White knuckle weekend

Daredevil is one of those terms, like mean or cheap, that really doesn't mean much when it is used to describe someone. Of course it is a relative term as well; what I consider life threatening may just be another day at the office for some. And for those who think that reckless abandon is a trait they will possess all of their lives, let me clear that up now, advanced age will take a generous portion of that away! Man that hurt, and man I’m going to miss a week of work mean two completely different things!

Growing up as the middle son of three boys certainly had its challenges and I wonder if this is what brought out the risk taker in me. Looking back I realize that I usually felt like I HAD to outperform the younger brother (this just seemed like simple physics) and the older one was there to set a higher bar to reach for. Sounds like an exhausting childhood (though primarily self-imposed) even to me! But I explain this only as an attempt to justify some of the crazy and dangerous things I've done in the past.

Perhaps trying to ride an unbroken horse is one of the stupidest things I’ve attempted, but sometimes I wonder if surviving this with only a concussion and a Baltimore Colts team logo stamped on my chest did more harm than good. Nothing speeds up the learning curve like a permanent limp. And diving in the water from a 100’ cliff? I guess this answers the old question of “would you jump off a bridge just because someone else did?” We know now that the answer is often yes.

I’m not sure why these two episodes from 30 years ago stand out so clearly to me now because, trust me, there were countless others. Running from a cab driver in a city 500 miles from home that would probably have killed me for the $62 flashing on his meter was not very smart, but hiding under a train car for over an hour so that he wouldn't find me is probably even dumber! But there was no permanent damage from this event and I know now that the only reason I did this was for the thrill…and because the guy sitting beside me yelled “Run” when the cab stopped. There’s that bridge again.

But the older I get the less I enjoy the palpitations these actions invoke; actually I think they call it high blood pressure at my current age and it’s probably more dangerous than before! Nothing speeds up the learning curve like dropping dead after a prank! Let’s just say that today I go out of my way to avoid these scenarios. But try as I may, sometimes they sneak up on me and rope me in before I realize what happened. Last weekend was a good example. Me, my wife, daughter and oblivious dog loaded up for a 10 mile trip to my parents’ house. We were almost out of the driveway when my 15 year old daughter asked “Isn’t this one of those times when I should be driving?” Did my dog just yell run? If you've never seen a man clutching a white knuckled dog you don’t know what you’re missing!

My 911

Every anniversary of the September 11 2001 terrorist attack in New York seems more powerful than the previous one. The stories told by survivors, witnesses and responders are often almost too sad to watch. If you send a loved one to combat you always fear that late night phone call or early morning knock on the door, but when the toughest war you face is for the parking spot closest to the door, the thought of your loved ones not returning home rarely crosses your mind. 911 began as just another average day.

I thought of telling my story of that day in 2001, and while it is an ironic one, compared to the losses suffered by others it is a trivial one. I decided to wait a few days so as not to minimize the genuine suffering of others. But I will say that I learned a big lesson that day.

We had a small television in our dining room at the time and we often watched the evening news during our evening meal. This was certainly an exceptional news day, and while this early in the game there was nothing really new about the incident to offer, we watched an endless loop of the two airplanes crashing in to the twin towers. Our attempts to explain what was happening to a four year old were tough ones and honestly just trying not to convey fear and hysteria was our goal as parents.

I though we both had been doing a pretty good job of down-playing the events to my daughter, when out of a blue and cloudless sky, lightning struck the ground a few feet from our home. I couldn’t say exactly what my daughter thought about this explosion, but my wife and I were pretty sure we had just been bombed! What could we think? It was like someone jumping out of closet when you returned home from a horror movie!

I won’t go in to great detail about the damage that lightning strike did to my home or the money it cost to repair this damage; it really does seem trivial after all this time especially when so many others lost so much more. This also has nothing to do with the lesson I learned that day anyway.

That fatal morning I learned that I would spend the rest of my life with my heart outside of my body. I’m not an uncaring person, but as I watched the second airplane crash in to that building, thousands of miles from my home, all I could think of was my heart. After thirty five years of being trapped inside my body, my new heart now had a short ponytail and it was wearing a yellow dress. I had just left it beating unprotected twenty miles away in a classroom with nineteen other innocent and oblivious Pre-K kids. That valuable muscle I had protected for so long now belonged to someone else.

Clinical apathy

It seems like now days you can hardly have a decent conversation with anyone without politics sneaking in and taking over. Personally I don’t remember an election as polarized and charged as this one, but perhaps my brain is just protecting me from a previous bad experience. It’s kind of like how good that old girlfriend begins to look after the restraining order lapses.

But this conversation didn’t really make me mad as much as it scared me. Of course I have my own ideas about the candidates, and while I may not post them on Twitter or Facebook, if you want to discuss them face to face I will be more than happy to engage you. Facebook is the bumper sticker of the new millennium…I didn’t buy in to the real bumper stickers of the old millennium!

What scared me most about this conversation was that it was based on a concept that, try as I may, I just don’t understand. It is the concept of apathy. “I don’t like or trust either candidate so I will vote for neither. I don’t want to give either one of those SOBs my vote. I’m writing in_______ to show the world what I really think”. Sounds like we’re talking about a murder trial!

Like it or not one of these candidates will win. I think you have to learn to treat these elections as if they were a civil trial and not a criminal one. In a criminal trial you decide to convict when you determine guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” as opposed to civil trial where guilt is determined by “a preponderance of the evidence”. If I don’t like every single trait that my spouse or close family members possess, how can I expect to do so with a political candidate? My decision will have to be a weighted one.

We are all very different people is this great big country and I have to admit that there are probably those that genuinely don’t care which party or candidate takes over in November. But I do think this number is lower than you might believe. I truly believe that if most voters, that vow and declare to be possessed with a case of genuine apathy, were to make a list of likes and dislikes; wants and exclusions; beliefs and disbeliefs; they would discover that they could easily chose one over another. But I guess this is harder than doing nothing!

If you complete the list and it turns out that you have viable, documented case of clinical apathy…stay home, I’ll take your parking spot. But if you decide that your list tips the scales in either direction, deciding not to vote is no different than voting for the one you don’t like!

Day one

Last week was one of those rare times when my wife and I both were able to go with my daughter for her quarterly visit to her diabetes doctor. Usually only one of us goes and it’s often a struggle remembering and relating exactly what the doctor had to say, or better yet what my daughter actually told him! But as luck would have it a phone call kept me sidelined in the waiting room after all; at least we could discuss the visit while it was still fresh on her mind. Annual blood work would accompany this visit as well, so I was just glad to be there anyway.

As I sat in the waiting room I couldn’t help but think about just how far we’ve come since her initial diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes almost five years ago. To say we’ve come instead of she’s come may sound strange to some, but any parent of a child with a lifelong and incurable disease will understand. When she was first diagnosed at 10 years of age I could hardly bear to let her out of my sight. When she went back to school I met her in the nurse’s office every day before lunch to help her test and give her her shot. I did this for almost six months. She didn’t need me as much as I needed to be there. If she had to do this, the least I could do was be there.

Of course my daughter is the one with the real job. She has to constantly test her blood sugar, count (and guess) carbs and take injections of insulin seven days a week, 365 days a year, for the rest of her life. We had to wait a year after her diagnosis before she got an insulin pump; it is important that diabetics know how to take care of themselves the “old fashioned way” before they are allowed this luxury. It’s akin to survival training. But really all the pump does is deliver the insulin without having to take a shot. She still has to draw blood, test her blood sugar and interpret the results. The pump is connected by a slender IV line to a short needle that stays under her skin for 3-4 days before it must be changed. This is a fragile, expensive, battery powered device that she depends on for survival.

But not only has she survived, she has thrived. She is a virtual dictionary of carbohydrate numbers and a master manipulator of the pump itself. She does whatever she wants to whenever she feels like it. She’s been away to camps and vacationed at the beach with friends; she is by all appearances a normal teenager. Do I still worry about her when she is out of my sight? Do I worry as I watch her eat something that I know she probably should not? Do I look her in the eyes and try to guess her blood sugar? Well, of course, and I probably always will. But I keep these things to myself; she is first and foremost a teenager. Knowing how far she has come in these five long years makes me swell with pride as I write this now!

 I decided that I had been sitting in the waiting room for far too long when the door to the patient rooms opened. I placed the magazine back on the table, but before I could stand and hold the door for my wife and daughter, I realized that it was not them after all. Standing in their place was a little girl; pig tails and a dress, every bit of four years old. Around her neck was the strap of a pink camouflage canvas lunch box that I knew all too well. It contained the “starter kit” of test meter, syringes and a bottle of insulin given as a sample by the doctor’s office and drug companies.

The parents quickly caught up with the little girl as they crossed the room and headed for the front door. But before they could exit the building her father gave me a quick glance that erased the comfort I had begun to feel over the last five years. Day one for another family.

Feats of thinking

The longer I live the more I am amazed by the power of the human brain. I could say that I’m amazed with humans in general, but that would be kind of like blaming the bullet for a shooting. The brain is the motor and hard drive (I love the way computer analogies have one-upped sports analogies); without it we are simply a shell. An easily damaged soft case.

I love reading stories about famous brains and feats of thinking. I find it funny that we are supposed to be shocked when we find out that some amazing cognitive discovery is made by a teenager or “just a plain, non-assuming resident of rural Texas”. You would think a midget had just dunked a ten foot basketball goal! Feats of strength are usually visible from the outside, but what we are capable of understanding is as obscure and uncharted as the bottom of the Cayman Trench!

But this powerful motor comes with no manual or operating instructions. Most of what we understand is taken in through our windows to the outside world; eyes, ears, nose, mouth and the nervous system. Our programming begins informally while we are still babies and escalates to regimented levels deemed necessary to “graduate”. Once we reach a recognized level, we are deemed trained, programmed, and ready to stand alone as a fully functioning unit. We are fully cooked, ready for show, on line and responsible for our actions.

Surviving this haze of programming has a different effect, and consequent outcome, on each individual brain. I don’t want to belittle my base of both formal and informal knowledge, for without it I would have set myself on fire or put my eye out long ago. But most of the real knowledge and free thought that I hold dear has come (and is still coming) at a later age. Some of it is rooted in a base of trial and error, both experienced and witnessed, but most of it is comes from a grading system of importance. It is a process of weighing information; what to leave in and what to leave out. This is a tough program that to date has many students and no graduates.

I climbed out of bed this morning fully rested from a great night’s sleep! Just another mid-week, typical work and school day. I sipped my coffee, checked my email, watched the news and walked the dog exactly as I have done for many years; I did say typical, right? But driving home after dropping my daughter off at school a good ten minutes late, I realized she left her water and lunch in the car. It was on top of the I-Pod she was charging to take to school! I guess I’m just lucky we have anything at all since I forgot to lock the house when we left! The brain is an amazing thing!

A terrible day for allergies

I read a series of posts on Facebook this week written by a mother who had just dropped her twin daughters off at Pre-K. The beginning of what now adds up to fourteen years of lower education. As luck would have it one was fine with the separation and the other was not; maybe a better term would be not at all. I have been down this road with a single child, but I can only imagine the stress of doing it with a double!

This really wasn’t a difficult transition for my daughter. She went right in and quickly forgot about me; I actually had to go find her to tell her I was leaving. She had already spent a little time in both a two year and three year old program at a local church, so she was kind of a school veteran by the time she was old enough to attend public Pre-K.

But for daddy it was very different. A full five day-8 to 3 work week! What a schedule for a four year old. Hell I didn’t work that much! I remember sitting in the crowded parking lot after dropping her off that first day and thinking, “maybe I should just wait a few minutes. Surely she will realize I’m gone and want me to take her home”. But the school didn’t call and after my wife assured me for the hundredth time that she would be fine, we headed home. This type of situation is terrible for my allergies, so instead of constantly wiping my eyes while driving and risking her safety…I let my wife pilot us back to the house.

Well of course she did fine. The teacher told us that she was “the class’s best napper” so I knew it had to be wearing her down; but she never complained. She was in bed by 9:00 and back up at 7:00 every day of the week; a bundle of happiness and energy that infected the entire household; a gift.

We’ve had quite a few more first days since this one, but they all have a similar feel. I no longer sit in the parking lot and wait for her to have a change of heart, although I do mention most every day that if she needs me all she has to do is…and I’ll be right…She smiles and waves me off now exactly as she did eleven years ago. Girls are so tough!

But I have to say that I’ve gotten much better at handling this first day. I now let my wife go on to work and I take our daughter alone. I drive her to school most days anyway, so I think the quicker we settle in to our typical routine the better off we will all be. We get back on the horse. It is probably for the best that I do this alone, I don’t want to endanger my wife while I’m driving on such a terrible day for allergies!

History lost?

I remember reading an article a while back that brought up a few negative points about cremation. Nothing bad about the process itself, it was more along the lines of the disappearing history we will face with fewer fields of headstones to visit as we research our family roots. History lost? I have to admit that my initial reaction was one of agreeing with this premise, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like driving to Walmart to check prices; it’s just not something we physically do much anymore.

I do love walking through an old cemetery though. There is something about seeing 1789 chiseled in stone that quite frankly makes me feel weird. I can visit an antique shop and view tools and furniture items claiming to be from similar times, and while I appreciate the effort from a pre-power tool perspective, it just doesn’t give me that same connected feeling. I know that what lies below the stone in a cemetery is nothing more than a vehicle that the driver has long since abandoned, but reading the beginning and ending dates and some small passage that someone deemed important enough to carve in stone is both touching and powerful.

 Unfortunately no one will have an “ah ha” moment with my headstone; there won’t be one. Unless something changes drastically in the next few years, I don’t think the tour bus industry will lose any revenue by the absence of a grave site for me anyway, but that’s another story.

My brother was cremated and I plan to have the same thing done with my remains.  Honestly that word, remains, is what made this decision easy for me. I just can’t seem to find a good reason for my body to remain. Having a place to visit my memory or my essence (if you so desire) will be as simple as visiting the location where my ashes were scattered, or maybe just some place I loved. If you have no experience with this scenario, let me assure you that it works about as well as any. All you really want is to remember.

This past weekend I visited the location my family chose to scatter the ashes of my little brother; the Jekyll Island Pier. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and the pier was crowded with people enjoying the location much the same way three little long-haired boys did many years ago. To leave his remains among excitement, salt water, fishing equipment, vacationers and the mystery of the swift murky ocean water was an easy decision for a grieving family; it was a location that described him perfectly.

We had a good visit that day. We did fish a little, but I think we all three just stood there and thought about him for a while; you could say we visited and paid our respects. I remember worrying that having a small ceremony and placing his ashes here would stigmatize the location for me. I feared that I would not want to visit and that when I did so I would lapse back in to the fresh sadness I felt when he died. I have to say that I was wrong on both counts. I feel like I belong there; I have a right to be there. I feel like an insider that paid for his partial ownership with nothing less than the most valuable item he had.  This magical place now belongs to us.....all!