Okay, I'm still here! I realized it's been nearly a half year since I've posted. A ton has gone on, including my son moving in with me after his mother threw him out in May after a Mother's Day celebration (holy irony, Batman!) I've been working like a fiend, trying to catch up financially-- a break coming soon regarding that. And I've been dealing with the deaths of three of my favorite people. I started a huge post trying to cover it all, but realize that I need to take it in smaller pieces. I've missed blogging, and have promised myself to start doing it regularly again. More to come...
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
A Year In
Where do I begin?
A couple of weeks ago, I realized that I badly missed blogging. There has been so much going on-- being a first year nurse, getting my oldest kid off to college, working crazy amounts of overtime. And dealing with the death of a friend.
So where do I begin? Let me start at today-- and a year ago. Just about a year ago, I was turned loose to do patient care on my own. Yes, I had finished nursing school. Yes, I had passed the NCLEX. Yes, I had finished the two months of training for the company I worked for, learning the ins and outs, ups and downs of dialysis. But I had a lot to learn. I thought a lot about one of my first days actually working as a nurse a year ago-- a really shitty work day-- and today. More on that later.
So, in May, right after they celebrated Mother's Day, my son and my ex got into an argument. It ended with her telling him to move out and move in with me.
Needless to say, both my son and I were very happy about it.
There were some problems to work out. The main one was how he was getting to school. His high school was just a couple of miles from my ex's house-- he would take her car, about a ten minute drive. I live about eight miles from his school, and did not have an extra car. We decided that since it was only about three weeks, that he could take the bus. It was two buses, and took nearly an hour, but it beat renting an extra car for those three weeks.
At the end of May, he graduated from college. My mother drove up from Tennessee for it. At the graduation, the parents sat with their sons (my son went to an all-boys school), sitting on either side of them. It was weird-- I'd spent so little time with my ex. When I met her, she was 24 and I was 31. Now I was 50 and she 45. We both have a lot of grey. It was funny to see him between us; I'm six feet tall, very white and lived it up a lot in my life. She's five foot one, Asian and didn't drink and only dated a few people. And there was the result of that union in between us.
He got a summer job selling home security systems door to door. He did quite well at it. He learned a lot about people through both his interactions with the homeowners he talked to and through his co-workers. I also realized that after years of letting out a little rope at a time, I was about to cut the ties.
In August, he asked me to talk to my ex; she wanted to drive him to his college, in Buffalo, New York, but he wanted me to go as well. I talked to her, and told her I would drive and pay for gas, etc. She agreed.
It was really strange spending 10 hours in the car with she and him. The first couple of hours, she and I caught up on family. And then had not much more to say. I realized that there were good reasons I left 15 years ago.
There were a few activities that weekend that we all participated in. I met two of his three roommates; they seemed like very nice guys. I kidded my son that he had the "diversity room;" he's a mix of Asian and white, and his roommates are African-American, Latino and White. I kidded him that the college recruiters would drag prospective students by his room to point out the diversity at the school, which actually appears to be about 90% white.
When it came time to leave, I had to drop something off for him that my ex had forgotten to give him. He came down from his dorm room to get it, but I could tell that he was ready for me to leave. It was time.
My ex, to my relief, had planned to fly back home. I didn't have to deal with her alone for ten hours, and had some time to decompress. My wife had pointed out that this-- and another thing-- were going to be really hard on me. And she was right. The other thing, just about a week before this, was the death of one of my closest friends.
My first day of my new job, August 7 last year, we gathered in the corporate office in a suburb of Chicago. Over the first couple of days, I gravitated to Neal, who it turned out lived near me. Another guy, Brent, annoyed me at first. He was way too eager.
I came to realize that the reason Brent was so over-eager was that he was extremely proud to be a nurse. He's struggled, like I did, to go to nursing school, paying for it himself like I did.
A couple of weeks into our training, he and I were at a hospital that our unit was covering. It was annoying. For me, it was a nearly 50 mile drive. For Brent, who lived in the in the suburbs to the south of Chicago, it was an 85 mile drive. At the end of the long day-- we worked about 15 hours-- we walked out to the parking lot and got in our cars. I was about to drive off, but noticed that he had gotten out of his car and put the hood up. Something was wrong.
I turned off my car and went to see if I could help. Turned out that his car battery had died for some reason. I kicked myself, realizing that I'd given my jumper cables to my wife and had forgotten to replace them. We thought that the security guard could help; he had one of those portable starter devices. Unfortunately, it didn't help.
I couldn't leave him up there stranded. I would have driven him home-- which would have meant about 150 miles of driving-- but his live-in girlfriend agreed to pick him up at my home, which was about half way between the hospital and their home.
As we drove home, we had a chance to talk. I can't even remember now what we talked about, but I realized two things: we were both happy with the career change choice we had made, and we were now friends.
As our Brent and my year as nurses and co-workers rolled on, my wife noticed something-- that I'd gone from having about 100 text messages a month to having over 1,000. It was mostly me and Brent. We texted back and forth about work related stuff-- some of it serious, much of it not. He and I could not be much more opposite. He'd been a blue collar worker before, running the printing presses for one of Chicago's papers. I'd been a teacher. And we were opposites in that most Chicago way-- he was a lifelong White Sox fan, I was a northsider, and a Cubs fan.
But for all that we were opposite in, we were also a lot alike. In the end, we were huge baseball fans, beyond our team loyalties. We were both fathers first, everything else after that. Both of us had been badasses in our lives before having kids had settled us down.
On August 7 this year, he, Neal and I had all sent similar texts to one another-- "Happy ^**^%%% Anniversary!" We had all come up together, all of us loved being nurses, but all three of us had become increasingly irritated with the stupid shit that came with working as nurses for a corporation. And we were all good friends.
The next day, I was working at a hospital near my home. Brent, who was having an interview the next day to possibly replace our boss, who had announced her resignation, stopped by that hospital to take care of some paperwork regarding our dialysis machines. He knew I was there, so popped his head in to the room I was working in to shoot the breeze for ten minutes or so. He was looking forward to going home afterward, having a couple of drinks, then getting up the next morning for the interview. He told me what his plans were if he actually got the job-- he doubted he would. He had a ton of great ideas. Which was probably why he wouldn't get it, both of us joked.
The next day I got a text from Aaron, a young guy who came in a couple of months after we did. He knew Brent and I were close, and wondered if I'd heard what he'd heard-- that Brent, who was only 43, had had a heart attack.
Since everybody knew that Brent and I were tight, I started getting calls from everybody in our unit as word spread that something had happened. Problem is that I knew nothing.
I finally called his phone, hoping that he'd had some kind of scare and was in a doctor's office, or being held at a hospital for observation. About ten minutes later, Lisa, his girlfriend, who I'd only met once for a moment, the night I gave him a ride home when he was stranded, called me. He had collapsed that morning. Her teenaged son had heard him fall in the bathroom, and gone in to check on him. He was not breathing. Her son ran to get a neighbor, who quickly called 911 and started CPR. The paramedics arrived within a few minutes and "bagged" him-- started artificial breathing for him. He had a heartbeat, but never breathed on his own again.
Lisa and I started burning up the cell phone lines. As she knew anything, she called me, and I called a few people to put the word out; everybody loved Brent, and wanted to know what was going on.
It turned out that Brent had had a brain aneurysm that had burst suddenly. The doctors were telling Lisa that there was no neural function. Lisa asked Neal and I to come out to see him and to assess him and confirm what she was hearing.
That Sunday morning, Neal and I drove down to the hospital, which was in Evergreen Park, where my mother had grown up. When we got to the room, Lisa, who had been keeping a 24 hour vigil, happened to have run out for coffee. It was a weird scene-- the three of us together, but now Brent was intubated and unresponsive. Lisa arrived, and Neal and I began our assessment. I opened his eyelid and shone a light into it, checking for pupillary response. There was none. I took his hand into mine and told him to squeeze it. No response.
We talked to his nurse and asked about various things. She told us the assessments they had done. It was clear to us that our friend was clinically dead.
We talked to Lisa about Brent's last wishes. He was an organ donor. If they were going to harvest his organs, they had to take him off the ventilator and do so within the next 48 hours.
On the way home, Neal and I talked about the irony-- that a the death of a dialysis nurse was going to result in two people being able to get off of dialysis.
A few weeks ago, I got a text from Neal. A few months ago, he had applied for a job at a hospital near the area he and I live in. He'd gone through the interview process, and had gotten the job. He was leaving.
Today I was sent to a hospital I rarely go to, doing dialysis on a patient for a doctor I rarely deal with. About a year ago, I was doing dialysis on a patient in this hospital, and had a lot of trouble with that patient; he was what we call a "stick" patient-- a patient with a graft or fistula, rather than a central venous catheter. We have to put big damned needles into these patients in a fistula or graft that was created surgically by attaching an artery and vein together. They're considered
A couple of weeks ago, I realized that I badly missed blogging. There has been so much going on-- being a first year nurse, getting my oldest kid off to college, working crazy amounts of overtime. And dealing with the death of a friend.
So where do I begin? Let me start at today-- and a year ago. Just about a year ago, I was turned loose to do patient care on my own. Yes, I had finished nursing school. Yes, I had passed the NCLEX. Yes, I had finished the two months of training for the company I worked for, learning the ins and outs, ups and downs of dialysis. But I had a lot to learn. I thought a lot about one of my first days actually working as a nurse a year ago-- a really shitty work day-- and today. More on that later.
So, in May, right after they celebrated Mother's Day, my son and my ex got into an argument. It ended with her telling him to move out and move in with me.
Needless to say, both my son and I were very happy about it.
There were some problems to work out. The main one was how he was getting to school. His high school was just a couple of miles from my ex's house-- he would take her car, about a ten minute drive. I live about eight miles from his school, and did not have an extra car. We decided that since it was only about three weeks, that he could take the bus. It was two buses, and took nearly an hour, but it beat renting an extra car for those three weeks.
At the end of May, he graduated from college. My mother drove up from Tennessee for it. At the graduation, the parents sat with their sons (my son went to an all-boys school), sitting on either side of them. It was weird-- I'd spent so little time with my ex. When I met her, she was 24 and I was 31. Now I was 50 and she 45. We both have a lot of grey. It was funny to see him between us; I'm six feet tall, very white and lived it up a lot in my life. She's five foot one, Asian and didn't drink and only dated a few people. And there was the result of that union in between us.He got a summer job selling home security systems door to door. He did quite well at it. He learned a lot about people through both his interactions with the homeowners he talked to and through his co-workers. I also realized that after years of letting out a little rope at a time, I was about to cut the ties.
In August, he asked me to talk to my ex; she wanted to drive him to his college, in Buffalo, New York, but he wanted me to go as well. I talked to her, and told her I would drive and pay for gas, etc. She agreed.
It was really strange spending 10 hours in the car with she and him. The first couple of hours, she and I caught up on family. And then had not much more to say. I realized that there were good reasons I left 15 years ago.
There were a few activities that weekend that we all participated in. I met two of his three roommates; they seemed like very nice guys. I kidded my son that he had the "diversity room;" he's a mix of Asian and white, and his roommates are African-American, Latino and White. I kidded him that the college recruiters would drag prospective students by his room to point out the diversity at the school, which actually appears to be about 90% white.When it came time to leave, I had to drop something off for him that my ex had forgotten to give him. He came down from his dorm room to get it, but I could tell that he was ready for me to leave. It was time.
My ex, to my relief, had planned to fly back home. I didn't have to deal with her alone for ten hours, and had some time to decompress. My wife had pointed out that this-- and another thing-- were going to be really hard on me. And she was right. The other thing, just about a week before this, was the death of one of my closest friends.
My first day of my new job, August 7 last year, we gathered in the corporate office in a suburb of Chicago. Over the first couple of days, I gravitated to Neal, who it turned out lived near me. Another guy, Brent, annoyed me at first. He was way too eager.
I came to realize that the reason Brent was so over-eager was that he was extremely proud to be a nurse. He's struggled, like I did, to go to nursing school, paying for it himself like I did.
A couple of weeks into our training, he and I were at a hospital that our unit was covering. It was annoying. For me, it was a nearly 50 mile drive. For Brent, who lived in the in the suburbs to the south of Chicago, it was an 85 mile drive. At the end of the long day-- we worked about 15 hours-- we walked out to the parking lot and got in our cars. I was about to drive off, but noticed that he had gotten out of his car and put the hood up. Something was wrong.
I turned off my car and went to see if I could help. Turned out that his car battery had died for some reason. I kicked myself, realizing that I'd given my jumper cables to my wife and had forgotten to replace them. We thought that the security guard could help; he had one of those portable starter devices. Unfortunately, it didn't help.
I couldn't leave him up there stranded. I would have driven him home-- which would have meant about 150 miles of driving-- but his live-in girlfriend agreed to pick him up at my home, which was about half way between the hospital and their home.
As we drove home, we had a chance to talk. I can't even remember now what we talked about, but I realized two things: we were both happy with the career change choice we had made, and we were now friends.
As our Brent and my year as nurses and co-workers rolled on, my wife noticed something-- that I'd gone from having about 100 text messages a month to having over 1,000. It was mostly me and Brent. We texted back and forth about work related stuff-- some of it serious, much of it not. He and I could not be much more opposite. He'd been a blue collar worker before, running the printing presses for one of Chicago's papers. I'd been a teacher. And we were opposites in that most Chicago way-- he was a lifelong White Sox fan, I was a northsider, and a Cubs fan.
But for all that we were opposite in, we were also a lot alike. In the end, we were huge baseball fans, beyond our team loyalties. We were both fathers first, everything else after that. Both of us had been badasses in our lives before having kids had settled us down.
On August 7 this year, he, Neal and I had all sent similar texts to one another-- "Happy ^**^%%% Anniversary!" We had all come up together, all of us loved being nurses, but all three of us had become increasingly irritated with the stupid shit that came with working as nurses for a corporation. And we were all good friends.
The next day, I was working at a hospital near my home. Brent, who was having an interview the next day to possibly replace our boss, who had announced her resignation, stopped by that hospital to take care of some paperwork regarding our dialysis machines. He knew I was there, so popped his head in to the room I was working in to shoot the breeze for ten minutes or so. He was looking forward to going home afterward, having a couple of drinks, then getting up the next morning for the interview. He told me what his plans were if he actually got the job-- he doubted he would. He had a ton of great ideas. Which was probably why he wouldn't get it, both of us joked.
The next day I got a text from Aaron, a young guy who came in a couple of months after we did. He knew Brent and I were close, and wondered if I'd heard what he'd heard-- that Brent, who was only 43, had had a heart attack.
Since everybody knew that Brent and I were tight, I started getting calls from everybody in our unit as word spread that something had happened. Problem is that I knew nothing.
I finally called his phone, hoping that he'd had some kind of scare and was in a doctor's office, or being held at a hospital for observation. About ten minutes later, Lisa, his girlfriend, who I'd only met once for a moment, the night I gave him a ride home when he was stranded, called me. He had collapsed that morning. Her teenaged son had heard him fall in the bathroom, and gone in to check on him. He was not breathing. Her son ran to get a neighbor, who quickly called 911 and started CPR. The paramedics arrived within a few minutes and "bagged" him-- started artificial breathing for him. He had a heartbeat, but never breathed on his own again.
Lisa and I started burning up the cell phone lines. As she knew anything, she called me, and I called a few people to put the word out; everybody loved Brent, and wanted to know what was going on.
It turned out that Brent had had a brain aneurysm that had burst suddenly. The doctors were telling Lisa that there was no neural function. Lisa asked Neal and I to come out to see him and to assess him and confirm what she was hearing.
That Sunday morning, Neal and I drove down to the hospital, which was in Evergreen Park, where my mother had grown up. When we got to the room, Lisa, who had been keeping a 24 hour vigil, happened to have run out for coffee. It was a weird scene-- the three of us together, but now Brent was intubated and unresponsive. Lisa arrived, and Neal and I began our assessment. I opened his eyelid and shone a light into it, checking for pupillary response. There was none. I took his hand into mine and told him to squeeze it. No response.
We talked to his nurse and asked about various things. She told us the assessments they had done. It was clear to us that our friend was clinically dead.
We talked to Lisa about Brent's last wishes. He was an organ donor. If they were going to harvest his organs, they had to take him off the ventilator and do so within the next 48 hours.
On the way home, Neal and I talked about the irony-- that a the death of a dialysis nurse was going to result in two people being able to get off of dialysis.
A few weeks ago, I got a text from Neal. A few months ago, he had applied for a job at a hospital near the area he and I live in. He'd gone through the interview process, and had gotten the job. He was leaving.
Today I was sent to a hospital I rarely go to, doing dialysis on a patient for a doctor I rarely deal with. About a year ago, I was doing dialysis on a patient in this hospital, and had a lot of trouble with that patient; he was what we call a "stick" patient-- a patient with a graft or fistula, rather than a central venous catheter. We have to put big damned needles into these patients in a fistula or graft that was created surgically by attaching an artery and vein together. They're considered
Monday, October 01, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
One More Father's Day
Don't get me wrong-- I love hanging out with my kids and my wife. But I worked over 170 hours the last three weeks. It was financially rewarding, but I'm beat. I needed a few hours to decompress. My wife is having dinner with friends, and my kids are at parties. I'm relaxing, watching an old episode of "Mission: Impossible" on Netflix, and will soon be enjoying a glass of red wine.Tomorrow is Father's Day. Tomorrow evening, I'll cook up some food on the grill and hang out with my family. On Monday, my son starts orientation for his summer job, and my daughter starts her theater camp.
This morning, though, I had a great "dad" moment. My kids had a friend over last night. Their friend, like each of them, is the product of a split family; her mother, a close friend of ours, divorced their friend's dad recently, having split from him a few years ago. We kid-- only half-kidding, really-- that the daughter has been "adopted." She spends a lot of time here. We're happy about it; she's a nice kid and a good friend to our kids.
This morning, I got up and made pancakes, turkey bacon, scrambled eggs and fresh fruit for my kids-- my son, my daughter and their friend-- and joined them. It was a delight not only to not have to work this morning, but to be able to join them for breakfast. Afterward, I had some things to do, but the kids helped me clear the table, and they played "Settlers of Catan," a favorite game of theirs, and then played "Rock Band" and watched a scary movie on Netflix.
In a few weeks, my son will be running off to college. My daughter and their friend will be starting their second year of high school. But today, I realized, with some satisfaction, that whatever mistakes I've made in my life, I've done one thing well: I made sure these three kids have had a childhood full of good memories-- memories that will carry them through the ups and downs life will bring them. I'm pretty happy about it.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Just When You Least Expect It
"Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans."
The above quote is one of my favorites. I've seen it attributed to so many people, I'm not sure who actually said it. Ironically, I'm an atheist, but I agree with the basic premise-- life is what happens while you're making other plans.
In 1992/93, I'd been dating a woman on and off. I finally ended it when I decided that things were not working out. On July 4, 1993, I got a call from her-- she was pregnant.
She decided to go through with the pregnancy, and after my son was born, we decided to try to work it out. I lasted about two years with her, and moved out when I realized her fits of uncontrollable rage were not ending any time soon. I'd spent my whole childhood in fear of my father's fits of uncontrollable rage, and had no desire to live with it again.
Things were fairly amiable for a while after the split-- until she realized that I was not coming back. I'd come to realize that she was always going to be abusive. She hired a lawyer, and tried to keep me from ever seeing my son again. I hired a lawyer and kept her from doing that.
For the last 16 years, my son has shuttled between two households. He had planned to move into my home permanently a few days after his high school graduation on May 26.
About a week and a half ago, I was home alone on a Saturday-- he normally would have been there, but his mother asked to have him for an early Mother's Day celebration with her family (irony alert here!) My wife and my daughter had other plans and were elsewhere.
I'd settled in with a movie and a couple of glasses of wine, when I got a text from my son, asking if I was working. I was not, I replied. Then could I come get him-- he was moving in that night.
I was floored. I called my best friend Jim, who has become, basically, Adam's uncle over the years. I knew (as did he) that Adam's mother could be very aggressive. I asked him to come with me. Jim had also settled in for the night, but without hesitating, told me to give him a few minutes to get out of his pajamas.
About an hour later, I got to her home. I texted Adam, and he started bringing stuff he'd hastily packed out. His mother came out, and was, surprisingly, calm.
It turned out, as I discovered, that she'd started arguing with him, and needled him, asking why he was unhappy. He wanted to tough out the last few weeks with her-- her home is much closer to his high school than mine is-- but she kept going and going. Finally, he let loose with 18 years of what she'd done, including kicking him out-- twice-- when he was 8 and 9. Her general anger and pissiness. She still could not understand what he was upset about.
After all these years, after all the anger and acrimony, it all ended quietly. He moved in with me, and will stay with me until he goes off to college. I can't even describe how happy I am about it. His sister (his stepsister technically, but they think of one another as brother and sister) is happy to have him here, as is my wife. It's been a long, long time coming.
The above quote is one of my favorites. I've seen it attributed to so many people, I'm not sure who actually said it. Ironically, I'm an atheist, but I agree with the basic premise-- life is what happens while you're making other plans.In 1992/93, I'd been dating a woman on and off. I finally ended it when I decided that things were not working out. On July 4, 1993, I got a call from her-- she was pregnant.
She decided to go through with the pregnancy, and after my son was born, we decided to try to work it out. I lasted about two years with her, and moved out when I realized her fits of uncontrollable rage were not ending any time soon. I'd spent my whole childhood in fear of my father's fits of uncontrollable rage, and had no desire to live with it again.
Things were fairly amiable for a while after the split-- until she realized that I was not coming back. I'd come to realize that she was always going to be abusive. She hired a lawyer, and tried to keep me from ever seeing my son again. I hired a lawyer and kept her from doing that.
For the last 16 years, my son has shuttled between two households. He had planned to move into my home permanently a few days after his high school graduation on May 26.
About a week and a half ago, I was home alone on a Saturday-- he normally would have been there, but his mother asked to have him for an early Mother's Day celebration with her family (irony alert here!) My wife and my daughter had other plans and were elsewhere.
I'd settled in with a movie and a couple of glasses of wine, when I got a text from my son, asking if I was working. I was not, I replied. Then could I come get him-- he was moving in that night.
I was floored. I called my best friend Jim, who has become, basically, Adam's uncle over the years. I knew (as did he) that Adam's mother could be very aggressive. I asked him to come with me. Jim had also settled in for the night, but without hesitating, told me to give him a few minutes to get out of his pajamas.
About an hour later, I got to her home. I texted Adam, and he started bringing stuff he'd hastily packed out. His mother came out, and was, surprisingly, calm.
It turned out, as I discovered, that she'd started arguing with him, and needled him, asking why he was unhappy. He wanted to tough out the last few weeks with her-- her home is much closer to his high school than mine is-- but she kept going and going. Finally, he let loose with 18 years of what she'd done, including kicking him out-- twice-- when he was 8 and 9. Her general anger and pissiness. She still could not understand what he was upset about.
After all these years, after all the anger and acrimony, it all ended quietly. He moved in with me, and will stay with me until he goes off to college. I can't even describe how happy I am about it. His sister (his stepsister technically, but they think of one another as brother and sister) is happy to have him here, as is my wife. It's been a long, long time coming.
A Couple of the Good Ones
There has been job stuff-- specifically, lots of overtime, but that's secondary. I've lost a couple of my favorite people in my life.
My mother-in-law, Ellie, died on March 9. She had suffered from emphysema and a related illness, COPD, for some time. I learned in nursing school that most people with COPD eventually develop a bout of pneumonia that they can't fight off. Ellie was right out of the textbook. A few nights before, she'd become very agitated, which is often a sign of pneumonia in older adults that people miss; they never develop a fever, because their bodies are too weak to mount a fever response to the illness. She was hospitalized, and sank fast. My wife, thanks to the kindness of one of her friends, was able to fly up to Minneapolis and be with her at the end. I talked to her on the phone the night before. She was lucid and loving; she told me how much she loved me and how much she appreciated me being a good husband to her daughter and a good father to her grandchildren. She died peacefully the next day, with my wife beside her.
This picture, taken in a visit Ellie and George, my father-in-law made around Thanksgiving, is my favorite. Ellie's ailments made life a lot of work for her in her last years, yet she kept her humor and spirits, and was a delight to be around. She adored her grandkids, and just couldn't get enough of them.
The day after my mother-in-law passed away, I got a call from Larry, one of my closest friends. I could tell right away, by the tone of his voice, that something was wrong. His mother, Sandra, who lived alone, had taken a fall. She'd hit her head and had been unconcious for an unknown amount of time. She was in a coma. The next day, Larry got terrible news: there was, as the physician told him, "no chance of meaningful recovery."
The last time I'd seen Sandra was last year, at the funeral of Larry's sister, who had passed away from a heart attack at the age of 49. As sad as the event was, I was very happy to see "Sandy" as Larry kiddingly and lovingly referred to as. When I was in college, where Larry and I became friends, my parents moved to California. They had bought me a car, and Larry would usually catch a ride back to Chicago with me during the breaks. I was always welcome at his mother's home, and loved hanging out with his family. I always joked that Sandra had "taken in a stray."
Sandra was already high in my book for bringing a guy who has become, over decades, one of my closest friends into the world. Giving me some stability at a time when I was sometimes estranged from my own family made her one of my favorite people too.
Ellie and Sandra will be missed. A lot.
Friday, March 30, 2012
No Regrets
There's a handful of days in my life that I'll always remember the date of. July 4, 1993 was one of them.
An old friend and college roommate, Garrett, was visiting for the weekend. I'd been having a crazy year-- working two full time jobs, and carrying on a couple of relationships. I was looking forward to the summer-- that would mean a break from one of the jobs-- the teaching job-- and a break from both of the relationships I'd been carrying on. My life had become impossibly complicated because of it all, and I needed to back up and figure it all out. A weekend with an old friend was just what the doctor ordered.
My friend and I had been out hitting our favorite watering holes-- he'd roomed with me for a couple of months when he'd gotten out of the military a couple of years before, and wanted to go to the places we'd hung out in back then.
I got a call the morning of July 4th-- I was hung over, had my friend and a couple of other people sleeping at my apartment. It was one of the women I'd been seeing. She was, she told me pregnant.
I felt like a building was collapsing around me.
Over the next nine months, I struggled to keep it together. I felt completely unprepared to be a parent. I kept thinking of an old Firefall song, "Cinderella."
Cinderella by Firefall
"Last December I met a girl
She took a likin' to me
Said she loved me
But she didn't know the meanin' of the word
She imagined love to be grand
Me holdin' her hand and
Whisperin' sweet things and
Cooin' softly like a song bird
Then one mornin' she came to me
With a tear in her eye
And a sigh on her breath
And Lord, she said,
"Hon, I'm heavy with child"
And I said, "God damn girl, can't you see
That I'm breakin' my back
Just tryin' to keep my head above water
And it's turnin' me wild"
Cinderella can't you see
Don't want your company
You better leave this mornin', leave today
Take your love and your child away
Rockin' chair on the front porch
Well, I'm thinkin' about all the things that I did
As a young man
Now that I'm old
And I remember her and the boy
Did he have all the toys and the joys
That a young man should have
Before he gets too old
Cinderella couldn't you see
I didn't want your company
You shoulda left that mornin' left that day
Took your love and your child away"
One night, I was drinking with a couple of friends and discovered they had a copy of the album this song was on. I played it several times, drunk, letting the song sink in. I puzzled over the meaning of the song. Did he stay, giving up his youth to make sure his son had all the "toys and the joys that a young man should have before he gets old?" Or was he sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, full of regret, wondering what happened to the woman and the boy?
In the end, I stuck around. She and I made a go at it, but eventually ended. But the boy stayed. I took an ass-whipping dealing with his mother but I have no regrets. I don't have to wonder. He had baseball and Yu-Gi-Oh and Spongebob Squarepants and Star Wars and music and nights out for Chinese food and friends and the things a young boy should have. He's had laughter and love around him-- at least in my home.
He turned 18 earlier this month. He got into the college he wanted to go to. He got a scholarship and some loans and my plan, to get a nursing degree and a nursing job, worked; thanks to that, I'll be able to come up most of the rest.
His imminent departure brings out conflicted feelings. I did my job. I did my part in raising a smart, happy, confident adult. But my heart is breaking knowing I'll only see him a few times a year.
I keep coming back to a moment right after he was born when my father, who was full of regrets about his own children, told me: right now you're looking at the next 18 years as a long, long time. But you'll discover someday that it will turn out to be a short, short time. You get them such a short time in their lives and then they're gone. They come and visit, and you have a relationship with them and talk to them on the phone, but this time, this next 18 years, enjoy it. Remember that money comes and goes, but you can never get back time missed with them.
I'm sure glad I listened to my father.
An old friend and college roommate, Garrett, was visiting for the weekend. I'd been having a crazy year-- working two full time jobs, and carrying on a couple of relationships. I was looking forward to the summer-- that would mean a break from one of the jobs-- the teaching job-- and a break from both of the relationships I'd been carrying on. My life had become impossibly complicated because of it all, and I needed to back up and figure it all out. A weekend with an old friend was just what the doctor ordered.
My friend and I had been out hitting our favorite watering holes-- he'd roomed with me for a couple of months when he'd gotten out of the military a couple of years before, and wanted to go to the places we'd hung out in back then.
I got a call the morning of July 4th-- I was hung over, had my friend and a couple of other people sleeping at my apartment. It was one of the women I'd been seeing. She was, she told me pregnant.
I felt like a building was collapsing around me.
Over the next nine months, I struggled to keep it together. I felt completely unprepared to be a parent. I kept thinking of an old Firefall song, "Cinderella."
Cinderella by Firefall
"Last December I met a girl
She took a likin' to me
Said she loved me
But she didn't know the meanin' of the word
She imagined love to be grand
Me holdin' her hand and
Whisperin' sweet things and
Cooin' softly like a song bird
Then one mornin' she came to me
With a tear in her eye
And a sigh on her breath
And Lord, she said,
"Hon, I'm heavy with child"
And I said, "God damn girl, can't you see
That I'm breakin' my back
Just tryin' to keep my head above water
And it's turnin' me wild"
Cinderella can't you see
Don't want your company
You better leave this mornin', leave today
Take your love and your child away
Rockin' chair on the front porch
Well, I'm thinkin' about all the things that I did
As a young man
Now that I'm old
And I remember her and the boy
Did he have all the toys and the joys
That a young man should have
Before he gets too old
Cinderella couldn't you see
I didn't want your company
You shoulda left that mornin' left that day
Took your love and your child away"
One night, I was drinking with a couple of friends and discovered they had a copy of the album this song was on. I played it several times, drunk, letting the song sink in. I puzzled over the meaning of the song. Did he stay, giving up his youth to make sure his son had all the "toys and the joys that a young man should have before he gets old?" Or was he sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, full of regret, wondering what happened to the woman and the boy?
In the end, I stuck around. She and I made a go at it, but eventually ended. But the boy stayed. I took an ass-whipping dealing with his mother but I have no regrets. I don't have to wonder. He had baseball and Yu-Gi-Oh and Spongebob Squarepants and Star Wars and music and nights out for Chinese food and friends and the things a young boy should have. He's had laughter and love around him-- at least in my home.
He turned 18 earlier this month. He got into the college he wanted to go to. He got a scholarship and some loans and my plan, to get a nursing degree and a nursing job, worked; thanks to that, I'll be able to come up most of the rest.
His imminent departure brings out conflicted feelings. I did my job. I did my part in raising a smart, happy, confident adult. But my heart is breaking knowing I'll only see him a few times a year.
I keep coming back to a moment right after he was born when my father, who was full of regrets about his own children, told me: right now you're looking at the next 18 years as a long, long time. But you'll discover someday that it will turn out to be a short, short time. You get them such a short time in their lives and then they're gone. They come and visit, and you have a relationship with them and talk to them on the phone, but this time, this next 18 years, enjoy it. Remember that money comes and goes, but you can never get back time missed with them.
I'm sure glad I listened to my father.
At Long Last Friday Random Ten
Hello? (echo, echo, echo...). Anybody still there?
My posting has been incredibly lax. I do have a pretty good excuse-- working lots and lots of hours. Lots of overtime. We're very shortstaffed, and with a kid starting college in August, I'm not inclined to saying no to overtime.
Still, I've missed blogging. Lots has gone on besides overtime. I'll post more on it later-- two losses recently, two of my favorite people. My mother-in-law passed away about three weeks ago, and my friend Larry's mother, passed about a week later. Both shall be sorely missed. As I said, more later.
On the job front-- feeling more and more confident, and at the same time getting really disenchanted with it. The unit I work for is so poorly run. I've got some feelers out about other jobs. It'll be a year in August, and maybe time to move on. More on that later too.
I've got a list of posts to write: thoughts about the upcoming election, the Supreme Court hearing on the healthcare law, some music and art stuff, and of course, reflections about my son turning 18 recently, and his imminent leaving of the nest to go to college.
But until then, I've got to get back to my blogging duties, including posting my Friday Random Ten. Without further adieu...
1. Nobody But Me- The Human Beinz
2. It's Hard Enough Knowing- Pete Shelley
3. All My Loving- The Beatles
4. New Gun In Town- The dB's
5. That's Entertainment- The Jam
6. It Keeps You Running- The Doobie Brothers
7. West LA Fadeaway- The Grateful Dead
8. Show Me The Way- Peter Frampton
9. Chicago/We Can Change The World- Graham Nash
10. Souvenirs- John Prine
1. Great one-hit wonder that's on the Nuggets set. I think the word "no" is said over 100 times in this song.
2. The closing track from the Buzzcocks' frontman's first solo album, which I played to death in 1982.
3. One of the Fab Four's first hits
4. From the dB's' record "Like This," which I played to death in 1984 and 1985. The cd was very rare for years, until it was re-issued, thankfully, a few years ago.
5. Heard recently that Jam frontman Paul Weller quit drinking. He'll probably suck now.
6. "The Best of the Doobie Brothers" was one of the first records I ever bought, along with Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" and the Eagles' "Hotel California."
7. Wasn't crazy about the "Touch of Grey" album when it came out, but have come to love it. Particularly like this ode to the dangers of the Chateau Marmont and its temptations.
8. Was delighted by the story recently where Peter Frampton was reunited with the guitar he had on the cover of "Frampton Comes Alive," which was lost in a plane crash in 1980.
9. About Bobby Seals and the Chicago 8/Chicago 7 trial relating to the 1968 Democratic Convention events.
10. "All the snow's turned to water/Christmas days have come and gone/Broken toys and faded colors/Are that's left to linger on." Maybe the most melancholy and beautiful song ever.
My posting has been incredibly lax. I do have a pretty good excuse-- working lots and lots of hours. Lots of overtime. We're very shortstaffed, and with a kid starting college in August, I'm not inclined to saying no to overtime.
Still, I've missed blogging. Lots has gone on besides overtime. I'll post more on it later-- two losses recently, two of my favorite people. My mother-in-law passed away about three weeks ago, and my friend Larry's mother, passed about a week later. Both shall be sorely missed. As I said, more later.
On the job front-- feeling more and more confident, and at the same time getting really disenchanted with it. The unit I work for is so poorly run. I've got some feelers out about other jobs. It'll be a year in August, and maybe time to move on. More on that later too.
I've got a list of posts to write: thoughts about the upcoming election, the Supreme Court hearing on the healthcare law, some music and art stuff, and of course, reflections about my son turning 18 recently, and his imminent leaving of the nest to go to college.
But until then, I've got to get back to my blogging duties, including posting my Friday Random Ten. Without further adieu...
1. Nobody But Me- The Human Beinz2. It's Hard Enough Knowing- Pete Shelley
3. All My Loving- The Beatles
4. New Gun In Town- The dB's
5. That's Entertainment- The Jam
6. It Keeps You Running- The Doobie Brothers
7. West LA Fadeaway- The Grateful Dead
8. Show Me The Way- Peter Frampton
9. Chicago/We Can Change The World- Graham Nash
10. Souvenirs- John Prine
1. Great one-hit wonder that's on the Nuggets set. I think the word "no" is said over 100 times in this song.
2. The closing track from the Buzzcocks' frontman's first solo album, which I played to death in 1982.
3. One of the Fab Four's first hits
4. From the dB's' record "Like This," which I played to death in 1984 and 1985. The cd was very rare for years, until it was re-issued, thankfully, a few years ago.
5. Heard recently that Jam frontman Paul Weller quit drinking. He'll probably suck now.
6. "The Best of the Doobie Brothers" was one of the first records I ever bought, along with Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" and the Eagles' "Hotel California."
7. Wasn't crazy about the "Touch of Grey" album when it came out, but have come to love it. Particularly like this ode to the dangers of the Chateau Marmont and its temptations.
8. Was delighted by the story recently where Peter Frampton was reunited with the guitar he had on the cover of "Frampton Comes Alive," which was lost in a plane crash in 1980.
9. About Bobby Seals and the Chicago 8/Chicago 7 trial relating to the 1968 Democratic Convention events.
10. "All the snow's turned to water/Christmas days have come and gone/Broken toys and faded colors/Are that's left to linger on." Maybe the most melancholy and beautiful song ever.
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