It was the 6-month checkup. It felt normal, and routine. Like going to the dentist. I drove my mother to the doctor’s appointment in Jacksonville. It was raining, and she worried about the “squaw line” coming across the state as if it was a band of radioactive storms sent to wipe out mankind. “Do you know how to drive in a squaw line?” she said. It was funny, worrying about something else for a change. Could it have been 6 months already? Six months since this very same doctor told her that even though it looked like all the cancer cells had been removed during surgery, chemotherapy was needed to mop up possible stragglers. I can’t remember the last time I had the wind knocked out of me. But this did the trick. Six months on the wildest, bumpiest ride I’ve ever experienced. Country-road-with-bad-shocks bumpy. She started chemo in September. She fell in the driveway the next day and broke her hip. She fell again a week or so later and fractured a knee. Six months of metal rods and rehab. Social workers and anti-nausea medicines. ER visits, wheelchairs, bone marrow shots, white blood cell counts, handicap rails … It’s easy to lose perspective while you’re in the midst of it. You need a moment of reflection, when you’re free from it all, to put it in context. When you can look back and say, “Whooeeee!” only to realize “Whooeeee!” doesn’t do it justice. You need a word that a […]
Here come the big kid teeth
In 10 years of parenthood, I can think of only two things I could do without: 1) diapers (luckily long ago in our past) and 2) losing teeth (unfortunately still with us, and getting bigger. And badder. And more terrifying with every one that pops free.) I think I’ve been a fairly good parent. I think I’ve met some obstacles and challenges that I handled well. But this teeth thing is testing me. It’s one of the few things about having a kid that gives me the squirms. “Hey dad,” my daughter says, tapping me on the arm. “Is this tooth loose?” “What’s that you … OH MY GOOSE-BILLED PLATYPUS, WHAT IS THAT?!?!” I am met by the most horrible sight I have ever seen: a tooth seemingly dangling in mid-air as my daughter presses her wide-open mouth into my eyeball. I scream. I clutch my head. On occasion I faint. Losing teeth used to be easy. They were little baby looking things. More like Chiclets than actual teeth. Tiny, cute, no harm to anyone. They got a little loose and then they fell out. She put them under a pillow and money showed up! But these days, my daughter is dropping boulders out of her mouth — the big boys. Molars and eye teeth. Maybe a small meteorite — possibly the one that got the dinosaurs. They don’t just fall out. They’re dramatic about it. They bleed profusely. “Does this tooth have a little blood on it?” my daughter will ask, […]
Alexa, and the high-tech, low-tech collision
“Alexa, play ‘Party Rock’ please,” said my daughter. Immediately the little black cylinder on the breakfast bar lit up in blue and started emitting — or spitting … The song sounds like drunken cats mewing — music into my living room. This is the future. Our voice-activated devices do what we want. Our houses are automated and our revolutionary machines are at our every beck and call. They do fantastic, incredible things … like repeat the “Party Rock Anthem” over and over until my brain becomes tapioca pudding. High tech. It was followed by me yelling over the surging music and frantic dancing: “Hey y’all, I’m gonna’ go outside and set some rat traps in the chicken run.” I was transported from the future to 1886. The voice-activated, revolutionary device snickered at me. I was about to use something that doesn’t listen, even though I begged it not to snap my finger off. I baited it with chicken kibble and ran screaming for the door. Low tech. This is my life. Where high tech and low tech collide. Future-man and old timey farmhand rolled into one. How did it come to this? The little black cylinder arrived for Christmas. It’s an Amazon Echo that goes by the name “Alexa.” Part music player, part personal assistant, she will tell jokes when you ask her, give the weather, advise on stock picks, predict presidential elections and pretty much mishear everything I say. “Alexa, please play traditional jazz,” I tell her. She replies, “Playing classic […]
Goodbye to the holiday snacks
I went searching for the holiday chocolates. The peanut brittle. The pecan pie. The $75 worth of exotic cheeses that my aunt had brought to town (inexplicably, she forgot the crackers!) The candied nuts. The salami with the peppercorn coating. The last edible vestiges of a bygone holiday season. Anything. I would have taken anything. But the cubbards were bare. The snack drawer famished. The refrigerator shelves like salt flats. The holidays? Officially over. The holiday snack bonanza had gone. It isn’t when the Christmas tree comes down that I rue the end of the holidays. Not the Christmas lights getting boxed up or the absence of Christmas music played from sunrise to sunset. (Actually, my daughter still does that.) But when the holiday snack well runs dry, the reality sinks in, and I sink into a deep, dark depression. “There’s nothing to eat for dessert,” I grumbled pathetically to my wife one night, exasperated. “Have we been robbed?!?” “You’re used to the Christmas cornucopia,” she replied. “Now it’s a wasteland. You’re going to have to cope. Detox. Get some professional help. Maybe eat a carrot.” A carrot! What kind of answer was that? For weeks, I had lived like a Christmas king, feasting on teeth-rotting and waistline-expanding delicacies. Now I was ruined. This wouldn’t do. I couldn’t go back. My eyes darted around wildly as I tried to make sense of it. A “wasteland?” No, there had to be something. I stood at the door of the pantry, trying […]
Resolutions … I should have made
I guess there’s still time. You know, to make some resolutions I should have made. The big ones. The serious ones. The ones that didn’t make the cut. Because I resolved to do little things instead. Like drink more carrot smoothies or not blame my daughter for the cookie crumbs I left on the kitchen counter. (In my defense, it’s a 50-50 shot they’re hers!) But I go with the easy ones. Don’t you? There’s still time, though. Time to resolve to do the big ones, like these: • Click on fewer “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” blog posts with theories about the movie. I’m a child of “Star Wars,” which means I’ve been totally hooked on the new film. Addicted is more like it. If anything comes up on the computer with “Star Wars” on it — “What kind of underwear do First Order stormtroopers wear?” — I click on it. And suddenly two days of my life are gone and I have a Jed-length beard. I need to realize it will be two years before the next movie and that no one on the Internet can tell me if Rey’s dad is really Chewbacca. No more links! • Stop looking for new house projects. Every time I finish a major job around the house, I commend myself for a bad job done poorly and pledge to never take on another do-it-yourself disaster AGAIN. This pledge lasts all of 13 seconds before I notice some wood rot and think, “Hmm, maybe I should […]