

Forget yoga, acupuncture, meditation or medication. When I’m in need of something to really take the edge off, I visitThe Container Store. It is a most wonderful and joyous place. For those of you unfamiliar, or unlucky to not have one where you live, it’s a home/office organization store devoted to selling boxes and bins of all shapes and sizes to put your crap into. You walk in, and with the help of the least attitudinal salespeople to have ever worked in Manhattan, you can organize your life down to the tiniest, junkiest, scariest drawer in your home. There is a container, or a hook, or a dry erase board, or a filing box that is sure to suit your needs and make you feel as if your life is absolutely not spinning out of control.

The ethos behind The Container Store is either genius or diabolical, depending on where you fall on spending yourself out of a problem.  These days, I’m pretty much for it.

Sometimes I go there just to breathe the lavender and cedar scented air in the extensive closet department, where I can ponder the potential of all wooden hangers in my perfectly edited, sorted-by-color-and-style dream closet (no wire hangers for Mommy!).  I wander the aisles, wide-eyed, present, and pulsing with the desire to de-clutter, snatching random crap that I know will make my life better and make me a super awesome parent and all around person to be envied: gift wrap and tape to always have on hand; shelf dividers so I can see all the snacks in the cavern that is our snack shelf; sensible, dishwasher-safe reusable baggies for school lunches my 4-year-old daughter won’t eat; atchotchke to gather the wires under my desk into a beautiful little bundle.

I even found the tiniest (and cheapest) container in the place: one-inch-square Lucite boxes in an assortment of rainbow colors, which totally delighted my daughter (39 cents!).  But I can’t be sure that my almost 1-year-old son didn’t eat the hot pink one, as I saw him gumming enthusiastically it the other day and haven’t seen it since.

When I was pregnant last summer with my second kid, I was nesting like a meshuganah.  Always a lover of containers, I became frighteningly obsessive, dragging home bins on a weekly basis (and I mean dragging – nine months pregnant and hoisting things home on the subway like a cavewoman dragging home her kill).  The desire to purge and fold and stack was physical, like I could somehow alleviate the anxiety of parenthood by sorting and saving and labeling with my label maker: things to pass on to friends, things to keep for the baby, things to go to storage. My husband joked that he was worried to go to sleep for fear of waking up in a man-shaped bin. I was certainly tempted.

I had then, and still have now, an intense need to put things into things. Bins and shelves and the promise of an orderly exterior somehow make me feel like I can do it, I can handle the intensity of raising these children. I was not always like this! I could let things go – not do dishes immediately or throw things in a heap until later. But now that I’ve talked about it with other parents, I know so many mothers and fathers who crave order in this same somewhat obsessive way. There are so many things to think about that we cannot control, that sometimes it feels safe to fixate about things we can.  Like bins.

I am aware that buying things will not lead to happiness in the long run. But sometimes it seems like if you have theright things, carefully chosen and perfectly curated – like if Martha Stewart were walking beside you in The Container Store, making recommendations on filing systems or giving you tips on the right hamper to fit into your tiny little closet – then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be okay.

We all have our stuff, both metaphorical and physical. No matter how organized that stuff is, or where we put it, it will always be ours.

musings on a past life, pre-kids

I have these moments of intense nostalgia, usually triggered by one of my senses. A summer camp smell, certain songs by Phish, or a glimpse of The Breakfast Club on cable can recall a time and a place when I was a different person. So pure in their ability to create longing for a past life, these moments feel like the impetus for an artistic epiphany or something – like I’m supposed to do something tangible with these powerful memories. But I can’t paint or sculpt or write a song or make a film. I wish I knew how. Or had the time.

Recently I was waiting for my husband to meet me in Chelsea for a friend’s art opening. It was a Thursday, late afternoon, early summer, and the kids were home in Brooklyn with a sitter. I planned to walk around and check out some galleries, since I never do that kind of aimless cultural wandering anymore, but I was thirsty and ducked into an Irish pub instead. I sat at the bar and drank two beers and got kind of buzzed as the place started to fill with people. As I listened to conversations around me, couples and clusters of friends having their first drinks of the night, getting ready to go to a show, a party, a restaurant, I felt a pang of envy for my younger self. There was a time where I regularly sat in bars like this one, alone, sipping a whiskey, reading a magazine and waiting for a friend or a boyfriend. There was nothing this twenty-something unencumbered self had to accomplish, short of getting to my job and doing my laundry. Go to the gym, maybe.

A night like this — the first warm one of summer — would be languid, anticipatory, pulsing with potential. Maybe I’d meet someone hilarious or make out with a stranger. New York, and the world, was open to me. I didn’t know where I would be in ten years. Looking back now, my only anxiety was: who and where do I want to be and how in the hell do I get there?

I wouldn’t have guilt about leaving the kids. Or worry about ruffling a babysitter’s feelings by staying out too late. Or wasting money on a stupid night out. Wondering if I bicker too much with my husband. Or if my kids will be as lucky as I was to enjoy a mostly happy childhood.

I likely know where I’ll be for the next ten years, and most days I feel incredibly lucky. But now I have the worry of staying lucky, not screwing up. Being an example. Keeping my marriage strong. Being a good mom. Trying to enjoy my blessings without the crushing anxiety that can go along with having them. Because at a certain point all that languid, pulsing-with-potential business begins to get tired, and you start looking for the next thing, which begets the next, and the next thing you know you have a mortgage, two kids and four kinds of insurance (health, life, condominium, auto).

So sitting in a bar every once in a while is a definitely a good thing. It’s just a very different thing if you don’t get to do it with regularity.