Fine Day For a Reunion

See, winter? This is why I hate you. The darkness, the cold, the snow, the suckfest that is the holidays, the ear surgeries, the massive heating bills, the shitty television programming (hey, HBO. What the FUCK!?) -- It's obvious that you take great pleasure in pissing me off. It's bad enough I have to wear socks during you, but now, turning a deaf ear to the camel's creaking back, you've decided to throw one more straw on the pile: My official invitation to the John F. Kennedy High School Class of 1980 30-Year Reunion. That's right, 30 years. As in, if I really concentrate I bet I can actually feel my prostate getting bigger. As in, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well. I forgot to shave my ear canals this morning." As in, I'm going to the grocery store in my bathrobe, slippers and black socks.
30. Years. We're as doomed as doomed can be, I must say.
In easier days I might be aglow with thoughts of good times past. I mean high school wasn't all angsty hell, was it? Maybe if the invitation had come during one of the other three seasons I might have even felt warmly optimistic, thankful for all the good things life has brought my way. Long, strange trip and all that. But in winter, when the foul stench of death is all around, nostalgia -- especially that of the youth lost variety -- just sucks balls.
So I get the e-mail telling me to check out the Web site, which I do. And there on the home page, in front of god and everybody, is a tab labeled "Photo Gallery." I can't resist the urge to peek in. Mistake. Immediately I'm swept back to a time that I didn't really care to revisit. A time that, if one could represent it graphically, I imagine would look like a blow-dried wave of feathered hair. Concert t-shirts and jeans. Converse All-Stars. Letter jackets and gaudy-by-any-standard class rings. So much hornyness, so little time.
And the drugs, Martha. Oh, the drugs. Ours was either the luckiest or unluckiest generation in history, depending on your point of view. Ironically, I'm in the "unluckiest" camp since I feel like I missed so much life for my stonedness. In case you missed those halcyon days, let me paint a little picture for you (those who lived through it, back a brother up here): Even without the benefit of the internet, you could find drugs within 3 minutes. If it took more than 2 phone calls it was considered a drought. You never had to walk farther than 2 or 3 blocks to get what you needed. Weed was everywhere, as were hash, Thai stick, cocaine, crank, acid, mescaline, mushrooms, quaaludes, etc. And by god, I did them all. In fact, if getting stoned were an Olympic event, I'd probably have been on the Wheaties box. Here, now, sober as I am (and I am), I'm an underachiever. With 2 or 3 or 27 joints in me? Fuck, it was a wonder I remembered to breathe.
Still, I played music and sports and held a job and did the usual shit high school kids do (except have sex -- another reason I count those days as unlucky). And I imagine I've grown up to be a semi-normal person. But I wasn't "in" back then (jury's still out about now, too) (shut up). I knew people who were, and their photos -- then and now -- stared back at me on this reunion site, making me feel ... Small. Awkward. Retroactively geeky. If you have siblings you'll know what I'm talking about. You understand what it's like to grow up with a shared rhythm, then find your own groove later in a life when, at best, family played a drastically reduced role. Away from them, you grow confident. You kill a few psychic demons. You mature. You can handle yourself in any situation. And then BAM! you're thrust back together by circumstance and are instantaneously reduced to that same old goofy kid once again. You become a magic eye poster for your soul. You know the real you is in there somewhere, but fuck if you can find it though all this damn scribble.
So the question now becomes to go or not to go. My then-girlfriend went to a different high school, so that eliminates some potential awkwardness. I wasn't exactly the catch you see before you now (I said shut up!), so the odds of having to endure drunken confessions of unrequited lust are fairly low. Most of the comments in the forums on the site are sufficiently lucid and uncreepy as to lead me to believe that most of these folks are either fairly normal or good at pretending. Their "now" photos make them appear non-threatening. At the very least I believe myself to be in good enough shape that I could outrun or overpower them if shit goes down. All these plus ... er, ... non-negative column line items against my insanely juvenile reticence to re-live that unsteady, awkward feeling -- all for the ante of a $70 ticket. How lofty my wager.
I've been mulling it over for a while now, listening to this song for inspiration. I'm leaning toward going just so I have another layer of reference with which to help Thomas and Ethan through their adolescence. It's either that or the three of us just get stoneder than a bejeesus.
What would you do? Why?

Fred Bailey: "So, you wanna dance?"
Girl: "In another life!"
Fred Bailey: "Yeah, I didn't either. I was just taking a poll."
-- From Valley Girl

Back in 2 and 2

The week after Virginia, Sandi went back to school. She now wakes up every morning to work a full-time job, then attends class Monday – Wednesday evenings until about 10:30, and on Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. She really likes it and is doing awesome so far (no surprise to anyone who knows her) and for my part, I watch the kids. So since Virginia, our lives have been work/school/sleep or work/kids/sleep, depending on which one of us you ask. You'd also get a different answer to "which of you is more tired?" depending on which one of us you asked (hint: it's me).
I also believe that we seriously underestimated the emotional drain Virginia would be on us all. A few days after the last post, exhaustion set in and we finally understood that we'd been running on adrenaline for a long time. So I apologize for the lack of posts lately. But every time I sat down to try to write, I had to step away to stop a fight, make dinner, help with homework (by the way, when the fuck did first graders get to the point of doing 1 – 3 hours of homework a night?) ... you know, all the stuff parents do. Oh, and to every single single mother who ever lived, RESPECT! Dudes, I'm part-time at this and I'm turning into that creepy, insane looking guy from the Aqualung album cover.
When I finally did get a few minutes to sit down and write, everything that came out just seemed trivial and verbose. How do you follow something as weighty as surgery unless it's with another surgery or a report on results? Anything I could think to offer would have been like following Haiti earthquake coverage with recipes. Suddenly my day-to-day observations seemed ridiculously quaint and totally uninteresting -- even to me. So rather than bore you all, I think I'll call it a mini-sabbatical -- just until we adjust to the new schedule or something interesting and relevant happens.
To that end, our new surgery is scheduled for March 4. We'll need to get a new CT scan by the end of February and send it to Dr. Brad so he can confirm that Ethan's infection is gone and we're declared "go" for surgery fun. Keeping our fingers crossed.
Speaking of crossed fingers, those who sent out the vibes for little Jalia last time? do me a favor and take March 4 off. Turns out she had an ear infection, too, and Dr. Brad was unable to complete her surgery. I'm starting to think it's you all. Maybe you don't have this "well wishes" thing down quite yet. Don't take it personally, lots of people confuse the word "well" with "infection." Here's a little test for you: tonight before bed, tell someone "sleep well" and if they wake up with an infection, you should definitely stop using the word all together. Either that or start charging for your regards much as a hitman would. I personally know quite a few people I'd like to see "well." But that's neither here nor there.
So I'll leave you with a song that Thomas learned in Y-Care and was kind enough to sing to me on the way home the other night:
Tarzan the monkey man
Swinging from a rubber band
'Snap' goes the rubber band
and Tarzan breaks his balls.
Think I'm starting to see why kids his age are being given so much freakin' homework.

"There is no harm in patience and no profit in lamentation." -- Abu Bakr

Death, Taxes and the Resiliency of Kids

Ethan awoke from his anesthesia Thursday morning at about 11:30. He had actually been out of surgery for quite a while, but because they were anticipating a much longer procedure, they totally dosed him for the long haul. And I mean DOSED him. Like Jack-Nicholson-post-lobotomy-in-Cuckoo's-Nest-looking dosed. In fact, with the dressing clumped on his ear and wrapped around his forehead, pushing his brow down, he looked like a cross between R. P. McMurphy and this thing from Star Wars. A lesser parent would have pointed and made fun of him. In fact, a lesser parent did. And I got some great photos of it, too. Daddy: 1, Future Career in Politics: 0.
Looking at that ragged little lump of pathos that was, just a few hours prior, a vibrant, rammy, Tasmanian devil of a child, I felt pretty sure he wouldn't be back to normal for a good couple of days. The nurses warned as much, saying that appetite and lucidity return when they damn well choose. Meanwhile there'd be the pain and the constant whining and the remind me why we had a second ones. To my (circle one: chagrin/surprise/dismay/amazement), zombie Ethan lasted only a few minutes. Not more than an hour after we were discharged he wanted to go into the pool. He wanted a cheeseburger. He wanted to go to Disneyland. Yeah, wrong trip, little man.
Absolved of the Friday follow-up appointment, we hit the road, aiming to beat a snowstorm that was expected to start that evening. Our fool-proof Magellan GPS mapped a route home that oddly was more than an hour longer than the trip down had taken. But who were we to question the satellite gods? And so we made our way toward Richmond (? Ha ha, Magellan. Very fucking funny. I hate you.). Not long out of the blocks Ethan made his first legitimate request: a milkshake. Not quite solid, not quite liquid, semi-comfort food. I love it. Let's go. We stopped at Dairy Queen for a milkshake and hit the road again. 15 minutes later we heard the rattle of a straw sucking vaguely creamy air, followed by Ethan's demand of another milkshake. 4 hours and 5 milkshakes later we pulled into a darkened office complex to pee in the parking lot. (These are the memories that time won't erase, kids.) There were a few nervous seconds when it appeared as though the asphalt pitching back toward E's feet might provide a nice comic distraction, but at the last second the flowing pee veered right and a crisis was averted. We pulled into our driveway around 11 p.m. and poured ourselves into bed, Sandi having wisely dressed the kids in their pajamas before we left. She's good.
Some time Friday afternoon we realized that Ethan had never complained of any pain at all. I stood looking at the bloody, puss-filled, mid-surgery ear canal photos Dr. Brad gave us, then looked at Ethan. Sir, you had a gigantic hole in the side of your head yesterday. Are you telling me you don't feel any pain at all? Apparently not.
Another 'apparently': Consuming 5 milkshakes in a single ride does not mean that you won't eat 4 waffles, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chicken nuggets and almost an entire bag of cheese popcorn the next day. Oh, Ethan's back all righty.
We spent most of our weekend in our pajamas, easing ourselves back into life. Glad to be home, but constantly reminded by Ethan's bandages and the graphic photos where we'd just been. And some time over this past weekend it occurred to me, the reason I'm not disappointed in the way things turned out. From the very first time I spoke with Dr. Brad, he's been careful to qualify the situation with this caveat: "I won't know for sure until I'm in there." And so we braced ourselves for what might be or go wrong. Now he's been "in there." Now he knows. Now we know. It's going to work. As sure as I'm sitting here, it's going to work. And I'll happily go through a million "almost there" visits to see it through.

•••

A note to parents of kids with atresia who aren't yet where we are in the process: I have to say here that I can not endorse the University of Virginia Health System strongly enough. We were amazed at and humbled by the professionalism and passion of not only Dr. Brad and his assistants, Dr. O'Rourke and Dr. Chance, but of the nurses, the anesthesiologists -- just everyone involved. These people are in it for your child, not just a paycheck (although I sincerely hope they each make more money than they'll ever be able to spend). Nobody is that freakin' focused or energized at 6 a.m. unless they truly love what they do.
The thing that struck me most was the total absence of ego. Ethan was never less than the star of the day, the center of everyone's attention. The fact that when he learned of the infection, Dr. Brad chose to call his mentor, Dr. Jahrsdoerfer, to consult, just speaks volumes to me about the caliber of people we're talking about here. Maybe it's TV's influence on my perception of how a world-renowned surgeon would act, but I was comforted by the fact that he didn't go rogue and try to muscle through the procedure because, dammit, he's the best and that's what the best do. No, he put our son's well-being before his ego and took the prudent course of action. And we are grateful to him and his entire team for their focus. Actually, grateful isn't even close to strong enough, but I don't think the word I'm looking for exists in our language.
All this isn't to say that the surgical team weren't as frustrated as hell. They were. Sandi, who met with Dr. Brad while Thomas and I were amping up with coffee and chocolate milk, told me that while he didn't come out and say it, she could tell he was disappointed. Good. I mean not good like "good, I'm glad you're frustrated," but good like "good, I appreciate that you're a results junky." The world needs more results junkies. Yes, I'm looking at you pre-anesthesia registration desk lady who left us hanging for two hours. Hope your dinner was delicious.

•••

Another shout out goes to the Marriott Courtyard in Charlottesville. They not only discounted our nightly rate because of Ethan's surgery, but they didn't charge us for the second night of our commitment since we left that evening. I don't even need a TV reference to tell you why this came as such a surprise. OK, so your restaurant ran out of food. There are only a billion restaurants within walking distance. And so your coffee sucked. See "billion restaurants" note, replace "restaurants" with "coffee houses." And so it felt like you had the air conditioning on in the pool. You had a hot tub. Plus you let us park for free, you gave our kids free cookies and it was an easy walk to the hospital from you. Cheap, convenient, friendly. We'll be back and we'll tell our friends about you.

•••

On another note, mojo hoarders, please send more good vibes down Charlottesville way for a little girl named Jalia and her family. Jalia is scheduled for surgery this week with Dr. Brad and friends to correct a failed attempt at atresia repair (performed by a different surgeon). I've never met the family, but I've seen pictures of Jalia and she is breathtakingly beautiful -- the kind of little girl you just want to hug and make giggle. Or have your younger son marry one day. Anyway, best to Jalia and family. We're thinking of you all, hoping for the best, knowing you're in good hands.

"You need a minute? Take your time. You need an hour, baby, you can borrow mine. I got all the time in the world." -- The Subdudes