So I picked the Muppet up from Kindergarten today. It’s a fun thing to do when I am able to. She’s always surprised that I am there, and she is always ready to talk about her day: who she sat next to at lunch (which has the possibility for endless drama on an almost daily basis), what she did at school, what she learned, who her favorite teacher is (which never changes, but she wants me to guess every time and seems genuinely amazed at my almost precognitive ability to guess right every time), and other such important details in the life of a 5 year old.
Truth be told (and every now and again it is here on the Maru) I really enjoy the entire verbal process. It’s her inviting me into her world. I know that she might not be so eager to do so later in life, so I relish it now. Today I got some serious scuttlebutt on the goings on in the kindergarten class. There is all kinds of stuff going on there. The Terry Fox run is tomorrow and the kids are raising money for the Terry Fox Foundation. The Muppet decided that she wanted to raise money for Terry Fox like she did last year. She told the kids this. They were not as impressed as she thought they should be - mostly because they are all doing the same thing. SO, being the Muppet, she felt it necessary to remind them that she raised more money than them last year and would do so again this year.
Heh. Funny, cause last year I was working in an office and I could let her go from cubical to cubical soliciting people who would feel occupationally obligated to help her out. This year, I work from home…
But this would not be something that held her back. She told me that we could make calls and get people to give on the internet. Seriously, my child is 5 and has a pretty good understanding of the vehicles best suited for fundraising. I told her that we would make some calls, but she had to do the entire solicitation. SO she had to be prepared to ask people to sponsor her, and then be ready to tell them what she was doing and WHY she was doing it. She seemed to get the picture, so I called a buddy and asked him if she could solicit him for a fundraiser. I explained in great length that he was welcome to say yes or no because the lesson was learning how to ask and how to be grateful no matter the response.
So after the quick run down, I handed the phone to the Muppet. She said hello and then immediately asked if he would like to support her cause. (I winced a bit because first rule of making an ask is to spend some time establishing rapport with the donor…seriously, everyone knows this and the kid blew right by it.) I could hear his side of the conversation and it went like this:
The Muppet: “Hello. Would you like to support my cause?
Her mark: “Well, what’s your cause?”
The Muppet: “We are raising money for Terry Fox.”
Her mark: “How are you doing that?”
The Muppet: “I am calling people and asking them if they want to support my cause.”
Her mark: “How much are you trying to raise?”
The Muppet: “I am letting people decide how much they want to give.”
Her mark: “What does the money go to?”
The Muppet: “The money goes to help little kids in the hospital who have cancer in their bodies, so they don’t have to die like Terry Fox did.”
Her mark: ” <blink> <blink> “uh, okay…how much do you want?”
The Muppet: “However much you want to give so the kids don’t die.”
Her mark: “How’s $50?”
The Muppet: <pulls the phone away from her ear> “Daddy, he’s giving fifty bucks!!” <puts phone back to ear> “Thank you…daddy will get your money.”
Seriously, this happened over and over for about an hour (though the $50 was the high water mark in single gift size). She told the same story time after time. I asked Ferf if she had coached her on wording, and she assured me that she had not, and that the Muppet had come up with that all on her own.
So she’s running in the Terry Fox run. I am pretty sure she will be the highest fund raiser in the class again. But, if you want to give, you can. Click this link to the Terry Fox National School Run. Where it asks for a participant code, type: APSEQT That’s the Muppet’s page. Donate however much you want so the kids don’t die. The Muppet and Terry Fox will both be grateful.
But to get back to the original point of this story - drama in the classroom.
Where were we???? Oh yes, we were on the way home from Kindergarten and the Muppet is sharing her day with me. She sat next to Emma at lunch because her favorite friend was absent. But that’s okay. Her favorite friend was probably sick…or on vacation. And Emma is nice to sit next to because she chews with her mouth closed. And she doesn’t spit when she talks. Both of which are social skills that are evidently not universally practiced in her class. Then, with absolutely no segue, she mentions that Nate doesn’t like it when everyone in the class looks at him when he gets in trouble. I mentioned casually that maybe he should stop getting into trouble if the looks of others bother him so much. The Muppet seemed to be underwhelmed with my suggestion and gave me a look that I AM CERTAIN she learned from her mother who gives me the same look when she is underwhelmed with suggestions I make. She paused dramatically to give the look and continued on with her story about Nate and his distaste for groups of people looking at him when he gets in trouble. Wanting to be an active listener, I asked what kind of things he did to get in trouble and thereby garner the looks. The Muppet told me that he is usually just silly or does inappropriate things.
Now, to be fair, the Muppet has a vocabulary that is kind of outside the norm for 5 year olds (at least this is what I have been told by others. Personally, I think she has an appropriate vocabulary for a 5 year old, but then she is the only 5 year old I have ever had and thus she is judged against herself in my world - thereby ensuring that she is constantly normal). So when she says that someone does something “inappropriate” I (a) know that she is aware of the meaning of the word and (b) ask a follow up question that you would expect me to: “What kind of inappropriate things does he do?”
Again, I am honestly expecting her to reply with something fairly benign like “forgets to wash his hands before eating” or “cuts in line at the water fountain.” Inappropriate to be sure, but hardly earth shattering. So, when I asked the question it was almost a throw away line. I am driving, she is in the back seat and I simply want her to know that I am listening and engaged with her. So you can understand that I almost drove off the road when she said, “Like when he’s inappropriate with others in the cloak room.”
<blink>
<blink>
<blink>
<remember to breathe>
<stop the trembling in your hands>
<release the death grip on the steering wheel>
<calm your voice before you speak and sound relaxed>
“What do you mean baby girl? What kind of inappropriate things does he do with others in the cloak room?”
<blink>
<blink>
<blink>
<check the clock>
<what’s taking so long to answer?>
<don’t sound pushy>
<don’t panic>
“ahem…Muppet? Did you hear my question?”
“What daddy?”
“I said, ‘What kind of inappropriate things does he do with others in the cloak room?’”
“oh…he talks. You aren’t supposed to talk in the cloak room - it’s inappropriate. He does, and so he gets in trouble, and then everyone looks at him. He doesn’t like that.”
<as feeling returns to my extremities and thoughts of justifiable homicide recede from my consciousness and my heart rate returns to normal>
“yes…I can see that. Wanna listen to the radio for a bit?”
Seriously, we’re like 3 weeks in…I don’t know if my heart can make it through a whole year of this kindergarten drama…And poor Nate has no idea how close to death he came today - somebody was gonna get hurt real bad!
note to self - teach the Muppet another word for “inappropriate”…one that doesn’t illicit such strong emotional responses from little girl’s fathers.
So today is an “anniversary” for me. At least that is what we call it. I have often wondered why we use the term “anniversary” colloquially only to refer to annual celebrations of weddings i.e. wedding anniversary, but we say birthday to celebrate the anniversary of our birth. And we use Christmas to denote the anniversary of the birth of Christ. And we use a length of time in conjunction with “reunion” when we celebrate the anniversary of our graduation from school (like this fall will be my 20th reunion - though I have not attended anything close to 10 others).
For those who pay homage to the great god google I give you this piece of intelligentsia:
An anniversary (from the Latin anniversarius, from the words for year and to turn, meaning (re)turning yearly; known in English since c. 1230) is a day that commemorates and/or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event.
But this day is actually none of the above, but it does commemorate a past event - 12 years ago today my father died much too young. He was 57 years old. He never saw me marry Ferf. He never saw me move to Nepal. He never saw me get dual citizenship. He never got to talk to me about my travels all over Africa and south-east Asia. He never heard me speak exotic languages poorly. He never saw the birth of the Muppet - nor any of the followig growth she has done in the almost 5 years since. He never drank really good scotch with me and talked about my life and my goals and dreams. He never saw me get my CFRE designation or the years of work that went into earning it. He never celebrated my first 7 figure gift that I brought into an organization. He never saw the first house I bought…or the second one for that matter. He never saw me screw up so badly and then pull life out of the ditch (with the help of more friends than I could ever create nicknames for).
Bottom line…he missed a lot. And the list grows every day. I think that is one of the hardest things to get over. He should be 69, about to turn 70 this year. That’s young…young enough to still be alive that’s for darn sure.
He died of cancer over a decade ago. Sometimes I think I am still pissed at him for having the audacity to die. Yes, that is incredibly self-absorbed to the point of bordering on narcissim…I’m comfortable with that. At least I’m self aware. SO many people miss the boat on that one. But not me. I got that going for me. Which is nice.
It is an amzing thing that our subconscious can remember the anniversary of the deaths of loved ones even we don’t consciously think about it. I had a list of things to do today that I didn’t really get through. I just wasn’t feeling it, you know? I couldn’t get in te groove. I felt blaise and weird and out of sorts. I wasn’t depressed but I was far from perky. Then I looked at the calendar and it occurred to me that this was the day that my father had died on. That gives me a complete pass on all things emotional I think. It’s like playing the orphan card (which Ferf and Merf do WAY better than I because they have lost both parents at much younger ages than I lost the one, so in the scheme of things they totally win on this). If I kinds sulk around on the 19th of May and just don’t get a lot done (or at least as much as you or anyone else thinks I should) then I get to play the “my dad died on this day in 1997″ card and you have to back off. It’s like a rule. No, more like a law. A universal law that must be obeyed.
I am lucky in the one respect that my wife and her family totally get what I am going through. Marvin married a girl and BOTH her parents are still alive! It’s like she’s rubbing it in. She can sympathize, but I get the full on empathy. It’s a totally different ballgame.
So here’s the deal. All of you out there with fathers that are still alive. Right now, go….wait!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? Okay. OKay, not RIGHT NOW…let me finish first. Go get a pen and paper, or open your Outlook (or whatever email client you have chosen or opted to accept like mindless sheep because it came installed on your Bill Gates controlled PC - those of you who use Eudora or Thunderbird, you get a pass from that last rant. If you own a Mac, then you get a cookie) and wrote them a letter RIGHT NOW telling them how much you love them and that you appreciate everything they do/have done for you - especially the being alive part, that is more important than you realize, trust me on this one. It doesn’t have to be long, though seriously, if you are balking at this because of the necessary length of said letter, than you do not understand the point behind this and I am going to have to ask you to go stand in the hall for 20 minutes or until you realize what a selfish punk you are - whichever comes first.
Then, call them too. Becaus hearing their voice is something you should do as often as you can. Just because you can. Besides, Fathers Day is coming up. Get a jump on the crowd.
Go…
Go on,
DO IT.
I am going to call them and ask if you did or not. I swear. GO!
If any of you would even remotely self-identify as a loyal or consistent or even semi-occasional reader here, then you are somewhat acquainted with my Uncle Bobby. He is one of my mother’s older brothers with whom I lived one summer after my folks split up and before my momma made the move up to Bivins, TX where we would live my junior year in high school. Anyway, you can refresh your memories of him by reading that previous post. Many of you know that he has been battling with cancer and organ rejection and other such medical issues for a while now.
This morning I got the call that I knew was going to come. Marvin called to let me know that he passed away this morning in his sleep. He had been in the hospital for a stretch recently, and in fact, they had not expected him to come home from there. But true to form, Uncle Bobby is not going to let anyone tell him what to do, so he recovered enough to go home. (Although it was assumed that it was really just to be made comfortable.) His brothers and sisters had a chance to go visit and see him “one last time.” His son and daughters, his grand kids and great grand kids all had that chance. Quite the gift.
Having someone die is never easy. I know. I have had lots of loved ones pass away in my life. We often will try to ease the loss by looking at it from their point of view i.e. Uncle Bobby was quite sick and in both physical and emotional pain and this really is best for him. Or we see them in Heaven in a much happier place, and I know that Uncle Bobby is there now. But all of that notwithstanding, losing someone you love sucks. It hurts. It is hard. The moment of them dying is like a beginning of hard moments that we live through from that point forward. Christmases they are not here for, anniversary dates, momentous occasions that we can’t share directly with them. Each of them is a sharp prick to the heart that is unseen but deeply felt. It seems that my calendar is becoming filled with these memory moments. Make no mistake, every memory of a loved one gone is bittersweet. I love that I have those memories, but it is with some sadness that I enjoy everyone of them. It is with a tinge of longing that I think about every moment that I spent with those I love(d) and a part of me wishes that I could go back in time. I am not really sure what I would do there if I could though. I have been lucky (or intentional enough) so that I have not lost someone AND felt like I haven’t told them I love them or let them know how important they are to me. So going back in time is more complicated for me. It would literally be simply for my benefit, but then I would have to leave everything here to do it, and it begs the question about how long would I stay there, would I make the same choices, and would I screw up the space-time continuum, and multiple other quantum physics issues that I am not as well versed in as I might like to be. Suffice it to say that I just wish I had the people I have lost here with me again.
It would appear that unless a miracle of bail-out proportional sizes appears in the next few hours, I am not going to be able to get back down to TX for the funeral. So, I am left to grieve here. Without the extended family that is so comforting in such times.
And yet, I have to wonder. Times like this force one to think. Deeply. About many things. But today I choose, from among those many things, to think about Uncle Bobby. I chose to remember every smile of encouragement he gave me. I chose to dwell on his words of affirmation that he poured into my life, and the many sentences he spoke to me that all started with “aww hell boy” and ended with a life lesson that helped make me the man I am today. I chose to be thankful for the time I was given to spend with him. I chose to focus on the memories of him singing Marie Laveau because that is something that has brought a smile to my face since I was a kid. I want to spend some time thinking about the man he was and the man he wanted me to be.
Sometimes there are people in your life (some might be family, or some might be friends, or some might be both) who through circumstance and timing speak into your life at a time when you are most susceptible to listening. Call them a mentor or adviser, coach, counsellor, guide, instructor, teacher, trainer, tutor - call them whatever you want. They are people that no matter where in time or space you are. No matter what you are doing or thinking about doing. No matter how foolish you are certain that you are. They are the ones that you know, that you know that you know, believe in you. They are the ones you think about in your heart before you do whatever it is that you are going to do. They are the ones that in your mind you hear tell you that you can and will succeed and give you the courage to try. They are the ones who ignore the facts when you fail and tell you to get up and do it again. They tell you that they have “had worse cuts than that on their eyeball” when you think about giving up. They are the ones who put bourbon in your coke before your mom comes into the room and winks at you and says, “when i was your age, I had a gun in my hands. No reason why you can’t have a drink in yours.” They are the ones who want you to know that they think you are a man before you do. They are like my Uncle Bobby.
Our culture really doesn’t have rites of passage anymore for men. We graduate and wonder if that rolled up piece of paper makes us a man. We get hair on our chest and wonder if that makes us a man. (well, if I had hair on my chest, i would have wondered. Back off on the smirk their mister - grass don’t grow on a playground!) We get married (eventually) and wonder if that makes us a man. We have kids and figure, if I am not a man at this point, I am not sure I’ll ever be one. Seems like other people know you are a man before you do. My Uncle Bobby was the first one to see it in me. He was the first one to talk to me like it, and challenge me like it, to treat me like it. I am not sure I can really explain HOW he did that. He didn’t do anything drastically different than anyone else at the time. It was just different with him. I could, and did, talk to him and sit out and watch the sun go down with him, drink the occasional beer with him, and just see it in his eyes. And that is the single most powerful communication that a boy can have. It is when someone you love and trust gives you that look that you somehow just know. You know that you know that you know. A stake is driven in the ground and some kind of spiritual ley line emanates from it and ties you to that place and that person. Uncle Bobby was that for me. That one place that I knew I was tied to. The place that I would always measure my travels from. The place that everything could be compared to no matter where I went or what I did.
For the rest of my life, no matter what I do (and I plan to do some pretty bodacious things) I will always wonder what Uncle Bobby would do, but I will never wonder what he’d think. And I know that it would start with, “aww hell boy” and end with that look. Thanks for everything Uncle Bobby.
So the Muppet is in pre-school and this week the are doing the Terry Fox run. For those who do not know, Terry Fox is a Canadian hero. The Terry Fox Foundation continues his vision every year by holding Terry Fox runs all over Canada to raise funds for cancer research. I have to admit, it is quite an amazing story, and he has my (and most Canadian’s) complete admiration.
So the Muppet’s school is participating in the run on Friday. The Muppet came home with the paperwork and a pledge sheet and a note that all the students will be running in the event. And so it begins…the love/hate relationship between schools and parents and fundraisers. One would think that I might have a little more patience for this type of thing since I am a fundraiser by profession. But I don’t. Maybe I am offended that all these cute little kids go out and do my job easier and better than I do. Maybe I get torqued that millions of children go out and do fundraising with such ease and carefree freedom. Maybe I am spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I could get hundreds of thousands of kids to go out and raise money for me and can’t seem to come up with a good way to do it…
But I digress. The Muppet came home with the info and absolutely no understanding of what the whole thing was about. Ferf and I talked about it and decided that if they could make 4 year olds go raise money, then we could use this as a teachable moment for her. We figured that since she had lost 3 out of 4 grandparents before she was even born to cancer that a cancer fundraiser was about as good a cause as we could get.
So we sat her down and started to explain the concept of having a cause. That it is something bigger than yourself. That it is something that you give to - time, money, effort, etc. (ok, so maybe we didn’t say etc, because we would have had to explain what etc meant, and that would have been a whole other discussion and I normally try not to rabbit trail - all evidence in this blog to the contrary notwithstanding) She seemed to pick that up pretty well, so we moved on to talking about cancer - which is a topic that she is actually aware of already. Then we talked about inviting others to join you in a cause - specifically through sponsoring you in a run and giving money. This she got really excited about - showing again that she really is my child.
Then we decided that we would let her walk through my office and ask my new friends and co-workers to sponsor her.
But before we did that, I sent an email around to all of them telling them the whole thing and explaining that we wanted to let the Muppet come around. I told them all that we wanted her to learn some life lessons and they were welcome to say yes or no. In fact, that would be great if they said no, so she could learn to deal with rejection too. It was a simple email and I even gave people the option of giving a buck or two, or even the change in their pockets if they felt an unrighteous sense of obligation.
Then came the day that the Muppet showed up at my office. When Ferf called me to say they were in the parking lot, I ran down to meet them. The Muppet came running and jumped into my arms. At that point, I might should have known that the day was going to be different than I expected, because as I put her down she pointed at the door and said (with much enthusiasm) “lets go in there and get some money!!!” I was somehow equitably horrified and proud at the same time - and in equal measure.
So, in we went. We went in and she walked right up to a lady in my office and said (loudly) “Daddy, do you think I can ask her?” I looked over and got a nod and then kneeled down and said, “you bet baby girl.” So the Muppet walked up and put out her hand and said, “Hi, I’m the Muppet. Would you support my cause?” It’s a very strong opening for a 4 year old. She did it every time she talked to someone (all 7 times she talked to someone). The immediate response was always the same question, “What’s your cause?”
At this point, the Muppet did the same routine. I think she realized that she was in the direct spotlight each time she got to that point. It was like watching the birth of a nervous twitch. It was awesome, especially because it was so dang effective. She put both hands in her hair at the scalp and then ran her hands through them to the ends. It was like seeing her channel Farrah Fawcett.
I had to remind myself that she has never seen Farrah - in a movie, on TV or even the poster that I had on my wall as a kid. And yet, there she was tilting her head to the side, giving a rye-smile and running her hands through her hair and twisting the ends, as she said, “Fighting cancer.” This answer always solicited the same follow-up question, “How are you fighting cancer?” They were expecting her to say something about Terry Fox, but that is not the direction she went. She said, “By getting money.” Then we jumped in and asked about the run, and she talked about Terry Fox and his cancer and losing his leg and that he died. It was always really important to her that everyone know that he died. I wasn’t sure why, but it was true, so we let her tell the story her way. Then she usually showed them how she was going to run.
She talked to 7 people, go 100% positive responses and raised about $200. And the funny thing is, she never asked how much anyone gave, nor did she ever really seem to care about the total. She just went looking for her next mark donor.
That night she wrote everyone of them a thank you note and signed it. Then she recorded a thank you and reminded everyone to pay their pledges to me at the office. Which I emailed to them all. The run was Friday and she did the run with a huge smile. She still doens’t really care how much money she raised, but she noticed that there were 3 thank you notes left from the pack of 10 that Ferf bought, so she has taken them to her room. She told us that she was going to keep them so that she had them for her next cause.
I think that on some level, the older she gets, the less secure my job is.
Today I lost my Uncle James to cancer. He was more than a good man. I started writing him a letter when I heard that he was dying. I had hoped to get it to him before he died, but I was too late. So instead, I ended up writing a eulogy. I post it in honor of him.
Dear Uncle James,
I wish I had started writing this letter sooner – like years ago. But we always seem to put off the things that should be most important. And while, I never put off telling you how much l love you, I should have written in down a long time ago. It matters, and I am sorry that I didn’t write this before.
As a kid, it took me a long time to really understand you Uncle James. My branch of the family tree were all talkers. We tend to be unable to keep our mouths shut. If you need an opinion, we are there for you. Heck, it doesn’t even matter if we know what we’re talking about, if we talk long enough we will become convinced of our own correctness on the issue. But you were not a talker. I think I was 12 before I had much of a conversation with you. And I remember that was scary. Not because you were scary, but because I wasn’t sure how to talk to you. See as a talker, I relate really well to other talkers. But you weren’t a talker. You were a doer. You showed people your love. I think that intimidated me, because I was less a doer and more a talker. I wanted to convince people I loved them by telling them over and over again. You simply showed them every day through everything you did.
It took me a while to learn that yours is a much deeper way of communicating. In the competition between word and deed, deed wins every time. (I cannot tell you how disappointed I am that this is true, but I can admit that it is.) Talking is easier. Talking doesn’t really require much of us. But your way of loving takes everything – your time, your mind, your muscles, your resources. You do the very things that we need most, or want most anyway, and all without complaint or comment. You even do the things that takes us most off guard. I remember one of many years that we came to Waco for Christmas. All of us loaded up in the car to go to a Christmas Eve service at church except you. You had to work. So we went and did the Christmas thing and all came home in a bunch after dark. We kids (especially Allen and I) were the first out of the car and into the house. We walked in loudly and excited because the next morning was of course the opening of presents. And all of the sudden, Allen and I both came to a dead halt and stood there with mouths gaping as we watched Santa Clause kneeling under the tree placing presents. I am sure that one of us must have said “Oh my gosh” out loud because “Santa” got up and ran out the front door. We looped back outside the back door hollering at our families that we just saw Santa Clause, but no one could find hide nor hair of him anywhere – except the presents under the tree. For the longest time we were pushed back to the edge of childhood magic thinking that maybe, just maybe…
It never dawned on us until much later that it might have been Uncle James in that Santa suit. And it wasn’t until even much later that I realized that for all intents and purposes it was Santa in that suit. Santa is this legendary guy that makes dreams come true for boys and girls by going out of his way to do something for them without ever saying a word. What part of that doesn’t describe you Uncle James?
You taught me a lot of things over the course of my life….besides how to show love. You taught me the value of words when they are used judiciously. Whenever you said the words, “I love you” I knew that you meant them deeper than I understood at the moment. I knew that whenever you took the time to talk to me (or anyone for that matter) your ideas and thoughts were not given with little or no thought behind them. You chose words carefully and they were salted with wisdom and strength that few of us will ever achieve ourselves.
You taught me that no matter how cheesy I thought they were, the inherent values that were found in westerns made them worth watching. And that as long as the Lone Ranger continued to ride, all of us were better off for it. I spent so many hours in front of the TV with you watching westerns (for the longest time because I was afraid to ask you to turn it to cartoons even though I KNEW you would like them better if you gave them a chance) but mostly because sitting with you in silence watching them somehow made me feel connected to you and even when I was young, that was important to me. It felt like we connected more by not saying anything for a couple of hours, and then eating pimento cheese sandwiches on fluffy white bread with cheesy poofs, then we ever could have nattering on about whatever was going on in the world. Plus, doing that always made me feel better about myself. I was a better person for having spent time with you.
You taught me not to undervalue things. This lesson came later in life and at my own expense – literally. I remember the annual garage sale that I sold a bunch of my stuff at right after Ferf and I got married. We were trying to thin out our “stuff” and decided to join in the fun that was the annual garage sale. I brought all my stuff and immediately solicited mom and Aunt Nita’s help in pricing the stuff. They marked everything “to ensure it would sell” and I went along with that mindset. To be fair, it did all sell. In fact I think you bought 90% of it the night before. And then you put it all back out on the tables with prices 50-100% higher than I had sold them to you. And, of course, it all sold. I was happy that it sold, but very depressed that “my money” was in your pocket. But as we started to leave, you pulled me aside and gave me all that money and more and made me promise not to tell mom and Aunt Nita, because you said I should have it as a newly married kid. Then you told me never to let the women price my stuff at a garage sale and hugged me and told me you loved me. But I already knew.
And, you taught me the value of wheat pennies. I know that they are, each one of them, worth somewhere between a dime and a quarter. I know this because you would always pay me that much for them. I spent a good portion of my childhood searching for these coins. It always seemed that there were lots of them, but over time I have found fewer and fewer of them. I always figured that you had simply cornered the market on them and that most of the ones in existence belonged to you. But I kept looking anyways. In fact, if you look in my bedroom right now, I have a jar of change and next to it is a special cup with nothing but wheat pennies in it. I haven’t sold you a penny in years, but I keep watch for them anyways because I know they mean something to you. And that is reason enough for me to keep looking for them.
I know that we are not going to get to spend much time together here pretty soon. Last time I was in Texas, we made sure that we stopped in to see you. I knew then that it might be my last time to see you on this side of heaven. And I am so glad that I did. Like always, it was less about saying and more about doing. But I did tell you how much I loved you anyways, and you told me too. And I gave you a wheat penny for the last time – for free even.
Uncle James, I hope that I can one day be the man you always were. I might not ever be able to do as much as you did for people, and Lord knows that I will always talk more than you ever did. But somewhere in the middle of talking and doing are the wheat pennies of life – the important parts where we know that we love each other no matter what. You always knew the value wasn’t in the pennies, it was in the connection we had by looking for them cause it gave us a reason to always think of each other no matter where we were. I will always continue to look for the wheat pennies.
So let me start by wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. American Thanksgiving that is. The day that gluttony is overlooked and football is the TV de jour (after the Macy’s Day Parade of course). It was by all accounts, a pretty good Thanksgiving this year. The food was good (I assume). The family was all together (well, I couldn’t make the trek to TX, but everyone else in my bloodline did). AND the Cowboys won. Convincingly. 10-1 for the first time in their illustrious history. Not altogether a shabby day. Plus, everyone south of the 49th parallel had the day off too.
But not everyone found as many reasons to be all celebratory and thankful today. Ferf and Merf and ScottyBear were all dealing with the odd fact that this year Thanksgiving fell on the anniversary of their mom’s death. She died of cancer on this date back in 1991. 16 years ago today. That is a rough reality. They were all mostly children, with Ferf being the oldest and away at law school at 17. ScottyBear and Merf were in high school and elementary school respectively.
As anyone who has gone through the devastating loss of a close loved one (especially a parent, spouse or sibling) knows, grief is a unique beast that comes and goes almost cyclically over the course of time. But anniversaries are always hard. Even if you don’t realize the anniversary is coming up - and this will happen too - your mind and body never forgets. Inexplicable sadness and depression can sneak up on you when everything is seemingly going great and only when you stop and look at a calendar do you realize that the anniversary is coming up quickly. Our subconscious is always keeping track of such things - like a little bastard with a photographic memory that always won the spelling contests in middle school and knew the frickin answers whenever the teacher asked a question. You know the one, they sat near the front of the class like some kind of keener and silently willed the teacher to ask a question, any question really, because they knew all the answers. They went home and read the dang encyclopedia at night. (for those of you too young to know what an encyclopedia is…well, it’s like the great grandparent of wikipedia, but nowhere near as cool) Anyways, I think you are picking up what I’m putting down with this metaphor. Subconscious memories are a biatch.
So to have that memory come rearing its funk nasty head on Thanksgiving of all days, well that just sucks. I mean, if it falls on any other major holiday you become, over time, kinda calloused about it. It happens every year. You know it does, and you adjust and deal with it. But Thanksgiving is the one freaking “major holiday” that is all over the freaking calendarial map. (yes, I said calendarial. I turned a noun into an adjuective by adding -ial and in doing so invented a word. Feel free to use it.) (and on another note. How the hell do we know which holidays are “major”? Who the crap decided that” And what metric is being used to make said determination?? I don’t even know. But it is quite common knowledge that Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are kind of the big three “major” holidays. Valentines Day is up there, but it sucks for so many people (as I noted with much wit last year right here on the Maru in a classic post that I suggest you go back and read again for the first time). St. Patrick’s Day is an excuse to say “kiss me I’m Irish” and drink green beer on purpose. 4th of July is obviously HUGE in the States, but still not really “major”. Presidents’ Day is barely a blip on the radar - it’s more like a planned teachable moment for middle school social studies classes. Halloween is a sugar fest that provides reason for older kids to act all a fool and cause mischief. Then we digress into things like “secretary’s day” and “take you kid to work day” and any number of other lesser holidays. But the BIG THREE are pretty constant. It’s like ranks of mythological deities. Major gods and lessor gods. Which is also kind of stupid. If you were going to go all mythological, why the hell would you bother to worship a “lessor god”? If you had to choose between Thor (who is no doubt totally cool) and say Zeus, who doesn’t pick the cool guy’s dad. That’s how we treat holidays. Well, sure I could do something special for Labour Day - but I’m saving up for Christmas! Labour Day is like a red headed stepchild in the holiday family. Stick with the blood relatives in the holiday family.)
Wow, I really digressed there…but I feel better about it, how about you? So anyway, before I so rudely interrupted myself, we were talking about Thanksgiving being all over the calendarial map. And therefore if you have any difficult date that nips at your unconscious mind that falls in the latter half of November then you run the risk of it falling on Thanksgiving one sucky year, and that, my loyal reader(s) is what happened to my ever lovin’ wife’s family this year. Kinda shitty I must say. Now I never met the matriarch of her clan. In fact it was her death that brought Ferf back to the States and let her meet me and put us on our current path of marital bliss, but I often wish I could have talked with her just once. I think she and I would have gotten along famously. (and not just because I am so damn lovable.) I think many of the things that I love so dearly about Ferf came from her mom. I just think that way. So losing her and then having that remembrance happen on the day that we all set aside to be thankful is somewhat difficult. In fact, Ferfy is lying on our marriage bed right now, three sheets to the proverbial wind having enjoyed a wonderful bottle of wine from Blasted Church vintage 2003 feeling much better than she did before we corked that Blasted Church. (I love using the term “blasted church” in a way that has nothing to do with religion, and yet sounds like I am taking church in vain, even though i am not. It makes me smile inside, just a little)
But, in true Ferf fashion, she taught me once again a huge life lesson from this thing (not the drunk from a bottle of wine with a crazy straw that she stole from my daughter part). Yesterday, a lady she works with lost her husband in a drowning accident while they were on Vacation in Mexico. They have two young children, and in fact the youngest is not even a year old. I cannot imagine the devastation. But Ferf immediately wrote her a letter that I am going to quote now. The wisdom she put on paper is beyond anything I could ever hope to do, but the amazing thing is that she put it in an envelope and put it in a file to mail to the lady in 3-6 months (she sent a short card of sympathy now). But she knows that what she is saying will take time to even hear, but it is truth in the raw.
She wrote:
…I reach out to you today out of my knowledge of grief rather than my knowledge of your specific circumstances.
I now understand that grief is not linear, but it is cyclical. The shock, horror, anger, loneliness, and deep sorrow comes and goes throughout life. I still feel abandoned when I cannot pick up the phone and ask my mother for parenting tips, I still expect my parents to be sitting at the Christmas dinner table, and I still experience sorrow when I reach a milestone in life that they can not physically rejoice with me.
And yet, grief can be an amazing gift as well. Our wisdom is mined in the dark places in life, and you now have an intimate understanding of a side of life that we, as a culture, prefer to avoid. Certainly, you will understand the pain of another widow, but you will also understand the pain of everyone who loses that which is closest to their heart. And this knowledge will be an amazing gift that you can bequeath to these people.
But I know this to be true too – you will be happy again. There will be a time when you can experience joy to heights which you have never felt before because of the very pain that you feel right now. The intensity of this grief will lessen over time, and you will be able to smile and laugh and live without a constant ache.
I realize that you have an outpouring of support right now – it might even be a bit overwhelming. But if you ever need someone to scream at 6 months, a year, two years, five years down the road, please know that I will always be available.
And that dear people is why my wife is so much better at life than I am. She gets it in ways that those of us who weren’t orphaned in childhood probably never will. I love her for that, and yet do not envy her. But I am thankful for her. And even selfishly thankful that she does understand. That is why Thanksgiving this year is a mixed day.
Luckily, tomorrow is just Friday. And November 23rd doesn’t hurt so bad.
Allow me to begin with voicing my disappointment on the volume of comments on my last post. Let me be clear that those who did respond are obviously not contextual to that comment of course - it goes without saying, though I find that more and more often that which goes without saying is in desperate need of being said. That notwithstanding, I had hoped for some more stories and at least one attempt at an explication of the lyric of the song I posted. How many of you had even heard of 2nu, much less heard them? That particular song holds many fond memories for me personally. How could it not??
So Monday morning I went to the hospital and for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, went under the knife of a plastic surgeon. I know…plastic surgeon. Just the name conjures up images of eye-lifts and botox and face lifts and collagen injections and other fun things. I went in for none of those - I had a boob job. I kid I kid - but my google search ratings just went through the roof. For those who remember my lovely story of having a cancer cut off my nose, I pick up the trail that was left cold those weeks ago…the pathology report came back with a yes and a no. Yes, it was indeed cancer as we thought AND No, we did not get it all. In fact we somehow completely overlooked that other cancer on the other side of your nose when we went ditch digging in your schnoz. So, they sent me to a plastics guy to do some serious renovations on my face. I got there and he looked at me and said, “yeah, that’s gotta come off and I see she didn’t get all of the other one - wonder how deep I ought to go?” Seriously, he “mused” this out loud while I am sitting there in front of him. “Hey Doc - I’m right here and you didn’t think that in your head!!!’
So he gets the injection ready to numb my face and says, “I guess since you had that first one worked on you already know that this part is gonna hurt pretty good huh?” To which I replied, “well, not really, my doctor told me that if you know what you’re doing it should never hurt - and when she did it there was no pain. Are you telling me that you don’t know what you’re doing?” It was at this point that I began to realize that Doc Plastic had no sense of humor. He gave me the intellectual equivalent of “Meh” and poked the needle through my nose and into my throat. Then told me he’d be back when I was frozen.
I am not kidding about the depths to which he plunged that syringe. Not only did my whole nose and all surrounding tissue go numb, but my whole top lip and all of my upper front teeth were dead too. He came back in and I said, “you just doing the nose or is there a root canal included in this, cause my whole front bumper is numb!?” He smiled and said, “I wish I was doing dental surgery, that’s where the real money is.” Riiiiiiight doc, cause you plastics guys are hurting in the pocketbook huh? Anyway, trying to bring some levity to the moment (more for me than him really, cause I don’t think he was nervous at all - nothing was getting cut off his face and he still had total feeling in all his extremities) I asked, “so Doc, when you’re done - am I going to look like Brad Pitt?” Not that Brad Pitt is the end all be all - I wouldn’t leave my wife for him or anything, but some people do find him attractive if you’re into that type of thing. But he again gave me what I came to think of as his patented patronizing smile and said “not while I’m getting paid by universal health care.” It was then that I realized that I was sitting in a room with a guy who was seriously taking issue with his pay scale - something I have no authority over. I thought about sending one across the bow like “yeah, I bet that top tax bracket is a real bitch come March huh?” Or, “you guys have a union to fight your battles for you? something like the Plastics Union for Surgical Specialist Yuppies?” But then I remembered - him got knife, me got nothing. So I smiled and gave a socially polite chuckle - the verbal equivalent of a golf clap. Then he laid the cloth over my face. You know the one. Don’t you watch Grey’s Anatomy or ER or House or Scrubs or St Elsewhere or Quincy or Chicago Hope or friggin M.A.S.H.? Geez, okay it’s the cloth that they drape over you so only the part they are supposed to cut shows through:
So the hole in the middle is where my poor nose stuck through. Dr. Plastic then began to cut open my nose and talked about things like (1) he’s from New Brunswick and (2) It was one of the original provinces to join Confederation in 1867.
At this point I am thinking to myself - Look turd, I moved up here when I was in my 30’s so I didn’t HAVE to go to school up here and learn all this useless kind of shite. I am from Texas - one of the original states to not give a crap about New Brunswick, Old Brunswick or Confederation - The Confederacy not withstanding. If it were not for the fact that you are in the process of something that could very well disfigure me, I would tell you to piss off. But what I said was, “huh. How long you been out here?” This was fairly surreal for the following obvious reasons:
As previously stated I am from Texas not giving a shite still applies
I will never see this guy again, does it matter how long he’s been here? Am I planning appropriate follow up questions like “do you like it out here” or do you miss whatever there is to miss in NB” or “what’s the most statistically significant demographic difference between the provinces” or even some non-question follow up like “cool.”
There is a sheet with a hole in it draped over my head and I cannot actually see the guy I am (and I use the term loosely) conversing with
While I am “conversing” with Doc Plastic, he is literally cutting an tearing cancerous flesh from my face
I cannot feel a dang thing in my teeth and I am talking like a teenager with an “Australian accent” whose parents are in total denial about my need for a speech-language pathologist
I am totally awake in a surgical ward while some New Brunswicker with a poor sense of humor and a monotone quality to his voice talks to me as he slices me open
His friggin cell phone rang like 6 times during the course of the surgery with EACH AND EVER ONE eliciting the same response from him: “I just learned how to text message last weekend”
I was literally making this list up while this was going on, actually mentally writing the eventual blog post in the midst of his soliloquy about his geographic origins
Eventually he got around to doing the stitches on the first area, and I politely mentioned that I could indeed feel the prick of the needle every time he poked me while doing the sutures. He explained that he was almost done and it would hurt worse to re-freeze than to just hurry through the stitches. I semi-nodded because that made some sense to me - until he took the stitches out 3 times because he “wasn’t satisfied with them”. I reminded my goldfish about the wearing off of the freezing and he said “I’ll hurry.” Finally he got to the other side of my nose where he would be re-doing the work of my family doctor. As he made the first incision, I raised my head ever so slightly and said “You just gonna hurry though this too, or can I get a little somethin-somethin for the pain?” He seemed genuinely surprised that I could feel the blade and with some unspoken shoulder shrug, gave me a enough freezing agent to give me frostbite. Then he started whistling and cutting me. I wanted so badly to whistle with him, but alas, I was physically unable to perform since I couldn’t feel my mandibles or tongue and I think my nose was running but I couldn’t be sure without asking and there is just no way to make that question un-awkward. So I resigned myself to mental gymnastics - and I am happy to tell you that I showed great promise and surprising dexterity.
I finally was released back into the wild and I drove home to find my wife somewhat shocked and lovingly telling me that I looked like a (and I quote) “middle earth troll”. And just for reference:
This is a LOTR Middle Earth Troll. And she was somewhat right. There was maybe a barely noticeable familial resemblance. 3 days, 2 swollen shut eyes and a serious jonsing for pain medication later - I look much more like me again. A “I was in a bar fight and caught a beer mug right between the eyes” me, but me none-the-less. Not quite the Brad Pitt look everyone talks about, but I am fairly happy with the me I have seen in the mirror for a while. It is nice to have him back.
On Wednesday I go to the doctor for one of those routine visits. She’s a swell lady who got her degree in Scotland and is the stereotypical Scot. Which is good for me cause they are “call a spade a spade” type folks, much like me. Though I am not aware of any Scottish roots in my family. Though lets be honest, after you go back a few generations - you really have no idea. Sure some folks trace lineage back to Adam (or cro-magnon man in some people’s cases. Though in yet another fit of politically correctness we no longer use the term Cro-Magnon, we now use the term ‘anatomically modern humans‘. I can only figure that this is a direct result of a lobby group that sprung up in light of the insurance commercials.
Where was I? Oh yes, genealogy. I know for a fact who my parents were (at least they have convinced a lot of people of it and forged some good documentation if they are fooling me - though at times I do question if Marvin and I are actually blood related…) and based on that assumption of truth, I know who my grandparents and even my great grandparents were. After that though, you are really just taking stuff on blind faith. My wife and her sister once got into the whole genealogy thing. They traced their lineage all the way back to Robert the Bruce - King of Scotland:
Personally, I want to go on record that I see no family resemblance at all. But, that not withstanding, they got to acting all pretentious that they were of royal blood. It was at this point that I felt compelled to save them from the impending, disastrous ending of relationships with all their friends that this would cause, by gently pointing out that just because an early king of Scotland, whose legal and moral claim to the throne was tenuous at best, got sauced one night and knocked up some waif woman behind the tavern who then gave birth to one of his potentially many bastard sons and that spawn of a drunken roll in the hay is related to you after dozens of generations does not make you royal. In fact, it’s a pompous way of relating the age old reasoning behind the “friends don’t let friends drive half naked, post-pubescent ragamuffins home in their horse drawn carts drunk” advertisements that were posted all over the late middle ages in greater Saxony. There, now that I have confessed to the world about my wife’s illegitimate great great great great grandfather, I can go on. At least with this post.
As I was saying, my doctor is Scottish. She calls a spade a spade.
This is a spade:
Of course this is also a spade:
As is this:
So maybe there is something lost just in calling a spade a spade, but that’s what she does. And when I went to see her on Tuesday, she looked at me and said, “Why don’t you lay down so I can surgically remove that from your nose.” Which is about the emotionally sensitive equivalent of Uncle Buck’s famous line - “Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! ”
But, being the semi-obedient person I am…at least towards people in authoritative positions who speak with forthrightness while holding a razor-honed scalpel in their dominant hand…I laid down and then asked, “what are you talking about?” To which she replies, “Well, that’s a cancerous growth and I am going to get rid of it as it’s dumb to die of things that are treatable.”
Now, I do want to say that her logic is sound there, and while I understood what she wassaying, I am not entirely sure that she realized what she had said. And while under normal circumstances, I am one of the first to sit up and nit pick the improper usage of English, I was not entirely sure that she didn’t realize what she had said, AND I gently remind you of the aforementioned scalpel. Therefore, I stay in the prone position and kept my smart ass comments to myself, figuring that worst case scenario I could at least share them with you my loyal reader(s).
She then step up to the plank of wood with issue paper on it that she is euphemistically calling a “surgical suite” and looks down at me. And I would be remiss here if I didn’t insert the word LOOMS into the story, because when a person in a uniform (whatever, doctor’s coats are uniforms) stands over you and looks down at you, they are looming. It is the very definition of the word:
loom verb, intr loomed, looming
1. To appear indistinctly and usually in some enlarged or threatening form.
Thesaurus: rise, tower, take shape, appear.
Form: loom over someone (often)
2. Said of an event: to be imminent, especially in some menacing or threatening way.
Thesaurus: overshadow, threaten, menace, hang over, hover, impend.
Form: loom over someone (often)
See - she was indubitably looming. Anyways, she looms over me with a hypodermic needle full of what I hope is either a local anesthetic or a hallucinogenic drug, and says, “once I freeze it you won’t feel it when I cut it out or stitch you up. But the needle is gonna hurt like hell, and I am sorry about that.” Again - the spade thing. I convey to her in a blur of English and a foreign language I picked up in Africa that only sounds to the untrained ear like whimpering but is really a very highbrow form of communication that I appreciated her being sorry about the pain she was about to inflict. I tried to explain that I have a medical condition that can best be described as an allergic reaction to pain that causes uncontrollable twitching (not to be confused with flinching) and eye watering (not to be confused with crying). She said that it was not tha uncommon a condition and she had dealt with people with similar conditions in the past. She did note that usually it can be dealt with the promise of a Popsicle afterwards, but I informed her that over time I had built up an immunity to that particular treatment and we would need to look at a new generation of medical or at least “medicinal” remedies. Wanting to deepen her affinity to me before she eviscerated my nasal cavity, I went with the cultural route and suggested something in a single malt prescription. That did induce a sly smile from her. But she then proceeded to fulfill her promise in a way that no one every has before in my life. People often say they will do things and then not really live up the the expectations (like prom nights and such) but not my doctor. She said it would hurt like hell and I’ll be darned if I didn’t actually feel the flames of hades and Satan himself speared my nose over and over with his nasty little pitchfork. I swear that I could feel the river Styx pooling around my buttocks, that or I pissed myself, either way it was not the most important thing on my mind at the moment. There is something incongruous in the concept that one should be hurt that badly in order to make pain go away. The paradox was not lost on me, in fact I asked her about it, but I realized afterwards that I had done it completely in the African language I spoke of earlier and it was obvious that she was not fluent. She just smiled patronizingly. Then she began to strip mine my nose.
While she cut, dug, pulled, sniped and otherwise carve out flesh from my face (once the stitches heal I will be able to tell for sure if she engraved her initials into my nose, for know I can only assume) she assured me that this was most likely basal cell carcinoma and that it was considered to be a benign form of cancer. (Normally this is where I would have been quite the smart ass about “benign cancer” being an oxymoron like crash landing or student teacher or Clinton’s monogamous relationship or Bush’s foreign intelligence or Microsoft Works. But ti e honest all I heard was carcinoma blah blah blah when the freezing wears off it’s gonna hurt like hell again blah blah blah.) There is a reason for this -my wife’s parents both died of cancer, my dad died of cancer, and then there is the fact that it’s cancer.
I did do some research though and it turns out that if you are gonna have cancer - which I do not recommend - then basal cell is the kind you “want”. Skin cancer is divided into two major groups: non-melanoma and melanoma. Basal cell carcinoma is a type of non-melanoma skin cancer, and is the most common form of cancer in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, 75% of all skin cancers are basal cell carcinomas. SO I am in the top 75%, which in Canada is almost an “A” in school (it’s a B+ actually which is nice cause in the schools I went to as a kid it was a solid “D”) AND the potential for it to return is about 1%. So rest easy my passengers on the good ship Maru, your cap-i-tan will be steering this vessel for quite some time.
I went to work the next day with the nasty looking blood crusted stitches holding a hole in my nose together and walked into staff meeting. I was about 5 minutes late and everyone turned to make smart ass comments to me and their eyes were immediately drawn to my nose and the obvious trauma it had endured since they had seen me last about 12 hours earlier and they stammered out…”uhhh, what happened to your nose?”
I thought about feigning ignorance and running to the bathroom to look in the mirror and letting out a blood-curdling scream, but I thought better of it. I thought about telling them that I had been attacked by a crazed druggie who was tripping out and thought that I had stolen his nose and tried to get it back, but I thought better of it. I though about just telling them the truth, but I thought better of it. I looked down and said, it was a home nose-piercing kit, the damn thing said it was safe!!! Then I sat down and opened my notebook to start the meeting. Then I told them it was cancer and nothing to worry about. Usually I would have milked this kind of thing for some sympathy, but I had work to do, I didn’t really want a day off and well, I take this kind of thing a little to seriously to take it that seriously. (I know that doesn’t make sense on the surface, but if you lose enough people in your life to cancer, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Until then, just nod you head somberly like you understand and say “mmmmmmm”. And if you crease your forehead just a little, it really completes the effect and passerby-ers will think you very wise and rich in life experience.)
So while my shnoz might not be a pretty as it once was - I’m still sexier than most people (relax of course I don’t mean you) and I got sympathy sex that night from Ferf too. So the whole thing wasn’t a total downer. I got that going for me…which is nice.
