Yesterday afternoon my daughters and I planted a bleeding heart root and a couple dozen daffodil bulbs. Wearing gardening gloves five times too big for their hands, the girls knelt on scraps of cardboard I’d retrieved from the recycling bin and bent over the loamy, fragrant soil, carefully digging up small holes with trowels and now and then holding up a worm or a stone they’d come across like prizes plucked from a Cracker Jack box.
I don’t know how good a chance the plants have of surviving. It’s pretty late in the fall planting season, and today we woke to a scene straight out of Currier & Ives. The first snow of the year always seems the purest and the whitest and this morning it blanketed the trees and landscape like the robes of Arctic royalty. The small patch of woods behind our house was transformed into a magical forest where I imagined unicorns and wizards in white cloaks moving among the frozen trees and acting out some drama beyond the ken of human senses. But how the weather bodes for the plants we put to bed we aren’t likely to find out until next spring.
And that’s OK, being uncertain about the future. Because the real pleasure is knowing that my daughters and I did a good thing, a simple thing, the best way we knew how at the time. It is a realization I come back to with greater frequency the older I get: the deepest satisfaction often comes from the simplest activities. Planting daffodils, for instance. Or, as my daughters and I did afterward, picking up sticks to use later as kindling in our fireplace. Or sipping a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen, where we could survey the work we had done.
I have come to this pleasure in other ways, too. By cutting wood or hammering nails, “drows’d by the fume” of cedar, oak or pine. Walking in the woods early in the morning when much of the world is still asleep and the air is taut with the sound of rustling leaves and wind and the scurry and scratch of squirrels vaulting from tree to tree, their tails following them like wisps of grey smoke. Writing a letter – on paper with a pen in cursive, not by email – to a dear friend I haven’t spoken with in years.
If this all seems obvious – that simple things are best – why is it that the lesson is so easily, repeatedly forgotten? Why does it require so much effort to do so little, especially this time of year when greed and gluttony take center stage? Who knows? But now when I get the urge to reinvent myself, to figure out what life is all about, to plumb the depths of my soul, I know the best course of action is not to think but to do.
To plant a flower.
To hand-wash the dishes.
To build a fire in the fireplace.
To make soup. Which is precisely what I did yesterday afternoon, a hearty Italian recipe my grandmother brought over from the old country.
I blended together Parmesan and Romano cheeses, breadcrumbs, nutmeg and black pepper. I grated lemon peel into the mixture, the citrus tang tickling my nose, and cracked three large, bright white eggs into the bowl and kneaded the dough to the consistency of polenta before stuffing it into a potato press and watching the noodles drop into a boiling pot of beef and chicken broth. I inhaled the steam rising out of the pot and was absolutely transported by the smells it contained.
This was heaven. This was joy.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Monday, November 22, 2004
Want Some Cheese With That Whine?
Yeah, I know. It’s been a few days since I’ve posted here.
Not that anyone’s noticed.
By last check of my web stats, I’ve had about three visitors over the past week. A couple were apparently just clicking the “Next Blog” button at the top of the page and came across mine by accident. No visitor has stayed on for more than a couple minutes. So if I don’t write anything today – or ever again – will the world care? If a blogger types something in the woods and no one’s around to read his stuff does he make a sound?
I was making this argument to my wife last night. Told her I was thinking of booting the blog. Fishing for a little pity.
“It’s only been a week,” she said, deftly avoiding the baited hook.
I took a bite of my fifth chocolate bar of the evening, putting a big dent in my diet plan but just a teeny dent in the supply of candy collected by my children Halloween night. “Yeah,” I said. “But what about the friends I emailed to tell them about the blog? So far no one’s tuning in.”
“First,” my wife said, “you only emailed them the middle of last week. Second, they’re probably busy and haven’t had time to look at it yet.”
She was right, of course. Still, I’m not sure which is worse. Being ignored or being damned with faint praise. Right now I think I’d prefer the faint praise.
Let’s face it. This isn’t Hemingway I’m writing here. Before this entry -- and not counting the very first one where I basically just said “Hello, world, here I am!” – I’ve written a total of just six essays. And a couple of them aren’t really essays at all but preambles to older material (an essay and some poems) I decided to inflict on – well, on whoever might happen to read my blog.
Which is no one, really.
I’m not a stupid person. Well, in some ways I’m really quite remarkably stupid. But I know people have little time to read, and when they do read they want something fun or intellectually stimulating or mysterious or titillating. To date I’ve posted essays on a friend’s vasectomy, the challenges of raising two daughters, another friend’s premature baby, the pleasure of watching a meteor shower (which, it turned out, I never got to see anyway because it was cloudy all that week) and my freaking out about some heart flutters. Oh, and some poems whose only distinction is that they’ve been rejected by some of the better poetry magazines in the country.
And I wonder why no one has offered me a book deal yet.
OK. So maybe I won’t give up the blog just yet. As my wife says, if I really ever want to be a Writer – with a capital W – I need to keep at it, regardless whether anyone is reading. It’ll help me sharpen my skills, find my voice, develop a stronger sense of narrative. And because I’m writing on a public website and there’s the potential for someone reading me, the blog puts the onus on me to write rather more regularly than I would otherwise – and, frankly, ever have – in a personal diary.
Which raises a good question: Just what exactly do I want my blog to be? A confessional? A sounding board? One of those albino lab mice I inject my poetry and prose into to make sure my writing’s safe on animals before exposing humans to it?
I guess I’m still kinda working that one out. So if you’re up to seeing where all this leads – yeah, you who just stumbled across my blog from the SatanDogLover blog – stick around. I probably won't provide much titillation, but at least the writing should improve with time.
Not that anyone’s noticed.
By last check of my web stats, I’ve had about three visitors over the past week. A couple were apparently just clicking the “Next Blog” button at the top of the page and came across mine by accident. No visitor has stayed on for more than a couple minutes. So if I don’t write anything today – or ever again – will the world care? If a blogger types something in the woods and no one’s around to read his stuff does he make a sound?
I was making this argument to my wife last night. Told her I was thinking of booting the blog. Fishing for a little pity.
“It’s only been a week,” she said, deftly avoiding the baited hook.
I took a bite of my fifth chocolate bar of the evening, putting a big dent in my diet plan but just a teeny dent in the supply of candy collected by my children Halloween night. “Yeah,” I said. “But what about the friends I emailed to tell them about the blog? So far no one’s tuning in.”
“First,” my wife said, “you only emailed them the middle of last week. Second, they’re probably busy and haven’t had time to look at it yet.”
She was right, of course. Still, I’m not sure which is worse. Being ignored or being damned with faint praise. Right now I think I’d prefer the faint praise.
Let’s face it. This isn’t Hemingway I’m writing here. Before this entry -- and not counting the very first one where I basically just said “Hello, world, here I am!” – I’ve written a total of just six essays. And a couple of them aren’t really essays at all but preambles to older material (an essay and some poems) I decided to inflict on – well, on whoever might happen to read my blog.
Which is no one, really.
I’m not a stupid person. Well, in some ways I’m really quite remarkably stupid. But I know people have little time to read, and when they do read they want something fun or intellectually stimulating or mysterious or titillating. To date I’ve posted essays on a friend’s vasectomy, the challenges of raising two daughters, another friend’s premature baby, the pleasure of watching a meteor shower (which, it turned out, I never got to see anyway because it was cloudy all that week) and my freaking out about some heart flutters. Oh, and some poems whose only distinction is that they’ve been rejected by some of the better poetry magazines in the country.
And I wonder why no one has offered me a book deal yet.
OK. So maybe I won’t give up the blog just yet. As my wife says, if I really ever want to be a Writer – with a capital W – I need to keep at it, regardless whether anyone is reading. It’ll help me sharpen my skills, find my voice, develop a stronger sense of narrative. And because I’m writing on a public website and there’s the potential for someone reading me, the blog puts the onus on me to write rather more regularly than I would otherwise – and, frankly, ever have – in a personal diary.
Which raises a good question: Just what exactly do I want my blog to be? A confessional? A sounding board? One of those albino lab mice I inject my poetry and prose into to make sure my writing’s safe on animals before exposing humans to it?
I guess I’m still kinda working that one out. So if you’re up to seeing where all this leads – yeah, you who just stumbled across my blog from the SatanDogLover blog – stick around. I probably won't provide much titillation, but at least the writing should improve with time.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Wanderings, Ponderings and Poetry
There are a few things I wanted to write about today.
Uno
I’m about as proud as a husband can be about the well deserved and hard-earned kudos my wife has been getting of late for a wonderful book she’s recently published about a long-time banking family in Iowa. Now, before you roll your eyes, know this: more human drama is contained between the covers of this book (beautifully laid out and illustrated, I might add, by a wonderful local artist and friend of ours by the name of Shannon) than you’re likely to find in your library’s Mystery and Suspense Section: bank robberies; meetings with such famous personages as Daniel Boone, Carl Sandburg and most of the 20th century’s U.S. presidents; tense encounters with Indians; Civil War battles with narrow escapes; bank heists; family tragedy and triumph; anguishing financial struggles that pitted farmers against bankers. There’s lots of humor, too, including a great anecdote about a traveling circus. And that’s just the first couple chapters.
They say that behind every great man stands a great woman. As the husband of a truly brilliant and successful wife, I can’t say that the reverse is true. But I can say this: I’m sure glad Melinda picked me to be her running mate.
Dos
It rained yesterday. No. It didn’t just rain. The skies wrung every last drop of moisture from the clouds until water flooded the streets, sweeping into the gaping storm drains torrents of leaves, trash and one or two small children. OK, I made that last bit up. But basically it started raining in the morning and continued, unabated, until well into the evening.
It rained in some pretty peculiar places, too, or so I learned this morning. Like, in my friend Blaze’s house – through light fixtures, door frames, ceiling vents. Along the walls. Down into the basement.
Well, you might say, astute reader that you are: Clearly this fella needs to get a new roof. And you would be correct. Which is precisely what Blaze was in the midst of doing when the heavens decided to unleash a few hundred thousand gallons of rain. The problem is, the roofing crew had left the job unfinished yesterday afternoon before calling it a day. They’d taken off half the old shingles and laid down fresh tarpaper, but that was it. I guess the rain scared them off. Got in their ears, too, and soaked their brains. Because they didn’t bother to put up tarp before leaving.
So when Blaze, his wife and their little boy arrived home at the end of the day, ready to fix some dinner, relax, maybe watch a little TV, they noticed water dripping in surprising places. Then in more places. Then, pretty much throughout the house. Fortunately, after quickly deploying buckets and garbage cans, they protected their furniture. But the big concern now is mold, so men with large fans are arriving today to try to air-dry the house. And the roofing company promises it’ll cover all repair costs.
Still, I gotta give Blaze credit for not going postal. Probably doesn’t help matters that it’s raining again this morning.
Tres
Finally got to yank the Holter heart monitor electrodes off my chest this morning. And was it really necessary for them to tape over my chest hairs? I’ll drop off the monitor later today and hear back from the doctor a week or two from now. Unless, the technician who hooked me up said, they find something really bad.
I hate honesty.
Quatro
Got another rejection today for some poems I submitted to an online poetry e-zine. Second rejection from them in a row. Yeah, it sucks. On the other hand, I probably don’t put in the time it would require to elevate the kind of writing I do to truly publishable quality. My ability to put together coherent sentences has gotten me by many, many times, especially in college. Got me through a newspaper career and is now buttering my bread as I write press releases for a living. But writing as art? Seems to be another animal altogether. And I’m learning, in painful, want-to-crawl-under-the-bed-and-hide kinds of ways, that coherent sentences alone do not constitute art – no matter how flowery the language.
So, as a kind of poultice on my struggling artist’s soul, I’m going to post a couple of my poems here. Publish them my own damn self. At least until I get up the nerve to send another batch of my babies off to the slaughter.
------
ENTOMOLOGY
Afternoon, and the insects
Seem drunk on summer’s
Distillation:
Ladybugs shell the
Western wall. Box elders
Braille the golden mailbox.
A moth, sulfur-winged and
Freckled, careens with
Ornithoptic grace into the
Window.
We, too, grow uneasy at
Night’s prevail. Wrapped
In ribbons and revelry we pray
For a child against a chill that catches
Our breath and turns our words
Against us.
In the woods we gathered
Pine cones, caressed rough scales where
Fetal forests dream of mountaintops, and
Brought them home in cradled arms
With winter on our tongues.
On the gray counter by the sink they began
To bleed black beetles that
Sizzled to the shadows. We seized them
And threw them out onto the porch, shuddering
At their dry scatter.
Even the moth has dusted itself off and
Rises into the quivering air and by sharp
Degrees resumes its travels south along a
Thousand fresh trajectories.
UNDONE
The cold has come too early again, creeping
Like clematis along earth’s tilted axis, filing
The edges of days down to copper.
How can we help, we ask the neighbor whose
Wife has left to find herself. My wife places her
Palm against his shoulder and
He leans into it, like falling, like release.
Say nothing to the children, the wife whispers
Before driving away in her car, waving;
We want this to be a positive change.
In their yard by the creek winter has already
Begun putting down roots. On the
Limb of a tree a crow scowls
Like heavy fruit grown too ripe to eat.
STAINED GLASS, CIRCA 1967
Lightning was best though headlights would do,
Illumination rising like a fever—sill skyward—
The seeded glass bursting into glossy blooms of
Daffodil, pomegranate and plum.
Sometimes my mother would wake to find my
Bed empty, wander up to the loft and
Lie silent beside me on the narrow couch,
Her hair like feathers against my cheek.
I might have disappeared then, floated
To the ceiling and through the angular
Smear of vermillion there. But her presence
Held me fast to her, tethered:
Her steady breath. The lift and settle of her chest
Like a pink shell moving through currents at high tide.
Her heat, her scent--cigarettes and cold cream. And
My knowledge, even then, that this could never last.
VISITATION
Outside the rooftops
Have dropped their white
Skirts to the gutter, exposed
Their rough skin to the pearl sky.
All that moderates this immodesty
Is a gray bramble of arteries and
Soft swaying synapses that
Now and then spark blue
Smoke and cardinal and
Cold, cold, cold.
It is the last morning.
The furnace heaves its
Heat and dry lightning, and still the chill
Presses up through foundation and floor,
Blossoming like an orchid in flesh and
Flexed bone –
It is a familiar ache. Even the
Water in the walls groans
At the thought of more winter,
Elbowing thin sleeves as
It seeks its own best path.
Above the stove a boy in a sailor
Suit leans in to kiss an inclined
Head. The girl’s hands are tucked
Deep into gloves big
And white as cats. They sit on a
Swing just like the one outside
The window and there as
Here the wind has bleached the
Landscape, piled dune upon dune along
The inland shore and propped up
The golden dead. At
Such a moment anything
Seems possible; even resurrection.
In the living room where the
Girls sleep and now are beginning to
Shed sighs and dreams like lanugo
My mother sits in the
Thinning darkness and watches
Over them and drinks her coffee
Practicing goodbye.
Uno
I’m about as proud as a husband can be about the well deserved and hard-earned kudos my wife has been getting of late for a wonderful book she’s recently published about a long-time banking family in Iowa. Now, before you roll your eyes, know this: more human drama is contained between the covers of this book (beautifully laid out and illustrated, I might add, by a wonderful local artist and friend of ours by the name of Shannon) than you’re likely to find in your library’s Mystery and Suspense Section: bank robberies; meetings with such famous personages as Daniel Boone, Carl Sandburg and most of the 20th century’s U.S. presidents; tense encounters with Indians; Civil War battles with narrow escapes; bank heists; family tragedy and triumph; anguishing financial struggles that pitted farmers against bankers. There’s lots of humor, too, including a great anecdote about a traveling circus. And that’s just the first couple chapters.
They say that behind every great man stands a great woman. As the husband of a truly brilliant and successful wife, I can’t say that the reverse is true. But I can say this: I’m sure glad Melinda picked me to be her running mate.
Dos
It rained yesterday. No. It didn’t just rain. The skies wrung every last drop of moisture from the clouds until water flooded the streets, sweeping into the gaping storm drains torrents of leaves, trash and one or two small children. OK, I made that last bit up. But basically it started raining in the morning and continued, unabated, until well into the evening.
It rained in some pretty peculiar places, too, or so I learned this morning. Like, in my friend Blaze’s house – through light fixtures, door frames, ceiling vents. Along the walls. Down into the basement.
Well, you might say, astute reader that you are: Clearly this fella needs to get a new roof. And you would be correct. Which is precisely what Blaze was in the midst of doing when the heavens decided to unleash a few hundred thousand gallons of rain. The problem is, the roofing crew had left the job unfinished yesterday afternoon before calling it a day. They’d taken off half the old shingles and laid down fresh tarpaper, but that was it. I guess the rain scared them off. Got in their ears, too, and soaked their brains. Because they didn’t bother to put up tarp before leaving.
So when Blaze, his wife and their little boy arrived home at the end of the day, ready to fix some dinner, relax, maybe watch a little TV, they noticed water dripping in surprising places. Then in more places. Then, pretty much throughout the house. Fortunately, after quickly deploying buckets and garbage cans, they protected their furniture. But the big concern now is mold, so men with large fans are arriving today to try to air-dry the house. And the roofing company promises it’ll cover all repair costs.
Still, I gotta give Blaze credit for not going postal. Probably doesn’t help matters that it’s raining again this morning.
Tres
Finally got to yank the Holter heart monitor electrodes off my chest this morning. And was it really necessary for them to tape over my chest hairs? I’ll drop off the monitor later today and hear back from the doctor a week or two from now. Unless, the technician who hooked me up said, they find something really bad.
I hate honesty.
Quatro
Got another rejection today for some poems I submitted to an online poetry e-zine. Second rejection from them in a row. Yeah, it sucks. On the other hand, I probably don’t put in the time it would require to elevate the kind of writing I do to truly publishable quality. My ability to put together coherent sentences has gotten me by many, many times, especially in college. Got me through a newspaper career and is now buttering my bread as I write press releases for a living. But writing as art? Seems to be another animal altogether. And I’m learning, in painful, want-to-crawl-under-the-bed-and-hide kinds of ways, that coherent sentences alone do not constitute art – no matter how flowery the language.
So, as a kind of poultice on my struggling artist’s soul, I’m going to post a couple of my poems here. Publish them my own damn self. At least until I get up the nerve to send another batch of my babies off to the slaughter.
------
ENTOMOLOGY
Afternoon, and the insects
Seem drunk on summer’s
Distillation:
Ladybugs shell the
Western wall. Box elders
Braille the golden mailbox.
A moth, sulfur-winged and
Freckled, careens with
Ornithoptic grace into the
Window.
We, too, grow uneasy at
Night’s prevail. Wrapped
In ribbons and revelry we pray
For a child against a chill that catches
Our breath and turns our words
Against us.
In the woods we gathered
Pine cones, caressed rough scales where
Fetal forests dream of mountaintops, and
Brought them home in cradled arms
With winter on our tongues.
On the gray counter by the sink they began
To bleed black beetles that
Sizzled to the shadows. We seized them
And threw them out onto the porch, shuddering
At their dry scatter.
Even the moth has dusted itself off and
Rises into the quivering air and by sharp
Degrees resumes its travels south along a
Thousand fresh trajectories.
UNDONE
The cold has come too early again, creeping
Like clematis along earth’s tilted axis, filing
The edges of days down to copper.
How can we help, we ask the neighbor whose
Wife has left to find herself. My wife places her
Palm against his shoulder and
He leans into it, like falling, like release.
Say nothing to the children, the wife whispers
Before driving away in her car, waving;
We want this to be a positive change.
In their yard by the creek winter has already
Begun putting down roots. On the
Limb of a tree a crow scowls
Like heavy fruit grown too ripe to eat.
STAINED GLASS, CIRCA 1967
Lightning was best though headlights would do,
Illumination rising like a fever—sill skyward—
The seeded glass bursting into glossy blooms of
Daffodil, pomegranate and plum.
Sometimes my mother would wake to find my
Bed empty, wander up to the loft and
Lie silent beside me on the narrow couch,
Her hair like feathers against my cheek.
I might have disappeared then, floated
To the ceiling and through the angular
Smear of vermillion there. But her presence
Held me fast to her, tethered:
Her steady breath. The lift and settle of her chest
Like a pink shell moving through currents at high tide.
Her heat, her scent--cigarettes and cold cream. And
My knowledge, even then, that this could never last.
VISITATION
Outside the rooftops
Have dropped their white
Skirts to the gutter, exposed
Their rough skin to the pearl sky.
All that moderates this immodesty
Is a gray bramble of arteries and
Soft swaying synapses that
Now and then spark blue
Smoke and cardinal and
Cold, cold, cold.
It is the last morning.
The furnace heaves its
Heat and dry lightning, and still the chill
Presses up through foundation and floor,
Blossoming like an orchid in flesh and
Flexed bone –
It is a familiar ache. Even the
Water in the walls groans
At the thought of more winter,
Elbowing thin sleeves as
It seeks its own best path.
Above the stove a boy in a sailor
Suit leans in to kiss an inclined
Head. The girl’s hands are tucked
Deep into gloves big
And white as cats. They sit on a
Swing just like the one outside
The window and there as
Here the wind has bleached the
Landscape, piled dune upon dune along
The inland shore and propped up
The golden dead. At
Such a moment anything
Seems possible; even resurrection.
In the living room where the
Girls sleep and now are beginning to
Shed sighs and dreams like lanugo
My mother sits in the
Thinning darkness and watches
Over them and drinks her coffee
Practicing goodbye.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
I Heart Huckabees
The palpitations began last January. Sometimes they felt like a moth trapped beneath my breastbone, fluttering to get free. Other times there was a sudden whooshing sensation as though my heart had taken in and disgorged an inordinate amount of blood in a very short time. On a few occasions it felt as though someone had stuck a finger into a deep bruise in my chest. They could appear anytime, anywhere. They rarely lasted more than a few seconds. Nor did I experience any other symptoms (dizziness, breathlessness, chest pains). And yet I came to dread these flutters, which only made them worse and gave my imagination license to fly off to some dark and unhappy places.
Google didn’t help matters. If you’ve never tried to look up medical information on the Internet, here’s some advice: Don’t. Especially if you’re like me and take the Woody Allen approach to self-diagnosis, which states, “If you noticed it, it’s probably fatal.” Based on my Web research I could have been suffering from any number of heart ailments. Many require lifelong medication or surgery. A few are incurable.
On the other hand – and it’s a big hand – palpitations are often indicative of nothing. They just happen. Lack of sleep, excessive caffeine or alcohol and anxiety are possible culprits. Sometimes the heart’s complex electrical system fires off a few extra sparks now and then just to make sure you’re paying attention. Or maybe, not unlike the main character in Ray Bradbury’s short story “Skeleton,” I finally became aware at the age of 40 that there’s an honest-to-God, flesh-and-blood heart pumping inside my chest and that my continued existence depends on its regularity.
The doctor didn’t come right out and call me a hypochondriac. But after checking my family history (a grandmother and several uncles with heart disease), my exercise regimen and my general health, and even giving me an EKG, he suggested that I probably had nothing to worry about.
Probably.
I hate that word. Leaves the door open just a teensy, weensy crack. Zip, there goes my imagination again.
For the next few months I did what the doc suggested. Cut back on the java. Upped my running time. Tried to get to bed earlier. Tried not to worry. And gradually the palpitations subsided, and then vanished. Didn’t have a single one all spring, summer or early fall. Then about three weeks ago they came back.
The doctor still thinks its nothing to worry about. Probably. Still, I went ahead and got fitted for a Holter monitor this morning. Not a halter monitor, as the perky but linguistically challenged hospital receptionist called it when she buzzed the clinic to tell them I was coming by. I may not be in the best shape, but I do not have man breasts.
For the next 48 hours the device will record my heart beat in much the same way an EKG does. I can exercise with it on. Sleep. Anything. I just need to be careful not to pull out any of the five electrodes taped to my chest. I’m also supposed to stay away from electric razors and electric blankets, which can apparently interfere with the device’s circuitry. Nor am I allowed to bathe or shower until the monitor comes off Friday morning. I don’t see this as an inconvenience, though my family and coworkers might by week’s end. And then, in a week or two, I should know whether I’m going to live, or whether I should start making arrangements with the funeral home.
I sure hope it turns out OK. Then I can turn my attention to that weird rash that’s cropped up on the back of my legs.
Google didn’t help matters. If you’ve never tried to look up medical information on the Internet, here’s some advice: Don’t. Especially if you’re like me and take the Woody Allen approach to self-diagnosis, which states, “If you noticed it, it’s probably fatal.” Based on my Web research I could have been suffering from any number of heart ailments. Many require lifelong medication or surgery. A few are incurable.
On the other hand – and it’s a big hand – palpitations are often indicative of nothing. They just happen. Lack of sleep, excessive caffeine or alcohol and anxiety are possible culprits. Sometimes the heart’s complex electrical system fires off a few extra sparks now and then just to make sure you’re paying attention. Or maybe, not unlike the main character in Ray Bradbury’s short story “Skeleton,” I finally became aware at the age of 40 that there’s an honest-to-God, flesh-and-blood heart pumping inside my chest and that my continued existence depends on its regularity.
The doctor didn’t come right out and call me a hypochondriac. But after checking my family history (a grandmother and several uncles with heart disease), my exercise regimen and my general health, and even giving me an EKG, he suggested that I probably had nothing to worry about.
Probably.
I hate that word. Leaves the door open just a teensy, weensy crack. Zip, there goes my imagination again.
For the next few months I did what the doc suggested. Cut back on the java. Upped my running time. Tried to get to bed earlier. Tried not to worry. And gradually the palpitations subsided, and then vanished. Didn’t have a single one all spring, summer or early fall. Then about three weeks ago they came back.
The doctor still thinks its nothing to worry about. Probably. Still, I went ahead and got fitted for a Holter monitor this morning. Not a halter monitor, as the perky but linguistically challenged hospital receptionist called it when she buzzed the clinic to tell them I was coming by. I may not be in the best shape, but I do not have man breasts.
For the next 48 hours the device will record my heart beat in much the same way an EKG does. I can exercise with it on. Sleep. Anything. I just need to be careful not to pull out any of the five electrodes taped to my chest. I’m also supposed to stay away from electric razors and electric blankets, which can apparently interfere with the device’s circuitry. Nor am I allowed to bathe or shower until the monitor comes off Friday morning. I don’t see this as an inconvenience, though my family and coworkers might by week’s end. And then, in a week or two, I should know whether I’m going to live, or whether I should start making arrangements with the funeral home.
I sure hope it turns out OK. Then I can turn my attention to that weird rash that’s cropped up on the back of my legs.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Twinkle, Twinkle
Winter doesn’t offer many consolations. It gets dark before dinnertime. The landscape is brown and bare and the trees, which only yesterday blazed with fiery reds and brilliant yellows, stand skeletal against the gunmetal sky. During the worst of it the cold and snow drive us indoors and underneath the covers, bury us in heavy clothes and force us to rush from shelter to shelter, head bent against the wind. Even the streetlamps and storefronts festooned with decorations do little to buoy the spirit, especially when the holidays have come and gone and we realize that we still have three more months until spring.
On the other hand, there is this: winter offers some of year’s most magnificent starscapes. And beginning tonight, skywatchers are in for a special treat. The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to sprinkle the night skies with pixie dust over the next few days. Although most of the tiny meteors (actually dusty debris from the comet Tempel-Tuttle) are no bigger than a grain of sand, they leave long, fiery streamers of light as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
If you have some time, take a stroll outside these next few nights and spend a little while watching the heavens for these shooting stars. If you have kids, by all means, bring them, too. So what if you have to bundle up a bit? Make some decaf coffee and some hot chocolate for the kids. Sit on a couple lawn chairs and wrap yourselves up in a blanket. Then watch the fireworks begin. Trust me, it’s magical.
If I can’t convince you, maybe the great poet Stanley Kunitz can with his fabulous poem, “Halley’s Comet.”
----
Halley’s Comet
Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
On the other hand, there is this: winter offers some of year’s most magnificent starscapes. And beginning tonight, skywatchers are in for a special treat. The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to sprinkle the night skies with pixie dust over the next few days. Although most of the tiny meteors (actually dusty debris from the comet Tempel-Tuttle) are no bigger than a grain of sand, they leave long, fiery streamers of light as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
If you have some time, take a stroll outside these next few nights and spend a little while watching the heavens for these shooting stars. If you have kids, by all means, bring them, too. So what if you have to bundle up a bit? Make some decaf coffee and some hot chocolate for the kids. Sit on a couple lawn chairs and wrap yourselves up in a blanket. Then watch the fireworks begin. Trust me, it’s magical.
If I can’t convince you, maybe the great poet Stanley Kunitz can with his fabulous poem, “Halley’s Comet.”
----
Halley’s Comet
Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
Will's Story
Today, it turns out, is national Prematurity Awareness Day. It also happens to be the UN International Day for Tolerance, Admission Day in Oklahoma (after a few minutes of Googling I gave up on trying to figure out what that one is about) and in Estonia the locals are celebrating their Day of National Rebirth. But those are for another day and another blogger to ponder.
Prematurity is rarely a good thing. There is premature baldness. Premature graying for those who manage to keep their hair. And in the boudoir too many premature performances can lead to the early demise of a relationship.
Today’s national awareness day, however, is about the birth of babies before they are due. According to the March of Dimes, which began the campaign last year, one in eight babies born in the United States each day arrives too soon – sometimes way, way too soon.
Such is the case with my friends Mary and John. Their baby was due in February 2005. But after hearing that President Bush was planning another round of tax cuts for the middle class, Will decided he wanted in on the deal and came into the world on Oct. 26, at the not-quite-ripe age of 24 weeks. He weighed less than a pound when he was delivered and measured just over 10 inches long.
It is difficult to imagine a human being that small outside of the womb. One incredible photograph taken by John shows Will’s footprint alongside a quarter. The quarter is only slightly smaller than the foot. To put things in even greater perspective, a website about the developmental stages of the fetus says that at 24 weeks a baby’s eyes have just fully developed, it can demonstrate both hand and startle reflexes, it is beginning to form footprints and fingerprints and it is forming alveoli in the lungs. It still has to look forward to controlling some body functions and developing eyelids that open and close (26 to 28 weeks) and rhythmic breathing and partial control of body temperature (30 to 32 weeks).
In other words, John, Mary and Will have a long road ahead of them. But I’m hopeful. Will couldn’t have asked for better parents. They are salt of the earth kind of people: kind-hearted, bright, funny, generous to a fault. They give Midwesterners a good name. And they’ve been blessed with a wonderful family and lots of friends who care a great deal about them. A number of these friends spent a recent Saturday morning raking the autumn leaves from their yard. Others have been stocking their freezer with enough home-cooked meals to last them until Will finishes graduate school. As for the hospital where Will is going to spend Thanksgiving, and Christmas and New Year’s Day and possibly next Ground Hog Day and Valentines Day? It’s got one of the country’s premiere premature infant units and some of the world’s top doctors.
So while the Estonians get mad drunk on grog and dance their crazy Estonian dances in celebration of National Rebirth Day, Mary and John will be spending today beside Will’s hospital bassinette, watching his tiny inhalations and exhalations, the flicker of eyes beneath paper-thin eyelids, and trying their best to ignore the beeps and hum of the machinery in the background and the tubes snaking to and from Will’s delicate body. That’s how they’ll spend the next day, too. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until the day comes, at long last, when they can finally bring Will home and celebrate a kind of rebirth, too, when Will sheds the label of premature infant and simply becomes John and Mary’s son.
John has started his own blog about Will, and I don’t think they’d mind if I shared it here: www.willkenyon.blogspot.com/ John’s an incredible writer, and his updates on Will’s progress make for some gripping reading.
And if you’re interested in learning more about premature babies, the March of Dimes website is a great starting point: http://marchofdimes.com/prematurity/prematurity.asp/ In addition to information about Prematurity Awareness Day, the organization has created a way to donate to the cause through a “bandingtogether” campaign.
Prematurity is rarely a good thing. There is premature baldness. Premature graying for those who manage to keep their hair. And in the boudoir too many premature performances can lead to the early demise of a relationship.
Today’s national awareness day, however, is about the birth of babies before they are due. According to the March of Dimes, which began the campaign last year, one in eight babies born in the United States each day arrives too soon – sometimes way, way too soon.
Such is the case with my friends Mary and John. Their baby was due in February 2005. But after hearing that President Bush was planning another round of tax cuts for the middle class, Will decided he wanted in on the deal and came into the world on Oct. 26, at the not-quite-ripe age of 24 weeks. He weighed less than a pound when he was delivered and measured just over 10 inches long.
It is difficult to imagine a human being that small outside of the womb. One incredible photograph taken by John shows Will’s footprint alongside a quarter. The quarter is only slightly smaller than the foot. To put things in even greater perspective, a website about the developmental stages of the fetus says that at 24 weeks a baby’s eyes have just fully developed, it can demonstrate both hand and startle reflexes, it is beginning to form footprints and fingerprints and it is forming alveoli in the lungs. It still has to look forward to controlling some body functions and developing eyelids that open and close (26 to 28 weeks) and rhythmic breathing and partial control of body temperature (30 to 32 weeks).
In other words, John, Mary and Will have a long road ahead of them. But I’m hopeful. Will couldn’t have asked for better parents. They are salt of the earth kind of people: kind-hearted, bright, funny, generous to a fault. They give Midwesterners a good name. And they’ve been blessed with a wonderful family and lots of friends who care a great deal about them. A number of these friends spent a recent Saturday morning raking the autumn leaves from their yard. Others have been stocking their freezer with enough home-cooked meals to last them until Will finishes graduate school. As for the hospital where Will is going to spend Thanksgiving, and Christmas and New Year’s Day and possibly next Ground Hog Day and Valentines Day? It’s got one of the country’s premiere premature infant units and some of the world’s top doctors.
So while the Estonians get mad drunk on grog and dance their crazy Estonian dances in celebration of National Rebirth Day, Mary and John will be spending today beside Will’s hospital bassinette, watching his tiny inhalations and exhalations, the flicker of eyes beneath paper-thin eyelids, and trying their best to ignore the beeps and hum of the machinery in the background and the tubes snaking to and from Will’s delicate body. That’s how they’ll spend the next day, too. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until the day comes, at long last, when they can finally bring Will home and celebrate a kind of rebirth, too, when Will sheds the label of premature infant and simply becomes John and Mary’s son.
John has started his own blog about Will, and I don’t think they’d mind if I shared it here: www.willkenyon.blogspot.com/ John’s an incredible writer, and his updates on Will’s progress make for some gripping reading.
And if you’re interested in learning more about premature babies, the March of Dimes website is a great starting point: http://marchofdimes.com/prematurity/prematurity.asp/ In addition to information about Prematurity Awareness Day, the organization has created a way to donate to the cause through a “bandingtogether” campaign.
Monday, November 15, 2004
A Proposal
In the interest of keeping the ball rolling on this blog I may occasionally pull something out of my Trunk Of Unfinished Things -- random thoughts, writings, etc. -- and post it here in the light of day. Today is one such day.
I actually wrote the following essay over a year ago, then recently brushed it up before submitting it to a local radio program that was looking for things to read on a weekend talk/arts program. In the end they said thanks but no thanks (though they encouraged me to send a few more poems, some of which may appear here at a later date). Probably it was just too sentimental. But I don't apologize for that. I come from a long line of weepy Italian men, and the older I get the more I appreciate that side of me -- the side that can be laid low simply by one of my girl's smiles or surprise hugs (the kind where they put you in an armlock and try to wrest your head from your neck).
Hope you enjoy it.
______________
My two daughters and I were at the breakfast table one morning eating, appropriately it now seems, Life cereal when my then-three-year-old, Abigail, popped the question.
"Daddy, when I older can I marry you?" Big blue eyes. Skim milk dribbling down her chin. How could I say no?
"That's very sweet, honey, " I said, "but actually I'm already married to mommy."
Abby's sister, Emma, who was six at the time, offered an elegant solution to this dilemma.
"Just tell mommy, 'Sweetie, I love you very much, but you are too old for me.'"
This did not seem prudent, especially since I'm six years older than Melinda. If anyone's owed a newer model, it's my wife.
I tried to let my daughters down gently.
"I'm flattered, really, but I'm sure both of you will find very nice people to marry when you're older." I coughed. "Much, much older."
My relationship with my daughters seems to be entering a new territory, one I'm not entirely ready to explore. Leading the way is Emma, who in the past year has asked questions – or made observations – about kissing, death, how babies get in a mommy's tummy, lipstick, boyfriends, God, parental sleeping arrangements, Britney Spears, hair dye, and same-sex couple hood.
Mind you, her questions are always G-rated, the kind of things you would expect from someone who still sleeps with a special blanky and considers Kraft macaroni and cheese (the 59-cents-a-box kind, with the packet of orange powder) haute cuisine. Still, it's clear the world is starting to open up for her, from the cozy, familiar microcosm of her yellow-painted bedroom with its dolls and its butterfly-covered comforter and parents who have an answer for everything, to a place colored in myriad shades of gray. A world that's more complex, and therefore more alluring, but also one that is less certain.
It’s the normal course of growing up, I know. Keeping her away from her personal Tree of Knowledge would do her more harm than good in the end. Also, it would be impossible. Just like learning to cross the street safely, or how to dial 911, she needs to understand that life is uncertain and sometimes dangerous if she’s to survive and thrive in this world. So when she starts pushing against the walls of her adolescent world, I try to let in the light and darkness she’s after in small and equal measures. Yes, honey, sometimes pets die, but their memories live on with us always. Yes, some people do hurt other people, but there are many, many others who feed the hungry and care for the sick and hold the lonely in their arms. How you treat people is far more important than how pretty you are.
When Emma was born, a friend told us that parents are given an invisible apron with eighteen strings our children can cling to as they grow up, and that each year we must be willing to cut off one of those strings so that when our daughter becomes an adult she’ll be her own person. It’s a pleasant enough image, even if my wearing an apron is not. But to be honest with you, I’ve been cheating a little since my girls were born. After clipping each string, instead of throwing it away, I’ve been secretly tying it to one of the remaining strings, giving my daughters the distance they need while trying to strengthen the ties that still bind us.
As for that last string? Well, when the time comes, I’m guessing I might just conveniently lose the scissors.
I actually wrote the following essay over a year ago, then recently brushed it up before submitting it to a local radio program that was looking for things to read on a weekend talk/arts program. In the end they said thanks but no thanks (though they encouraged me to send a few more poems, some of which may appear here at a later date). Probably it was just too sentimental. But I don't apologize for that. I come from a long line of weepy Italian men, and the older I get the more I appreciate that side of me -- the side that can be laid low simply by one of my girl's smiles or surprise hugs (the kind where they put you in an armlock and try to wrest your head from your neck).
Hope you enjoy it.
______________
My two daughters and I were at the breakfast table one morning eating, appropriately it now seems, Life cereal when my then-three-year-old, Abigail, popped the question.
"Daddy, when I older can I marry you?" Big blue eyes. Skim milk dribbling down her chin. How could I say no?
"That's very sweet, honey, " I said, "but actually I'm already married to mommy."
Abby's sister, Emma, who was six at the time, offered an elegant solution to this dilemma.
"Just tell mommy, 'Sweetie, I love you very much, but you are too old for me.'"
This did not seem prudent, especially since I'm six years older than Melinda. If anyone's owed a newer model, it's my wife.
I tried to let my daughters down gently.
"I'm flattered, really, but I'm sure both of you will find very nice people to marry when you're older." I coughed. "Much, much older."
My relationship with my daughters seems to be entering a new territory, one I'm not entirely ready to explore. Leading the way is Emma, who in the past year has asked questions – or made observations – about kissing, death, how babies get in a mommy's tummy, lipstick, boyfriends, God, parental sleeping arrangements, Britney Spears, hair dye, and same-sex couple hood.
Mind you, her questions are always G-rated, the kind of things you would expect from someone who still sleeps with a special blanky and considers Kraft macaroni and cheese (the 59-cents-a-box kind, with the packet of orange powder) haute cuisine. Still, it's clear the world is starting to open up for her, from the cozy, familiar microcosm of her yellow-painted bedroom with its dolls and its butterfly-covered comforter and parents who have an answer for everything, to a place colored in myriad shades of gray. A world that's more complex, and therefore more alluring, but also one that is less certain.
It’s the normal course of growing up, I know. Keeping her away from her personal Tree of Knowledge would do her more harm than good in the end. Also, it would be impossible. Just like learning to cross the street safely, or how to dial 911, she needs to understand that life is uncertain and sometimes dangerous if she’s to survive and thrive in this world. So when she starts pushing against the walls of her adolescent world, I try to let in the light and darkness she’s after in small and equal measures. Yes, honey, sometimes pets die, but their memories live on with us always. Yes, some people do hurt other people, but there are many, many others who feed the hungry and care for the sick and hold the lonely in their arms. How you treat people is far more important than how pretty you are.
When Emma was born, a friend told us that parents are given an invisible apron with eighteen strings our children can cling to as they grow up, and that each year we must be willing to cut off one of those strings so that when our daughter becomes an adult she’ll be her own person. It’s a pleasant enough image, even if my wearing an apron is not. But to be honest with you, I’ve been cheating a little since my girls were born. After clipping each string, instead of throwing it away, I’ve been secretly tying it to one of the remaining strings, giving my daughters the distance they need while trying to strengthen the ties that still bind us.
As for that last string? Well, when the time comes, I’m guessing I might just conveniently lose the scissors.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
V-Day
Last night two of my buddies and I went out for a night of drunken debauchery. Actually, since we all had to get permission from our wives to leave the house for a night, and because we are all parents of small children who think daybreak is a reasonable time to get out of bed, there wasn't much debauchery. Unless you count my running a few yellow lights over the course of the evening. We did, however, do some drinking, starting with some imported brews at one eatery (Blaze, pining for his college days, ordered a Schlitz, “for old time’s sake”), followed by a couple more beverages at a quaint tavern where each winter a Welsh transplant with a wonderful brogue and more than passing resemblance to Kris Kringle reads to the rapt audience Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Then we all settled in to a nice snifter each of B&B (Benedictine & Brandy, for the uninitiated), which glides down the throat like liquid fire and warms the stomach and cheers the heart until –- basking in the drink’s smooth afterglow -- you consider everyone in the bar to be your very best friend. It was so good in fact that we decided to pick up an entire bottle (retail $34 for a fifth -- and worth every cent) at the 24-hour grocer and take it to my secret He Man, Woman Haters Clubhouse (a.k.a. the home of my in-laws, who are wintering in Florida) for further imbibing and manly talk.
Unfortunately, the talk eventually turned to Cav’s recent vasectomy.
Now, I don’t consider myself to be an especially squeamish person. I was, for a while, a police reporter and saw (and smelled) a fair number of corpses, including one gentleman who tried to make a U-turn over an active railroad line with his semi trailer when a train came and jettisoned him from his cab onto the centerline of a highway about thirty feet away . But there are some subjects that just curdle my milk. Sharp objects near the nether regions is one of them. Cav’s vivid description of the procedure caused my arms and knees to draw up into the fetal position and I began mewling like a newborn kitten plucked from its mamma’s teat. It did not help that the last name of the doctor who performed the procedure was also Sharp. I jest you not. Or that every last person involved in the procedure (Cav excepting) was a woman, from pre-op to post-op.
As Cav tells it, he was told to put on one of those drafty hospital gowns and handed off, so to speak, to a nurse who expertly shaved him with a straight blade. (Is there any way other than “expertly” that one might wield a straight blade without doing irreversible damage?) Freshly shorn, Cav was laid out on the operating table and a sheet was drawn across his midsection so he couldn’t see what was going on. Cav, a bright and curious guy, told the doctor he wanted to watch the procedure. But the doctor discouraged it. “Trust me,” she told him. “Once we begin cauterizing and you can smell your own flesh burning you’ll wish you’d kept the curtain up.”
Then the visitors began to arrive.
The local hospital where Cav did the deed is a teaching hospital. So when the doctor asked if he minded having a few med students observe his vasectomy, Cav – ever accommodating – said bring ‘em on. So in they came. First one. Then three. Then four more. In the end, a dozen bright eyed, freshly scrubbed med students gathered around the maypole to see Cav’s manhood get snipped. A couple of them even peeked around the Curtain Of Unknowing to introduce themselves. And Cav, with his business all hanging out, said howdy right back because, frankly Cav’s a decent guy and because just about that time the Valium had begun flowing through his veins like milk and honey in the desert. Nor, apparently, was Cav the only person in the room under heavy medication. When one of the med students introduced herself, Cav asked if this was her first vasectomy. She replied, "Yes, yours?"
Me? I would have called off the operation right then and there.
Now, normally a vasectomy only takes about five minutes. But because Cav was so gracious about sharing his experience with others, the doctor made sure each of the students saw and understood every step of the procedure, holding up this bit of flotsam, shoving aside that bit of jetsam until she moved in – a good twenty minutes later -- for the coup de grace. But by then the drugs had begun to wear off and Cav levitated from the operating table, shouting, “What the hell was that? What the HELL was that?” The doctor muttered her apologies, poked him a few times down yonder with a syringe of dope (See? I’m not the only one in the fetal position here, am I?) and quickly brought the surgery to a close. A short while later, Cav was good as gold, back in his street clothes (and wearing a jock strap stuffed with a two-pound bag of frozen peas) and doing the Vasectomy Shuffle down the hallway.
It took me a few minutes to recover from Cav’s story. But with the help of a couple more B&Bs I was able to move out of the fetal position. I even stopped mewling after a while. And when Blaze vomited into my mother-in-law’s kitchen sink? It didn’t affect me one bit.
Unfortunately, the talk eventually turned to Cav’s recent vasectomy.
Now, I don’t consider myself to be an especially squeamish person. I was, for a while, a police reporter and saw (and smelled) a fair number of corpses, including one gentleman who tried to make a U-turn over an active railroad line with his semi trailer when a train came and jettisoned him from his cab onto the centerline of a highway about thirty feet away . But there are some subjects that just curdle my milk. Sharp objects near the nether regions is one of them. Cav’s vivid description of the procedure caused my arms and knees to draw up into the fetal position and I began mewling like a newborn kitten plucked from its mamma’s teat. It did not help that the last name of the doctor who performed the procedure was also Sharp. I jest you not. Or that every last person involved in the procedure (Cav excepting) was a woman, from pre-op to post-op.
As Cav tells it, he was told to put on one of those drafty hospital gowns and handed off, so to speak, to a nurse who expertly shaved him with a straight blade. (Is there any way other than “expertly” that one might wield a straight blade without doing irreversible damage?) Freshly shorn, Cav was laid out on the operating table and a sheet was drawn across his midsection so he couldn’t see what was going on. Cav, a bright and curious guy, told the doctor he wanted to watch the procedure. But the doctor discouraged it. “Trust me,” she told him. “Once we begin cauterizing and you can smell your own flesh burning you’ll wish you’d kept the curtain up.”
Then the visitors began to arrive.
The local hospital where Cav did the deed is a teaching hospital. So when the doctor asked if he minded having a few med students observe his vasectomy, Cav – ever accommodating – said bring ‘em on. So in they came. First one. Then three. Then four more. In the end, a dozen bright eyed, freshly scrubbed med students gathered around the maypole to see Cav’s manhood get snipped. A couple of them even peeked around the Curtain Of Unknowing to introduce themselves. And Cav, with his business all hanging out, said howdy right back because, frankly Cav’s a decent guy and because just about that time the Valium had begun flowing through his veins like milk and honey in the desert. Nor, apparently, was Cav the only person in the room under heavy medication. When one of the med students introduced herself, Cav asked if this was her first vasectomy. She replied, "Yes, yours?"
Me? I would have called off the operation right then and there.
Now, normally a vasectomy only takes about five minutes. But because Cav was so gracious about sharing his experience with others, the doctor made sure each of the students saw and understood every step of the procedure, holding up this bit of flotsam, shoving aside that bit of jetsam until she moved in – a good twenty minutes later -- for the coup de grace. But by then the drugs had begun to wear off and Cav levitated from the operating table, shouting, “What the hell was that? What the HELL was that?” The doctor muttered her apologies, poked him a few times down yonder with a syringe of dope (See? I’m not the only one in the fetal position here, am I?) and quickly brought the surgery to a close. A short while later, Cav was good as gold, back in his street clothes (and wearing a jock strap stuffed with a two-pound bag of frozen peas) and doing the Vasectomy Shuffle down the hallway.
It took me a few minutes to recover from Cav’s story. But with the help of a couple more B&Bs I was able to move out of the fetal position. I even stopped mewling after a while. And when Blaze vomited into my mother-in-law’s kitchen sink? It didn’t affect me one bit.
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