Here, Girl!

OK, this was the post that I originally had up a few weeks ago, then took down when my medical drama, and then my father's death, intervened.  Things have finally returned to normal (or at least, normal enough), so we can now return to our regularly-scheduled programming (and Bijoux can have her comment back). . .


I was having a conversation with another blogger recently, and this story, which I originally posted almost five years ago, came to mind.  So I decided to re-post it for your edification and enjoyment. . .


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All new parents go through a kind of 'break-in' period, during which they slowly figure out the real ways in which being parents is different from how they were before. For Jen and me, this lasted quite a while - even past 1F's first birthday, we were still discovering unanticipated ways in which our lives would never be the same.

Once, the three of us went out to dinner at a restaurant which the childless Jen and me would have counted very 'family friendly', and in fairness, it probably was, as long as none of the children were younger than five or so. 1F was about a year old on the evening in question, though, and by the time we finished our dinner, there was a circle about five feet in diameter, centered on 1F's high chair, littered with an assortment of food fragments, torn napkins, pieces of silverware, and other miscellaneous items. I left a very large tip, and we realized that taking 1F to a 'nice' restaurant with us was not going to be a live option for a while.

I've always been a bit of a gadget buff, but I really like gadgets that have a certain simplicity about them, and Kid-world is rife with elegantly simple, practical gadgets. When 1F was a baby, the little seats that you can sort of hang off the edge of the table were new, and we got one of those right away. Suddenly, we could eat at friends' houses, or church potlucks, or at a picnic table in a park, without having to pack a full-blown high chair with us. A very cool, simple contraption.

Around the same time, we met a couple who were visiting from Germany, whose daughter was just a bit older than 1F. They had a little leather harness that they put on their daughter when they took her to a crowded public place; they would clip a short tether to the harness, and they could keep the child close to them, without all the bad posture that goes along with holding her hand, to say nothing of the struggles that invariably occur when the child in question decides that she doesn't want to have her hand held anymore.

I loved it - so elegant, so simple, so practical. And all the moreso, because the child actually had a lot more freedom of movement - a lot more freedom to go where she wanted to, within a much larger radius, than she would if her hand were being held. We were so taken by this little item that we asked our German friends to send us one, since they hadn't appeared in the US market yet.

A few weeks later, we received a package in the mail from a German address. We opened it eagerly, and put it to use at our first opportunity. It worked really well, and we were pleased - 1F could roam about more freely, engage her curiosity more freely, and we hardly had to exert any effort to keep track of her. In fact, we were so taken with it that we decided to make a modest improvement - in place of the short tether, we used a 25-foot retractable leash, so 1F could have even more freedom of movement.

The Fourth of July was coming up soon, and the harness setup seemed perfect for such an occasion - a large crowd in an open public place. 1F could wander to her heart's content within a 25-foot radius, and, as long as we kept hold of the leash, Jen and I didn't need to worry about where she was.

Our first inkling that this would work out just a bit less than perfectly came as we walked into the park. We were walking alongside another young family like us, with the toddler being carried on his father's shoulders. They were looking intently at the harness/leash setup we had 1F in. I smiled, knowing that they were appreciating the ingenuity, the elegance, the simplicity, the practicality of it, and preparing to tell them how we had friends in Germany, and this was all the rage among European parents, and how they could get one for themselves. Instead, the dad sort of sneered and said, "Kind of a sick joke, man."

What?!? Sick joke? What the heck does he mean by that? Ah, well; obviously a philistine who doesn't appreciate ingenious gadgets when he sees them. We found a spot suitable to our liking at which to settle, and we spread our blanket. Jen and I sat down on the blanket, while 1F wandered around on the end of the leash. When she reached the limit, she would just turn around, and poke around in a different direction, checking for bugs in the grass, or whatever else captured her eye. We were enjoying ourselves immensely, just watching her exploring her expansive little piece of turf.

While we were sitting there, a woman approached us to talk. I smiled in friendly greeting, but 'friendly' wasn't her own personal orientation at that particular moment.  Rather, she immediately ripped into us. "How could you?!" she shrieked.

What the hell?  I looked at her in utter bewilderment.

"Treating your child like an animal!"

No, wait, you don't understand - see, she's so much more free to roam about. . .

But the woman would have none of it. See, this was a leash, and leashes are for dogs, and that was that. At the very best, in her mind, this was an inappropriate transfer of technology; at worst, it was slam-dunk evidence of depraved child abuse. And nothing I could say would dissuade her.

Before the night was over, and all the fireworks had flashed, two or three other folks wandered by to very helpfully yell at us and call us colorful names.

We were more circumspect about taking the harness out in public after that, and we eventually decided that the elegance, simplicity, and practicality didn't quite outweigh the grief we had to endure from well-meaning idiots fellow-citizens.

So you see, a thing can be wonderfully practical, elegantly designed, and a vast improvement on the existing technology. But, if you don't take account of public reaction, you can still wind up with a marketplace failure. . .

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Back here in the present (OK, the near-past), I rode my bike 35 miles yesterday, in glorious fall weather - around 60 degress, with brilliant blue skies and a few puffy white clouds; it's just a bit too early for the fall colors, or it would've been perfect.  Yesterday's miles make a total of 1053 for the year, my 5th consecutive year over 1000 miles.  I've got two months or so left in the season, so I'm on pace for around 1300-1400.  Life is good. . .

And, hey, while I'm thinking of it, my Tigers are American League Central Division champions!  Playoff bound!  (Maybe even against Suldog's Red Sawx!)  I'm sure I'll have some manner of elegiac post at the end of the season, but for now, you'll all share my joy, won't you?

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I just put up a sidebar link to 2F's blog; if you want to get an independent, inside perspective on what life in our family is REALLY like. . . (not like anyone's inheritance is riding on the outcome, or anything. . .)

A Day of Unfathomable Evil

Today is the tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. . .

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I think it was a Tuesday morning; for whatever reason, I was running late that morning, and didn't get in to my office until after 9:30.  As I arrived, and began getting my work-station set up for the day - unlocking file cabinets, turning on my computer - one of the three co-workers who shared my four-person cubicle was all aghast, asking me if I'd heard the news.

Oddly, I hadn't.  I usually spent a good portion of my commute with my radio tuned to a sports-talk station, but on that day, I'd left my radio turned off, so I arrived at my office completely unaware of what was happening 600 miles to the east.

She went on to explain that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and at first it had seemed like an accident. but when another plane crashed into the other tower, and a third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, it was clear that this was no accident.

I linked to one of the News websites, and for the rest of that morning, there wasn't much work done in our office, as we all watched the drama play out on our computer screens.  What I remember is the confusion - four planes had 'fallen off the screen', but only three had crashed into what were obviously targets of choice (although whose choice, and to what end, were as yet unknown); where the fourth plane might be, or what its designated target was, weren't yet known.  Then there were rumors of a plane crash in Pennsylvania, and while all that was still churning, the WTC towers fell, first one, and then the other.

And that absolutely stunned me.  I am an engineer by profession, and by now, I understand what happened, but at the time, I was utterly stunned and flabbergasted that a plane crash could lead to the collapse of an entire building, especially one the size of the World Trade Center towers.

A group of folks wandered down to the cafeteria, where there were TVs tuned to CNN.  For a while, we were just glued to the screens, as the images played over and over of planes crashing into the WTC towers.  The second plane was essentially caught live, as the cameras were trained on the smoke billowing from the first crash.  And then, as the towers continued to burn, we watched them collapse live.

After a while, I couldn't watch any more, as it began to sink in that I wasn't just seeing a plane crashing into a building, or a building burning and collapsing, but I was seeing thousands of human lives ending before my eyes - each spectacular fireball of a jet crashing into a building was the instant extinguishment of hundreds of human lives, and the slow, agonizing collapse of each tower was the end of perhaps a thousand more.  As the obscenity of it all finally began to sink in, I couldn't watch anymore; I had to turn away.

I struggled to make any kind of sense of it.  The pure evil of it was unfathomable - the unprovoked murder of thousands of innocent people whose only 'crime' was going to work that morning, was - and still is - incomprehensible.  I had a deep sense of the profound corruption of human nature, and in the back of my head, the thought was lurking that I didn't want to live in a world where people who were supposed to be made in God's image and likeness could do such things.

A couple days later, my comapny gave all of its employees time to participate in the national Time of Mourning.  I went with a couple guys to a nearby church; it wasn't my church, since I worked (as I still do) over an hour from home; it wasn't even a Catholic church.  It was just relatively nearby.  I joined in the mourning, and I was simply overcome by the sadness of thousands of widows and orphans made bereft of their fathers and/or their mothers, and thousands of lives snuffed out, in an hour's time three days earlier, at the hands of an unfathomable, demonic evil.  For a long time, I could only sit there and weep.  The tragedy hadn't really touched me personally - as far as I know, I didn't personally know any of the victims, but you know, the dead were all my countrymen, and my neighbors, and I was clear enough that the perpetrators of the evil regarded my life, and those of my family and friends, with the same degree of contempt they did those who had been on the planes, or in their offices, that morning.

I still cannot begin to understand the depth of evil, the viciousness of hatred, the bloodlust, that animated the events of that day.  And honestly, I hope I never do. . .

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A couple other random memories from those days. . .

Of course, as soon as the nature of the attack was understood, all planes in US airspace were immediately grounded indefinitely.  For a few days afterward, there were no planes in the air over the entire United States.  I remember how odd, even spooky, it was, as I drove to work on subsequent days, to see no planes in the air, no contrails snaking across the sky.  And I remember thinking how odd it was that such mundane things as a lack of contrails would register so large in my awareness.

And how oddly comforting it was, a few days later, when I saw my first plane in the air after flights were resumed. . .

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A few days after September 11, there was the whole 'anthrax scare', in which a few apparently random (or at best, tenuously connected) individuals were infected with anthrax sent to them in the mail.  And for weeks, anthrax added another layer of texture to the overall terror of the times.

One day, I was driving to work, on a rural stretch of freeway that I traveled every day, when, all of a sudden, in the middle of noplace, traffic came to a complete and utter halt.  For over an hour, we just sat on the road, not moving, wondering what in the world was causing the problem.  I called my office to let them know that I was stuck in traffic, and would be in as soon as I could.

Then a small plane appeared, and began crop-dusting the field adjacent to where we sat halted on the road.  A cold chill ran down my spine while the crop-duster made his back-and-forth passes across the field, as I considered the possibility that a trap had been set for all of us on the road that day, and wondering whether one of the passes of the crop-duster might be right along the column of parked cars, 'dusting' us all with anthrax, or some equally-lethal bio-toxin.

I switched my car's ventilation system to 'internal recirculation', and watched intently as the small plane finished dusting his field and flew off.  And then I breathed a sigh of relief. . .

And, in the fullness of time, the accident ahead of us that had blocked the freeway, was cleared, and we continued on our way. . .

Catholic Signs?

While we were down for my dad's memorial, we were driving along a road that was lined with several fast-food places.  8M, who is 9 years old, seemed particularly interested in one of the establishments, and asked Jen and me, "Are they Catholic?"

What?

"Are they Catholic?" he repeated, pointing to a particular franchise.

Um, why do you ask, son?

"Because it says, 'Pope Yes."

Pope Yes?

And at that point, Jen and I could only burst out laughing, because 'Popeye's' could easily be read as 'Pope Yes', if you're not too careful about where the breaks are. . .

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And to make it even more, um, fun (and, you know, keeping it in the family). . .

Another time, we were driving along in a minivan with one of my brothers and his wife, when she pointed to a glass storefront we were driving past.  On one side of the door, the word 'Roman' was painted on the plate-glass window, and 'Tic' was painted on the pane on the other side of the door.

"Now," my SIL mused, "what the heck do you suppose a 'Roman Tic' is?"

"I think," I replied, with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, "that it's one of those 'Catholic guilt' things; when a Catholic feels remorse for his sins, he develops a nervous twitch."

"Oh. . . really?  I guess that could make sense.  I don't know, though; why would they paint it on a storefront?"

Finally my brother, who is a singularly reticent man, chimed in.  "Ummm," he began, with a bemused smirk on his face, "I think that's supposed to say 'Romantic'. . ."

The she punched him for pointing it out. . .  'Cuz, you know, she's always tryin' to get him to be more romantic, and all. . .

And, you know, the funny thing is, there's not even any genetic connection between 8M and my brother's wife. . .

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Dad's memorial was good, and blessed, and rich.  I got to give one of the eulogies, which I basically took from my recent Father's Day blog post.  My youngest brother also gave a eulogy, and between the two of us, I think we gave a pretty good account of Dad's life.  I was able to say some things about his early life that most of the others might not have known about, and my brother said some things about him from after I'd left home, that I was less intimately acquainted with.  Jen and I and our kids sang a couple of songs ('For All the Saints' is a great funeral/memorial song); I was a little surprised by how many of the folks in attendance hadn't known how musical our family is, or even that I play the guitar. . .

The whole time we were there, it was just great family time, full of reminiscences and fond affection.  I even got invited to one brother's house for the first time in the 15+ years he's lived there. . .

I've shared some about our wacky, yours-mine-and-ours family, and I was appreciating my family on a whole new level this time.  I couldn't help thinking that it was, in lots of ways, a uniquely happy place for an adoptee (at least, this adoptee) to land - our family was formed out of folks coming from so many different, odd directions, that my adopted-ness was really no stranger than anyone else's path into the family.  And, given what I've come to understand in the intervening decades, about the unique challenges of 'blended' families, I cherish all the moreso that our family is still together, and we still love each other.  And it was very gratifying to experience that again this past week, in what could have been a particularly stressful time for us. . .

Requiescat In Pace. . .

My dad died Saturday evening.

I drove down Friday and went to the hospital to visit him.  He was asleep; I never saw him conscious.  We met with a lady from hospice, and made arrangements for his final care.  No-one could give us a very firm prognosis; it could be a few days, it could be 2-3 weeks, or even a month.

When I arrived on Friday, I was met by all my siblings but two - one brother who is local, but didn't have transportation, and my youngest brother, who lives in Arizona.  He called and told us he was flying in on Saturday, and we made arrangements to pick up the other brother, so we could all be together Saturday afternoon.  I had originally planned to return home Saturday morning, after all the hospice issues were decided, but when I heard he was coming, I decided to stay longer so I could see him.

Saturday morning, I had nothing in particular to do, so I went to the hospital and just sat at Dad's bedside by myself for a few hours.  I alternated between reading, and occasionally speaking to Dad, telling him that the other two sons were on their way, and would be there soon, telling him how grateful I was for his fatherhood, and that I loved him (all of the medical people assured us that, even though he looked to all the world as if he was unconscious, he could hear everything we said).  It was a surprisingly good and rich time, for just sitting there for a few hours, and occasionally taking a walk around the ward.

It was mid-afternoon when my brother arrived from Arizona.  It really was good to see him; because he lives so far away, we don't get to see him very often.  Shortly after that, the other brother arrived, and all of us were together at Dad's bedside (for some background on our family, you can go here).  We spent an hour-and-a-half, maybe two hours, just talking, reminiscing and joking with each other (although tears were not absent from the proceedings).  Then we went to another brother's house for dinner.

I had planned to head home in the early evening, so I could at least be home by midnight (I had some things to cover back home Sunday morning and afternoon).  We were sitting out on my brother's deck, enjoying a beautiful late summer evening, and each other's company, and continuing with the reminiscences.  The dinner dishes were cleared, and we were just getting ready to break into dessert, when the phone rang.  It was the hospital, informing us of Dad's passing.

We went back to the hospital to spend a little more time with what was left of Dad.  At first, none of us said a word, for a long time.  Then one of my sisters asked if we could join hands and pray together.  I led us in a short prayer, and then we prayed the Lord's Prayer together.  It seemed fitting, like we were on some kind of Holy Ground, on the narrow margin between this world and the next one.  Just a short time before, Dad had been there, and now he had taken his leave.

There are mysteries here too deep for words.  It comes to seem as though Dad was just waiting for the last of his children to arrive, and once we were all present and accounted for, he could bid us farewell.  It's a little bit awesome, honestly. . .

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Peter Kreeft is one of my favorite authors; probably my favorite living one.  Many years ago he wrote a book titled Love Is Stronger than Death, which is probably my favorite of all his books, and I've read quite a few of them.

Kreeft is wonderfully perceptive, and draws some really sharp insights. For instance, he notes the double meaning in saying that death is the 'end' of life - both its termination, but also its consummation (or even its 'goal'). "If death is not meaningful, then life, in the final analysis, is not meaning-full. For death is the final analysis...Life cannot be meaningful in the short run and meaningless in the long run, because the long run is the meaning of the short run."

He draws an analogy between death and birth that is acutely perceptive. A child in the womb is warm and secure, and outside the womb is - he knows not what (although he might have some inklings of the 'world beyond' - muffled voices and such). Birth is a painful thing, and yet he is born into a world infinitely wider and richer than the womb; he is infinitely freer in the 'outside world' than he was in the womb, and he spends his entire life 'growing into' this larger, richer world. Even so, we are comfortable in this world, and at any rate, this world is all we know (although we might have inklings of a 'world beyond'). Death, like birth, involves pain. Is it possible that death, like birth, brings us into a wider, richer, freer existence than we have here?

And, as the child in the womb draws his life from his mother, he can't SEE his mother, much less KNOW her AS A PERSON until he is born. Is it possible that, just as, in this world, we can't see God, death brings us into a new relationship with Him ("then we shall see face-to-face")?

Of course, we can't know for certain.  But the analogies are at least intensely provocative, don't you think? . . .

Getting Answers

Okay, things are getting clearer as to what, exactly, happened to me on my bike ride this past Sunday.  As you recall, I was feeling great, and riding well, for the first 15 miles of my ride.  Then I stopped for a short break, and a bottle of sugar-free Gatorade, and all hell broke loose with my body.

I have suspected that the Gatorade was the culprit, since the symptoms appeared immediately after I drank it.  And, in discussing my situation with our nurse friend, while we were trying to decide whether or not to go to the ER, she mentioned that an electrolyte imbalance can cause arhythmia, which also seemed to point to the Gatorade.  But the blood work I had done showed nothing unusual regarding my electrolytes, so that seemed like a dead end.

Then, after I got back home, I was telling another friend about what had happened, and he perked up his ears when I mentioned the Gatorade.  He asked me specifically whether it was regular Gatorade, or sugar-free, and I told him it was sugar-free, since, with my diet, I'm off sugar.  (Just to get the full irony of the situation, I would normally have a bottle of unsweetened iced tea, but it was late in the afternoon, and I didn't want the caffeine.)  Then he pointed me to this web site, which describes the link between aspartame and something called Sudden Cardiac Death.  The article cites numerous cases of otherwise very-healthy individuals dying suddenly while engaged in strenuous athletic activity, during which they consume aspartame.  And the description fits virtually exactly what happened to me.  To quote the article:  "the shock from strenuous athletics in combination with aspartame consumption. . . leads to activation of shock mechanisms. . . the cardiac conduction system that generates the impulses regulating the heart suddenly sends rapid [and/or] chaotic impulses."  Which is pretty much exactly what I experienced. Aspartame poisoning; who knew?  The fact that the article references something called 'Sudden Cardiac Death' is sobering in the extreme (I experienced a milder form called 'Sudden Cardiac Feeling Like Shit')

Of course, the FDA has approved aspartame, but one could reasonably wonder why.  You all are adults, and I trust you are competent to make your own decisions as to what foods you purchase and consume.  But aspartame (and virtually all 'sugar-free' foods/drinks contain aspartame) damn near did me in; and thousands of folks every year are less fortunate than I was.  If this is news to you, I'd encourage you to give serious consideration to deleting aspartame from your diet.  Or at least, don't engage in strenuous athletic activity while you consume it.  That shit is deadly. . .

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Alas, the news concerning my dad is not so happy.  The stroke he had was a massive one, involving two-thirds of one side of his brain, and we are now basically waiting for him to die.  It may be soon, or it may be not-so-soon, but Dad as we've known him is gone.  I will miss him terribly.  I've said elsewhere that Dad is one of the very best things that ever happened to me, and I will always be grateful that, of all the families I might have been adopted into, I was adopted into his. . .

Not Just Yet. . .

I know that I had another post up here, and at least one of you left a comment on it.  I promise I will re-post it later, but recent events have come to pass that I thought you all might be more interested in, than a five-year-old re-post about my youthful parenting skills (or lack thereof). . .

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I usually ride my bike on Saturdays.  But this past Saturday was rainy, and besides, we had a family reunion to go to, so I put my ride off until Sunday.  Which worked out just fine, actually, since Jen had to go to a baby shower for one of our neices, and a ride would keep me suitably out of trouble in her absence.  Sunday was a delightfully sunny day, and I planned a 42-mile ride on one of my favorite routes.

As I began my ride, around 4PM, I felt absolutely great.  Sometimes, at the start of a ride, I feel a little sluggish, and it might take 4 or 5 miles to get into my groove; but on Sunday, I just felt great, right from the start of my ride.

After 10 miles or so, I noticed that my mouth was feeling a bit dry, and I was going through my water a little quicker than normal.  It occurred to me that I hadn't had much to eat since just after church, and that I'd forgotten to have glass of water before I left, like I usually do.  No problem, though - there's a little party store at about the 15-mile mark, and I just figured that I could grab a bottle of Gatorade, and maybe a bag of trail mix, to tide me over through the rest of the ride, and easily stretch my water supply through the end of the ride.  So I stopped at the party store, and bought a bottle of Gatorade, and drank it down over a 10-minute break.

When I got back on the bike, though, I instantly felt like utter crap.  It was the damnedest thing.  Minutes before, I'd felt absolutely great, and then after taking a 10-minute break and a pint of fluids (and replenishing my electrolytes in the process), I felt utterly terrible.  I had no energy anymore, and I was laboring twice as hard as normal to go half as fast.

At first, I thought that I'd guzzled the Gatorade too quickly, and was feeling the effects of an overfull stomach.  But if that were the case, the bloated, lethargic feeling would go away in a few miles, and this wasn't going away.  I was starting to get concerned.

There is a gas-station/party-store at about the 25-mile mark, and I stopped there for another break, and the trail mix that I didn't get at the previous stop.  While I rested, I thought maybe I should check my pulse, so I put my two right fingers against my left wrist.  I didn't have a stopwatch, but I was instantly alarmed that, even resting, my pulse was extremely rapid and irregular.  A quick self-inventory revealed no pain or tightness in my chest, but something was obviously not right.

I was still 17 miles from home, though, and Jen was out town at the baby shower, so she wasn't available to come get me, so I thought I could just cut the power, and limp home at a reduced speed.  As I recommenced my ride, my cell phone rang.  Jen was stuck in traffic an hour from home, and wanted me to give her an alternate route home.  So I stopped for five minutes, and worked out an alternate plan for her, and then I continued riding.  Ten minutes later, she called again, having gotten confused with some of the directions I'd given her, so I had to help her undo her mistake, and get her re-oriented in the right direction.  And when we hung up, I got back on the bike and rode some more.

And I still felt like crap.  In fact, I had started the ride going around the loop in the opposite direction from what I usually do, because the hills are more challenging that way, and I was feeling good.  But now that I felt lousy, it was a really unfortunate choice.  Every time I climbed a hill, I had to slow to a virtual snail's pace just to get up it at all, and then it took three times as long just to recover back to the level of 'feeling like shit'.

And Jen continued to call every ten minutes or so - seven times in all - asking for directional assistance (we often joke between us that I'm her own personal GPS).  And I was getting increasingly frustrated - that Jen was interrupting my ride every ten minutes, yes, but even moreso because of my own all-too-obvious health problems.  And the fact that, between my own reduced physical capacity, and all the time I spent on the side of the road talking to my wife, I was starting to move into the realms of 'will I get home before sunset?'

I continued taking periodic stock of my physical status.  On the flat-and-level parts, I wasn't doing too badly, if I didn't push myself too hard.  And I wasn't having any chest pain, or anything like that.  But, somewhere around the 31-mile mark, in moment of lucidity, I thought to myself that a heart attack isn't required to send up a warning flare, and there were plenty of stories of guys who had heart attacks with virtually no warning whatsoever.  So I stopped, and called 1F to come and pick me up.  She didn't answer.  I called 4M, and he didn't answer, either.  3M was at work.  So I called my friend Richard (who just made an appearance in my last post), and he said he would come out and pick me up.

I continued limping along in the mode I had been, until, at the 35-mile mark of my ride, Richard pulled up, and I gratefully got off my bike and threw it into the back of his van.  As we rode home, I told him what was happening.  By the time we got home, Jen had just arrived, and I filled her in on the situation.  I had Richard check my pulse, and he gave me a concerned look - it wasn't rapid, now that I'd had a chance to rest, but it was still wildly irregular.  We all went into the house, and tried to sort through a reasonable plan of action.  With rest, I no longer felt so bad, so I was wondering if a trip to the hospital was warranted or not (and besides, on Sunday night, none of the 'urgent-care' places are open, and ER visits are not treated happily by my health-care insurance; so if I could avoid a trip to the ER, I viewed that as a good thing).  Jen called our family doc, and he thought it would be good just to get an EKG, so why don't we just go on in.  Then Jen called a friend of hers who is a nurse, and the nurse-friend urged us even more strongly to go to the ER; and besides, she said, if we told the triage-nurse at the ER that 'my doctor wants me to have an EKG', that was pretty much a ticket to the front of the line.  So I said, OK, let's go.

And I just got home this afternoon, to tell you all about it.  Without going into stultifying detail, we still don't completely know what happened to me out on the bike Sunday afternoon.  As of now, we're just calling it a 'Cardiac Event'.  Of the various indicators of a heart-attack, all of them were negative, except one, which was, in the ER cardiologist's words, "slightly elevated, not at all what we'd see if you'd had a heart attack."  And I generated several odd-looking EKGs, "but that might just be you, and the way your heart works."

I had an Echocardiogram done, and that showed my heart working pretty doggone well, for what it's worth,  Then I had a Heart Catheterization (which is just more fun than a human being ought to be allowed to have), which showed one of my coronary arteries less-than-40% blocked; they don't even think about putting in a stent until the blockage is more than 70%.  So the diagnostics, while not quite sunshine and light, just don't seem to correspond to what I was feeling on the bike.

But now, at any rate, I have a cardiologist, with whom I will be becoming friends over the next few weeks.  So at least I'll be in touch with people who know how to figure out what's happening.

If any of you are moved to pray for me/us, I would be grateful. . .

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And just because the Universe is a bastard. . .

While we were sitting in the hospital room, waiting for the final discharge papers, my sister-in-law called, informing us that my dad had had a stroke.  They'd just found him in his room just this morning, an hour before her call, conscious, but unable to talk or move his right side.  As I write this, that's all I know.

And he can certainly use your prayers even more than I can. . .

Another Midsummer's Miscellany

As I posted previously, the week before last Jen and I, and four of our kids (8M was a camper; 4M, 5M and 6F were all on staff in one capacity or another), were gone off to summer camp.  We had a wonderful time, full of sunshine, water, trees, good friends, and even God.

On Friday of the camp week (the last full day at camp; Saturday is 'Going Home' day, full of songs like 'Country Roads' and 'Sloop John B'), I was playing softball in the afternoon with a typical mix of campers and staff (and seriously - there are few things in life much happier than jumping into a chilly-ish lake after getting baked under the hot sun on the softball field for an hour or so).  Thankfully, we didn't have any softball 'incidents' this year that were remotely on the order of last year's line-drive-off-the-face.

Anyway, I came up to bat at one point in the game (actually two or three times; but this story is just about one of them).  I have maintained a reputation among summer-camp softballers as a pretty fearsome power hitter, but truth be told, I can't quite jack the ball to the far reaches of the camp anymore, quite like I could when I was still spelling my age with a '3', or even a '4'.  Especially since the advent of the mush-balls.  But I can still stroke a nice line drive most of the time, even if I no longer have the legs to turn most of those line drives into home runs, or even triples.  Aging is such a pain. . .

So, on the at-bat in question, I stroked a screaming line drive to the deepest corner of center field, and as I watched it bounce, I saw it heading for a gap in the trees which, if the ball made it through, would give even a lumbering old man like me a decent chance at circling the bases.  So I turned on the jets (such as they are) as I rounded second base.

And - *ping!* - my hamstring stretched and recoiled back on itself.  I yelled out in pain, and I had all I could do to make my way safely to third base, in the fashion of a deranged, wounded walrus.  I stood on third for a few minutes, trying to ascertain the extent of my injury.  It seemed not to be too bad - I could still stand and walk, albeit a tad gingerly, so I stayed in the game.  Fortunately, the next batter stroked another line drive to the outfield, so I could limp home without further issue, and I got through the last day of camp with nothing more dire than some stiffness and soreness in the back of my leg.

But, you know. . . I was MAD!  A pulled hamstring is the classic 'old man injury' (those of you who remember such things, think Joe Montana with the KC Chiefs); the classic sign of a brain that is willing to try anything that the body has ever done before, except that the body can't pull it off the same way anymore.  By rights, I should've sped around those bases as lithely as I ever did (which, let's be honest, never exactly rose to the level of 'gazelle-like', even in my prime).  I hit the ball hard, and I knew what I had to do, but my stupid body (which, I am thinking, Saint Francis of Assisi was all-too-apt in calling 'Brother Ass') rebelled.  I was angry and frustrated.

The anger and frustration eventually gave way to something more like disappointment and resignation to the simple fact that I am getting older, and now I have to work out the implications of that 'aging-ness' in terms of my behavior.  Which can stir up the resentment that I should even have to worry about stuff like that, if I let it.  But, you know, life is what it is, and it behooves me to conform my life to the actual Universe, rather than demand that the Universe conform itself to my wishes (the Universe is notoriously stubborn on stuff like that).

The funny thing is, even while I was still at camp, I found that climbing stairs didn't bother my leg at all.  And on Sunday, the day after we got back home, I went out to test my leg on my bike, and ended up going 32 miles.  Even though it hurt to lift my leg to put my socks on.  Very weird.

But, you know, I'm not complaining. . .

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While six of our family members were at camp, 7M was on a week-long hike with a group of jr-hi boys from our community, on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.  He had a great time, taxing himself physically, strengthening his friendships with the other boys, and enjoying God's creation in the process.

One day, toward the end of the hike, 7M, as jr-hi boys will be from time-to-time, was feeling a bit down; perhaps his will had run afoul of one of the adults-in-charge (as will also happen to jr-hi boys, from time-to-time), but he was moping about, and wandered off a short distance from the campsite.  He found a log to sit on, and began picking up stones from the ground and randomly tossing them in no particular direction.

One stone in particular caught his attention - flat and maybe three inches across or so, it was sufficiently buried as to require a bit of effort on 7M's part to coax it out of the ground.  When he finally did, he found that the stone had been inscribed in purple-Sharpie with the message, "Smile, God loves you".

Which, you know, isn't necessarily the most profound of all possible messages, but right at that moment, it met my son where he was living. . .

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This past weekend, the town where I live (OK, actually the college town right next door) hosted the annual Great Lakes Folk Festival, a weekend event in which various flavors of 'folk' groups from all over the midwest (and actually, much farther afield than that) come to perform.  The festival has been going on for something like ten years, but Jen and I have only gone for the last three years (and now wonder why we weren't more strongly motivated before that).  It's a really great time to hear some really fine, really fun music performed by some really talented musicians that you might never hear on your radio.

It turns out that our town is something of a regional hotbed of folk music, especially bluegrass and blues.  There's a music store in town to which people come from multiple states away, just to shop their selection of 'folk' instruments - mostly stringed instruments like guitars, bass guitars (an acoustic bass guitar is a pretty impressive-looking instrument), mandolins, ukuleles, dobros, dulcimers, etc., etc.  I've even seen a few harps on the sales floor, over the years.  A friend of mine went to Germany a few years back, and one of the Germans he met asked where he was from.  When my friend told him, he said, "Ah!" and named the music store. . .

Jen and I went to the festival this past Friday evening, and saw a Hawaiian guitarist, a Michigan-based bluegrass band, a klezmer band ('Jewish soul music'), and an Irish Celtic group (with every bit of the rollicking good humor that you might associate with such a label).  Each of them played about a 45-minute set, and each was wonderful in its own way.  Part of the charm of such a festival is being able to sample so many disparate musical styles in one venue, over the course of a weekend.

And part of the charm of living in Our Town. . .

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Jen and I went to the festival on Friday night with our very good friends Richard and Stef (Richard and I were each other's Best Men, and Stef was my once-upon-a-time date to see Paul McCartney).  As we relaxed during one of the breaks between sets, I noticed an elderly gentleman (well, he was at least fairly obviously older than me) (at least, it seemed fairly obvious to me), who was seated directly in front of us, carrying on a conversation with two men seated on either side of him.  I was sort-of idly people-watching, when the thought arose in my head that this gentleman looked familiar, somehow, although I couldn't quite place him (at this point, I hope I wasn't crossing into 'creepy' territory as I intently checked out his face for clues as to where I might have known him, once upon a time).

Then the penny dropped.  The man reminded me A LOT of a Catholic preist who had been at the student parish back in my college days.  I wasn't sure it was really him - it's been more than 30 years since I'd have last seen him, and this gentleman was thinner and frailer than the priest I remembered; to say nothing of white-haired, and sporting a white beard, whereas the priest I remembered had a thick black mustache (Italian as he'd been).  I turned to Richard and whispered in his ear, "is that Fr. Jake sitting in front of us?"  He turned and replied that he'd been thinking the same thing.

We debated for a few seconds as to how we might best determine the answer to our curiosity, when one of the men he was speaking with called him 'Jake' by name, and we knew we'd been right.  Before we could interrupt and (re-)introduce ourselves, he turned toward us with a broad grin and said, "You look familiar to me; do I know you from somewhere?"  When we told him our names, he remembered us.  Mostly, it seems, from a class that he'd taught at the university, that Richard and I had both taken, more than from anything associated with the student parish (although, after we'd talked for a while, he suddenly turned to me and said, "You used to play the guitar, didn't you?"; so the data points were slowly falling into place for him, too).  We had a pleasant conversation for a few minutes, before he left to see another group play at one of the other festival venues.

The thing is, Fr. Jake is one of the utterly unique people I have ever known.  He is just instinctively kind and gracious, and everyone who has ever met him has felt utterly loved and cared-for.  In the course of our conversation, I thanked him for his part in bringing me into the Catholic Church, and Jen thanked him for helping keep her in the Church in her college years, when she'd been seriously considering changing her Christian affiliation.

As I grew deeper in my faith, Fr. Jake came to frustrate me greatly, as well.  In his kindness, he often resisted speaking the 'hard truth', and I feared (and still do, although in maturer ways than I used to; I hope) that in his very great kindness, he was misleading some folks as to what the actual truth of the gospel was, or what God might require of us as response to His mercy.  And I would guess that a fair bit of that frustration was mutual.  But Fr. Jake never treated me with anything other than open, gracious love and kindness, and even for all the frustration, I have always remembered him fondly.  He taught me a valuable lesson, that it is possible to disagree with someone, even deeply and passionately, and still love and value them at the same time.

He is 82 years old now, still active and fit (he was complaining that he'd screwed up something in his knee, playing tennis the day before), still teaching the class at the university.  He's no longer associated with the student parish, but he is still a faithful Catholic priest.

And it was good to see him again, after 30+ years. . .

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(*sigh*)

I HATE it when I screw stuff up. . .

Alas, I have hurt one of my very good friends, through my own culpable carelessness.  I am hopeful that our friendship will survive my stupidity, but it will necessarily be different than it was before.  My friend didn't do anything wrong; all my friend did was be in the wrong place when the consequences of my, um, stuff came down, and got splashed with the fallout.

If my friend should happen to be reading this, please understand that hurting you was the very last thing I ever intended.  I hope you can forgive me. . .

Wonderful-ness; or, Happy Anniversary to My Beloved

Another re-post, this one from five years ago, in honor of Jen's-and-my 31st wedding anniversary. . .

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There are times when I’m simply overwhelmed by the wonderful-ness of my wife. Times when I just look at her and ask myself, “How is it that the most amazing woman in the universe threw her life in with me?” And I’m just in awe of my good fortune.

There might be a few women in the world (stress on ‘might’ and ‘few’) who are physically more beautiful than Jen, but when I consider the strength of her character, the beauty of her soul and spirit, she blows them all away. I’ll say it again – she is the most amazing woman in the universe. I almost feel bad for the rest of you guys that she’s my wife. Almost.

And the thing is, I’m well aware that I did nothing in particular to deserve her. I’m still not real sure why, all those years ago, she brought that rubber ball to me, when it seems like there must have been lots of more desirable guys than me available to her. But I’m glad she did. I’ve often described how we knew each other pretty well before we ever got to the point of courtship. And that’s what’s most amazing of all to me – she’s told me many times how God told her, before I even proposed to her, “What you see is what you get with him.” She had a pretty good, sober assessment of my character. AND SHE STILL MARRIED ME! That blows me away, and I’m grateful for it every single day I’m married to her.

And even now, after 31 years, I’m still blown away. She knows me way better now than she did back then, and she still throws her life in with mine. For all the clear-eyed, sober appraisal of my character she had when we were courting, there are lots of things, not all of them good, that she’s only learned from living with me for 31 years. And she still stays married to me. Amazing!

“Somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, I must have done something good.”

Simply flat-out amazing. . .

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Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart.  You have made my life immeasurably richer. . .

Happy Birthday, Jen! (and We'll See Y'all in a Week)

Today is Jen's birthday.  Which brings us into the seven months of the year that she and I are the same age, at least as far as integral numbers of years are concerned.  In our family, we are fond of telling each other on our birthdays, "I'm glad you were born."  And I can say with all sincerity that, with the possible exception of my own birth-parents, I am gladder for Jen's birth than any other person on the planet.  I don't even want to contemplate what my life might have been like without her existence.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.  My world is a sweeter, richer place for having you in it. . .

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We're gone to Summer Camp for the coming week, so I'll be incommunicado from Blog-space.  But, just so you have something to remember me by, here's a photo of my friend Jason and me, regaling the campers with our rousing rendition of Loudon Wainright's 'Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road'. . .

(Tie-dye napkin do-rag by Lime)

Yesterday. . .

. . . 2F and I went to Comerica Park, on a muggy and sporadically rainy evening in Detroit (we endured a light shower for 10 minutes or so just before the band took the stage, but there was lightning in the sky all around us for a good part of the evening, and a few drops fell at random points during the show itself), to see Paul McCartney in concert, along with 40,000 or so of our closest and dearest friends.

It was the fourth time I've seen Sir Paul in concert, going back to 1993, when he played the Silverdome (and my best friend's wife was my date).  I saw him with a buddy in '02, at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and Jen and I saw him at the Palace in '05, as part of our Silver Anniversary celebration.  The open-air venue this time was a cool ambience, even including the few spits of rain we had to endure.  During the 10-minute shower above, I leaned over to the guy next to me and wondered if we should break into the 'No Rain!' chant, a la Woodstock.  He smiled at me and said, "Actually, when I was at Woodstock, the rain was much worse than this."  OK, then. . .

I'm just old enough to remember when the Beatles were first on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of '64 (seriously? that was almost 50 years ago?!?), and I followed them into my teens, then Wings through my college years.  At any rate, to a large extent Paul McCartney, and the Beatles more generally, have provided the soundtrack for a large portion of my life.

2F has been a Beatles fan from early on in her life.  When she was in 6th grade, I think, she did an Academic Fair project on the Beatles, complete with a tri-fold board adorned with the Sgt. Pepper album cover (I suppose, if I were a more astute father, I'd have been quicker to recognize her desire to form a connection with her dad; but I did have a lot of fun helping her with it).  So, when Jen and I came home from the concert in '05, having been cut off in mid-'na-na' from such sharing of McCartney's greatness with our daughter as we could manage at the time (I rang her up on my cell phone for the 'Hey Jude' singalong, but an usher saw me and threatened to bounce me from the concert; no further comment in that regard), I promised 2F that, the next time Sir Paul came to town (or heck, within a manageable drive of town), I'd take her with me, so I was duty-bound to fulfill my promise (and don't you wish your duty included going to McCartney concerts?).

We went to the concert  with one of 2F's friends - a young woman who has become one of her best friends and an honorary member of our family, even apart from a shared fondness for McCartney and the Beatles - along with the young lady's mom (who, conicidentally, has actually met - and been photographed with - Hugh Jackman, as her husband is a sometime film-industry hairdresser; please don't hate her, Lime) although their seats weren't by ours.  They were originally going to be joined by another friend, a young man from Scotland, who has also become a close family friend over the course of the past year, but he took ill at the last minute, and couldn't come (he must have been really, REALLY sick); the girl and her mom offered his ticket to 4M, so I got to go to the concert with two of my kids, which was quite cool.

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The band was the same crew Paul has played with for the past 10 years or so, with Paul Wickens on keyboards, Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray on guitars and backup vocals, and Abe Laboriel on drums (and backup vocals; he also provided a bit of visual hilarity during 'Dance Tonight').  It's a tight group, and they really seem to enjoy playing together.

In case anyone is interested, here's the setlist they played last night:

Hello, Goodbye
Junior's Farm
All My Loving
Jet
Drive My Car
Sing the Changes (from his album Electronic Arguments under the pseudonym The Fireman)
Hitchhike (a Marvin Gaye number added just for his Motown friends)
The Night Before
Let Me Roll It (ending with a jam on 'Foxy Lady')
Paperback Writer
The Long and Winding Road
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Let 'Em In
Maybe I'm Amazed
I've Just Seen a Face
I Will
Blackbird
Here Today
Dance Tonight (from his '07 album, Memory Almost Full)
Mrs. Vanderbilt
Eleanor Rigby
Something
Band On the Run
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (you don't think he reads my blog, do you?)
Back In the USSR
I've Got a Feeling
A Day In the Life (ending with 'Give Peace a Chance')
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude

(1st encore)
Lady Madonna
Day Tripper
Get Back

(2nd encore)
Yesterday
Helter Skelter
Abbey Road Medley (Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End)

36 songs in all (which has been pretty standard for him in his recent shows) - 23 Beatles songs, 10 Wings songs, 9 that he's never done live before (at least in front of an American audience), spanning three amazing hours.  I've long thought that his '90 concert (the one chronicled on the CD Tripping the Live Fantastic) was the best of his recent live shows, and I've regretted ever since that I missed it.  But this show was right up there, on a par with the one 21 years ago.  And I can only hope to have anything close to Paul's energy level when I'm 69.

McCartney is a consummate performer and showman.  His concerts have always left me happily satisfied, and yet wanting more at the same time.  Having seen him on multiple occasions over the course of nearly 20 years, it has seemed to me that, as the years pass, he is coming to a greater and greater appreciation of the warm affection in which he is held by his audience; he added a couple singalong numbers (beyond 'Hey Jude') to his setlist this time, but it almost didn't matter - all through the show, we were hearing the band in one ear, and in the other, 40,000 people singing along.  It was a magical evening.

I don't know how many more of these concerts I'll end up attending (heck, I don't know how many more of 'em Paul is gonna play), but every time I start to think that it's becoming 'old hat', I'm just blown away by the one I'm seeing today.  It was an amazing evening; an amazing show by one of the great performers of all time. . .