Spirit Howl of the Red Wolf Mother

Last weekend I spent some time in the dreaded pediatric urgent care wing of our not so local hospital. MJ had the cooties. They were bad cooties. Subsequently, she was hurling her little guts out for the first time since she gained "toddler consciousness" of life, but utterly no understanding of it all.

Since dehydration isn't an option for homo sapiens, we waited it out until that recommended 12th hour of vomiting everything and went right to said germ factory where they somehow still cure people. While there, the male nurse who neglected to identify himself as one and instead decided to call himself the "health care professional who would be seeing us today," went into this long explanation of dehydration. He also said it was good that I got her there before she was severely dehydrated and then continued to talk about vein restriction, etc...

While I was in medical school for about 15 minutes, my feverish kid who is now apparently no longer allowed to have fluids until "treatment" is wailing through his lecture. And believe me, it felt like one. Now, as an avowed life-long hypochondriac who grew up with a sickly mother, I have to say I could do without the schooling. Yep, "I am here in a reasonable amount of time to fix my kid specifically BECAUSE I know these things" --In my mind. I smile until he is done feeling self-important while rocking my child. Also it was pretty apparent he had no clue about me and was making some assumptions. None of those included Prep school.

And then we waited for her Zofran to arrive and had some more incompetency I won't bore myself or anyone else with... but I happened upon a revelation in that room, while Happy Feet was thankfully keeping MJ occasionally distracted from feeling like a poop. I was thinking, after I finally had to tell Nurse Focker to go fock himself basically, the tiger mom has nothing on the red wolf mother. Maybe it was my spirit animal finally talking to me and I have been waiting a long time to hear her. I always thought she would be some kind of cat. But nope, definitely a big pack-leading, yet female red wolf. Um, I was also delirious without any sleep.

Here is what she said and why the tiger mom, my apologies Amy Chua, has nothing on her:

"The fabric is only made whole by the individual threads. When there are more threads, the softer and warmer it will be."

Tigers and red wolfs are similar in that they have no natural predators and are mostly nocturnal, but that is about where it ends. The red wolf itself is a hybrid species midway between a grey wolf and a coyote. It is a social animal and within the pack there is a mutual sense of care for the young. Yes, there is definitely a territorial nature between separate packs, but within the group there is a village mentality. Both the male and the female care for the young.

This is how I intend to raise my daughter. I intend to tell her that it really does take a village not just for big things like social change, but also in situations where we are simply communicating with one another. We must be mindful that we do not know the other pack and it is simply wrong to judge without a good sniff test. Pun intended. I hope though she doesn't think I mean butt sniffing. You know how canine are...

I intend and hope I succeed in helping her be proud of who she is first and what she does second. Because none of us are defined by our careers or where we went to school. Ultimately when a person is dead and gone, we think of them fondly when they were kind and showed compassion. I tend to hope, and maybe too optimistically, that no one thinks too fondly of the asshole that trampled everyone to success. And those who DO think that way, well I hope we wolves can breed them out. The coming election should be pretty telling in this regard.

As it turns out, both dahduh and mahmuh got sick too. And I made soup for my pack. I will post that recipe soon because there IS such a thing as a short cut to homemade 1/2 Jewish girl Chicken Noodle Soup. 20 mins, I swear...

Hope no one else gets these cooties. And more on the red wolf mother's philosophy soon. I have a feeling this isn't her last appearance.

Signed,

Red Wolf RS Day.