Suburban Shame

Take a stroll down Any Street, USA and you’ll see that people spend a lot of time and money beautifying their yards. Who can blame them? Real estate is a huge investment and a yard can reveal a lot about a homeowner. But what’s revealed is not always a good thing. Here is photographic proof from my own neighborhood…

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Similar to Roman ruins, these miniature turquoise columns suggest a race of homosexual dwarfs once lived here. What kind of fabulous architecture did they once support? In other areas of the yard there are rock faces and flower bed borders painted this same color, lending the entire property an air of pastel squalor.

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OK, it’s hard to get a sense of the enormity of the freakish flora from this picture, but these bushes are huge. If you lived in this house and gazed out of any window or doorway towards your front yard, all you would see is branches. A hundred thousand branches to haunt your dreams. A landscaper could spend his entire career pruning just these two monsters.

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What we see here is perhaps a 6-foot length of shin-high wire fencing. It is neither decorative nor functional and is slowly being overrun by the encroaching weeds. This fence wouldn’t keep out a blind and crippled rabbit. Why someone hasn’t yanked it from the ground and slung it in the street is beyond me.

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Spray-painted pink yard chairs may not seem like such a decorative affront, but the people who live here are bikers. You know, real bikers—burly, heavy, middle-agers with glistening Harleys in the driveway and pink chairs in the yard. It just doesn’t go together. I would have taken a picture of the whole oxymoronic panorama but, fearing a beat down, didn’t want to stand in their yard with my camera any longer than necessary.

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Someone spent a lot of energy hauling these unwieldy concrete blocks across the yard and stacking them into this wavy, waist-high defensive wall. Its construction is as puzzling as that of the Great Pyramids of Giza. It doesn’t keep anything in or out and would be a considerable obstacle when mowing and weed eating. Why bother? Unless you were starting a neighborhood paintball course or needed something to high jump.

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This pitiful looking cow must have strayed from its herd. It now stands alone in this yard and has obviously grazed most of the grass within its reach. Perhaps it was staked there to hide the flimsy sapling or the snake pit of neon cables behind it. I must say that its beautiful eyelashes take focus from the hump-goiter that plagues its hide quarters.

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There are “race fans” all over the south, so I wasn’t surprised to find Jeff Gordon’s #24 sticking out of this flower bed. What is odd is the haphazard, careless placement of the numerals and the way they seem to have drunkenly collapsed against the shrubs. Any passing Jeff Gordon enthusiast would look upon this display as an outrage—the resident needs to stick them in the center of his yard within a weather-proof plastic dome with dramatic lighting and an eternal flame.

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Clearly the owners of this goal think no one will notice the 8 sandbags that lay beneath the flapping, split trash bag that is supposed to mask the half-ass repair, a fix they hope will keep the goal from falling down again onto one of their vehicles.  The object has lost all of its sports cred and has become something that resembles a futuristic pack animal. (I am no yard snob. This is our own embarrassing basketball goal.)

Music Sampler

For this week’s post, I thought it would be a nice diversion to listen to some tunes. Better yet, to listen to some tunes while watching moving images.  In this sampler we have a couple of music videos and a couple of live cuts from a few of my favorites—hope you find something you like, too.

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Donald Fagen

“Snowbound”

From the album, Kamakiriad, 1993.

Donald Fagen is of course half of the brain trust known as Steely Dan, creators of genius music puzzles for the past several decades. The album was a solo project for Fagen, which thematically explored a bleak, ironic future for mankind. The video was directed by Michael Gondry, the man behind a ton of cool videos and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Let me also state for the record that Gondry’s film Be Kind Rewind is an underrated gem which you should rent as soon as possible.

 Click here for “Snowbound” Video

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James Taylor (with J.D. Souther)

“Her Town Too”

From the album, Dad Loves His Work, 1981.

Apparently, this album came out while Taylor was simultaneously divorcing Carly Simon and suffering from drug and alcohol addiction. J.D. Souther, a widely-respected writer and musician in his own right, lends a sweet harmony to the song. It’s hard to believe this came out nearly 30 years ago (unless you look at their wardrobes).

 Click here for “Her Town Too” video

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Jackson Browne (with David Lindley)

“Late for the Sky”

From the album, Late for the Sky, 1974.

This clip is from an unknown 2006 folk festival and features a grizzled Jackson Browne and an understated David Lindley.  Not that Jackson Browne has ever needed backup of any kind, but Lindley’s soaring guitar work helped shape Browne’s signature sound when he was a musical force in the 1970’s. If you haven’t listened to some of Jackson Browne’s earlier work, find these records and listen to them through an old pair of headphones. You will be moved.

 Click here for live “Late for the Sky”

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Gillian Welch and David Rawlings

“Caleb Meyer”

From the album, Hell Among the Yearlings, 1988.

I had the good fortune to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at Merlefest several years in a row and again at the Town Hall in NYC. The selected song is a higher tempo than some of my favorite Gillian Welch songs, but you get a sense of his brilliant guitar technique and her anachronistic songwriting, like haunted old tunes written in the 1840’s.  The interplay of their voices is an amazing sound to hear live.

 Click here for live “Caleb Meyer”

Manalyze This

There’s a curious thing that happens when men get acquainted for the first time. There’s a sizing up, a probing if you will. Wait, wait…settle down. For those of you snickering in the back row, let me say up front that this is an asexual phenomenon and has nothing to do with Gaydar or the size of anyone’s dong. It’s innocent really, when guys manalyze each other.  There is a tacit, nearly subconscious assessment that happens, as each man checks off the attributes they may find interesting and noteworthy. If everything goes OK and readings are positive, then those guys can hang out together without any awkwardness. You see this a lot when female coworkers or old girlfriends try to get together and decide to bring their husbands or boyfriends along. The first time the guys meet, there’s a manalysis to make sure they are compatible enough to socialize—at least enough to excavate a variety of guy-friendly discussion topics—enabling everyone to survive a double-date or a dinner party. These events always make me nervous because most traditional male topics bore or confuse me. I have absolutely nothing to add to a conversation about college football, NASCAR’s point race, or how to fix a faucet.

My wife and I recently went to a birthday dinner for one of her friends from work. I’ve spent a lot of time with this friend (Georgeanna) and her husband (Jeff) and I like them both a great deal—fortunately, Jeff and I performed our initial manalysis a few years back, so now we have an easy rapport. What benefited me even more is the fact that Jeff is a lunatic sports fan and the most skilled woodworker I know. I can ask Jeff about his Fantasy Football team and his cabinet making and just let him run with it.  If other people at the table overhear chatter about wood screws and I’m nodding along, then I’m golden. I’m manly by association.

You also get this during large family gatherings when all of the male family members end up in the garage or den or backyard and they pass around the guy chit-chat like a bottle of high dollar bourbon. We had a party recently for my son’s birthday and several male in-laws attended. My father-in-law, brother-in-law, and my wife’s cousins and uncles are all manly men. So before the party, as we tidied the house for our guests, I made sure to open the dartboard to show use and lifted the lid to my tool box to prove without question that the compartments still held actual tools and not a dainty button collection or something.  And these guys are family now! What is my deal? Why even go through the trouble of coating one’s life in a virile veneer that other men will find acceptable? I seriously doubt they are sprucing up for me when I come over!

I realize this makes me sound like a squirrelly, self-conscious poseur weirdo, someone obsessed with acceptance and gender stereotypes and other nonsense like that. But it’s all about first impressions and what people absorb the first time they meet you.  I’m stuck on this: if you’re going to assault strangers—especially he-strangers—with babble about books and crossword puzzles and your bout of the artsy-fartsies, you may as well tell them your bra size and favorite brand of lip gloss. I hate to say it, but it just seems so sissy as an opener. So I tell myself to filter. Don’t rush it. The truth will come out. If new acquaintances are to spend any future time with me, they will come to know that I prefer a pen to a screwdriver and can sing most every song on the soft rock station. And that’s ok.  And if it’s not ok, please know that I watch SportsCenter every morning and am filing away stats for future use.

A Cool Mountain Mourning

This time last year, I lost my dear cousin Patrick in a car accident.  He will be forever missed by all who knew him.  Rest well, Pat.

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We were in the pediatrician’s office when mom called my cell phone. Trying to settle my month-old son, I swung his carrier while Mom cried and struggled for air. My wife watched the concern collect in my face. “Your cousin Patrick was killed in a car wreck last night,” mom finally managed to say. Maybe I gasped, maybe I cursed, I don’t remember now. But I know I looked down into the face of my little son and felt life and death slam together in a disorienting collision.

The last time I saw Patrick Anderson was over the 4^th of July holiday, a long weekend when we’d gone to Hot Springs to visit my grandparents and have a little vacation before the baby came.  Hot Springs is a quaint mountain town in Madison County, a few miles from the Tennessee state line, and my family lived there in a small cabin beside my grandparents’ house when I was a toddler.  We ended up moving on to Asheville and beyond, only returning to Hot Springs to see my grandparents and reconnect with the mountains. Patrick never left. Patrick owned the only watering hole in town, Paddler’s Pub, and this lively place served as an oasis for weary Appalachian Trail hikers and boaters from nearby rivers.  Hot Springs to me was a location that resided in my soul, a place I could visit in my mind when I felt the need to return to something I’d lost. To Patrick, Hot Springs and the surrounding area was home and I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous when I visited and saw how well it suited him. I always felt like a returning tourist.

I loved my cousin and his sudden absence from our family is still hard to accept. It is like a fresh scab, one that keeps opening up when I bump it into things.  And he wasn’t even in my everyday life, what about the people who spent real time with him?  The people who worked at the pub, all the regulars, the townspeople and visitors who spoke to him as they walked into and out of his life?

As news of his passing spread, it became clear that this would be a very special funeral.  People would be coming in from all over–Montana, Colorado, New York–from destinations both far and near, inching towards western North Carolina on a pilgrimage of grief and love. 

The last farewell to Patrick was made up of several unique events and the first was the visitation at Madison Funeral Home.  Even though I’d seen much of my family since arriving that afternoon, I’d yet to see Patrick’s siblings, and frankly I dreaded it. Since my own brother and I are so close, I viewed Pat’s passing through the prism of brotherhood and I couldn’t fathom losing mine so young and unexpectedly. Patrick’s parents preceded him in death; thankfully, they didn’t have to suffer the agony of burying a child.

People stood in line for up to 4 hours at the visitation, paying respects to someone local resident Billy Ebbs called “The Gandhi of Hot Springs.”  Behind Paddler’s Pub sits the Creekside Inn, a small hotel Patrick owned that caters to tourists and through-hikers. Ebbs recalled when his own life hit a rough patch and Patrick let him stay free in the hotel for several weeks until he could get back on his feet. It seemed like everyone in line had a similar story to tell. Patrick’s younger brother, Jonathan, later said, “You wouldn’t believe all the strangers who hugged my neck and told me how Patrick had given them a meal when they didn’t have any money.”

There was a bonfire afterwards at Patrick’s childhood home, a place full of memories for friends and family alike. Though tinged with melancholy, the mood was festive since only a person like Patrick could unite so many kinds of enjoyable people. There were country boys, hippies, fishing guides, housewives, accountants, loafs, outlaws and everything in between, all sharing their beverages and stories and comfort. Fittingly, there was also a group of bagpipers in attendance, friends he’d made at the Highland Games in Grandfather Mountain. Those guys had heard the news and wanted to come pay tribute through their music.  If you collect romantic images, it’s hard to beat a pair of bagpipers playing by the soft glow of firelight for a cold, huddled mob of mourners as mist settles on a gurgling stream.

On the next morning came an epic mission. A group of us went up in the woods to haul Patrick’s monolithic headstone out from a mountain gully. In an inexplicable moment of irony, only weeks earlier Patrick had seen this giant boulder from the dirt road and told a couple of buddies that he wanted it as a headstone when he died.  Taking him at his word, the group engineered a web of straps and chains and affixed them to their trucks, hoping to pull it out and make it easier for a backhoe to grab it. Progress was slow and the funeral was scheduled in a few hours. Someone had the genius idea to push it downhill to meet the windy road on a switchback, and real progress began. The mob pushed the boulder downhill until it was stopped by a tree, then they would chainsaw away the obstacle or change its direction, and push again. With each advance, there was a war-cry that drifted up from the woods. “There are people who roll giant rocks off of mountains, and there are people who watch them,” said Brad Platt, who had flown from Montana to witness such a thing.

The afternoon funeral was held at the lovely Zion Baptist Church Cemetery, a little south of Hot Springs.  This was largely a symbolic gathering since Patrick’s siblings had decided to bury their brother up on Papa’s Mountain, a large tract of family land that is mainly an undeveloped and wild treasure. So after hearing the preliminary graveyard service, whoever had the inclination and the 4-wheel drive, joined the funeral procession that snaked across the dirt road that led up Papa’s Mountain.

That’s where we ended up—in a leaf-strewn clearing on the top of a mountain, staring into an incongruous hole that would forever hold my cousin. It was amazing and stirring and different, and it all somehow fit together.  The giant boulder rested at the head of the grave like it had been there for centuries.  The bagpipers, wearing Patrick’s family clan tartans as tribute, squeezed out a funeral dirge.  The assembly wasn’t a group of individuals; it was one organism that pulsed with emotion and reverence.  The whole weekend shed light on how one singular event–or one singular personality in this case–can bridge generations, politics, demographics, and every other quantifying factor that divides us. 

Cheers, Patrick. Keep a good watch over us, and over the mountain.

If Michael Myers Had a Cell Phone

If  Michael Myers had a cell phone,

he wouldn’t need to hold a knife.

There would be no time to kill

in his new and busy life.

 

All those features are distracting–

there are a dozen decent games.

And the oversized address book

holds fifteen thousand names.

 

Haddonfield has two cell towers

so reception would be grand–

he could call up every Strode

with his Friends and Family Plan.

 

But his stalking would be over with,

his killing spree would end.

Creeping up and down the block

would be left to other men.

 

And it’s practically impossible

to hide for very long

when your cellphone’s cheesy ring tone

is the “Halloween” theme song.

 

There are no ear holes to speak of

in the mask he wears around.

He would have to take it off

to maximize the sound.

 

So there goes all the secrecy—

his face would then be shown.

He’d be just another jackass schmo

chatting on his phone.

Going Postal with a Pen

Dear Makers of Playtex VentAire Baby Bottles,

Shopping for a baby is difficult when you’re a first-time parent.  It’s especially tough when your infant son has acid reflux and needs specialized food and equipment, so a lot of time and frustration can be saved when you find the right product. Congratulations to your marketing team for designing such promising labels and handsome packaging for the Playtex VentAire Bottles—you really had us going! Nicely played! My wife and I were convinced that better times were coming when we found them. Improvements were welcome, too. Up until then our son tended to spit up… whatever milky liquid went in, a good portion of it came right back out. He was like a little malfunctioning fountain cherub. But your bottles have helped! Do I credit the specially-designed vents at the base of each bottle that are supposed to keep air bubbles from entering the chamber? Nope. Is it the rapid-flow nipple openings that ensure a smooth, white, life-giving stream of sustenance at every feeding? I think not.

Maybe it’s because your bottles leak so badly that he’s had no actual milk since we bought them.

Yes! Leaks! All of those incredible leaks! How has this helped? If nothing is going in, then conversely, there’s nothing to regurgitate. Symmetry! I imagine that many Research and Development dollars were spent designing this product—expensive bottles with 6 different parts carefully constructed to fit together—and that they would actually hold in liquid. Well, they don’t. Just put milk in one, place it on the table, and watch how milk begins to pool around the bottom. Boy, is that an unexpected sight in the middle of the night when you’re trying to stay awake long enough to feed your milk-starved, screaming progeny. A puddle of milk on a coffee table with a flashy bottle sitting in the middle of it: that should be the picture on your packaging. So the parent resorts to sopping up the leaked puddle of milk with a cloth and wringing it out into the gaping baby-bird mouth of his hungry infant. Is that how it’s supposed to work? If so, your instructions need a little clarification.

I also commend the design team for choosing disappearing ink for the bottle level measurement marks. Upon purchase, you could plainly see the 1-ounce, 2-ounce, even the 3-ounce markings. Those are very helpful when you’re trying to mix formula. But after a few washings, those marks come right off! Presto! You’re left with a blank canvas where you can imagine any amount you like!

Earlier I mentioned 6 distinct parts per bottle. It is an impressive number but you could have rounded up to ten separate pieces just to extend the washing process by another half hour. There’s nothing like coming home after a long workday and dunking your tired hands into a stinky tub of countless bottle parts—it’s truly blissful.  Forget actual quality time with your kid, there are bottles to wash! Ultimately, as you place the tiny pieces out to dry, a strange surreal certainty hits you–in no time those pieces will be reassembled and locked together to form a leaky, unreadable bottle. It’s like the resurrection of a sad, broken thing, like something from Pet Sematary, night after night after night.

So thank you for your inspired work and your nearly criminal resolve to keep a faulty product on the market.  If nothing else, they are durable.  I’ve cussed, thrown, beaten, stomped, punched, and garbage disposal’d these bottles yet they still stay on our counter. Durability is a great lesson for new parents.

Your humble customer,

Mike Johnson

Sound Safari

My intention for this post was to provide oddball audio clips for a quick giggle or headscratch. I found several things I wanted to include but ended up ramming into some technical and legal obstacles. First of all, to pull this off I would need to purchase an upgrade from WordPress (both Lord and High Priest for this blog) just to attach audio files and I generally balk at the word “purchase.”  Secondly, I would need to own the copyrights for my attachments. That’s where they really got me. Although I am not above scamming faceless entities for the amusement of others, especially in a forum with no revenue, I didn’t want to step on someone else’s creative rights. However, there are pages in the far reaches of cyberspace that have already posted the sound files, so we’ll piggyback off of them and let them get in trouble.

 I downloaded some of these files to my mp3 player and took them out on a jog yesterday afternoon.  I never realized there was a connection between Bigfoot, David Lee Roth, and Charles Bukowski, but there is. The evidence was in the earbuds. It was horrifying and unmistakable.  Follow these links and listen to the sound clips in order:

1. This is a clip that features the apparent vocalization of a Bigfoot. It was recorded in the late 1970’s out in the deep wilds of California. 

Click here for Bigfoot (top clip)

 2. David Lee Roth is heard here on the vocal track of “Running with the Devil,” but without the surrounding musical context.  Roth’s unique instrument is on full display.

Click here for David Lee Roth

 3.  A writer with a renowned ability to touch you with his depravity, here’s a recording of Charles Bukowski reading his poem, “The Soldier, His Wife, and a Bum.”

 Click here for Charles Bukowski

Did you listen to them all? Was it in a relatively quick succession? Maybe it’s me—and maybe it’s because I heard these clips one after the next, many many times through, as I jogged around the suburbs while my neighbors may have guessed at my choice of music but none guessed Bigfoot—but there is a pattern. There’s something there.

What we are listening to could very well be vocal recordings of Tarzan, the Legend of Greystoke himself.  These are the tapes that chronicle his evolution from savage beast to civilized man. [Replay clip 1] Tarzan emerges from the primordial forest. He is gigantic. He has heard activity around his den for a few days and has spied on the researchers with their sound equipment and their Beanie-Weenies. He is frankly tired of being disturbed. But he appears in the clearing and moves closer to the odd-looking device smeared in peanut butter. It is a microphone. He noses it, ruts around, sniffs, snorts, cackles like Satan himself, and whistles. He actually whistles as he skips back into the ferns and overhanging tree limbs and vines! What the hell? The researchers play back the tape and start looking around for a translator.

They capture Tarzan, drag him from the jungle and begin to teach him English. They dress him in spandex leotards and are amazed by his blond locks and leaping abilities. He grasps certain sounds and words but ultimately speaks as he did in the jungle, through yells, mumbles, screams and whoops. The teachers put headphones on his head and play music to inspire him. [Replay clip 2] They have booked the studio at $5 thousand a day and he, even in an ape-like way, feels pressure to perform. He can’t stay on that plane for take after take without something to keep him up, so he does a bunch of blow and babbles incoherently until the tape ends.

Years later, by the time he reaches old age, Tarzan looks like any other man.  There is a weary sadness to his wretched face, but he could pass you on the street and you would have no idea that he was a trained monkeyman. He can nearly walk upright. Once in a while his teachers put a microphone in his face and expect him to say something wise or amusing or off the wall. He is clearly perplexed by his notoriety and fame and is surprised that anyone would want to record him. [Replay clip 3] He is disconnected, apart, a stranger amongst silly and unreadable humans, and  can never relate to them in any real or tangible way. Late at night when the music is soft and the neighbors have finally given up on screwing themselves into a better life, Tarzan sleeps and returns to the jungle.

* Later still, as Tarzan dreams jungle dreams, “American Top 40” comes on another station. [Casey Kasem Bonus Clip] . We are all animals.

Delivering the Goods

Just one year ago, we took our first anxious steps into parenthood. The following piece was written at that time, commissioned by a local real estate website that was looking to get a personal profile of Wilmington’s new baby hospital. The website went under, leaving this article a homeless orphan playing with matches in a ditch. So for Foster’s 1^st birthday, let’s go back in time to relive his grand entrance. Happy birthday, buddy! You’ve come a long way!

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Carrie is pregnant. Very pregnant. My wife has journeyed far beyond the baby bump stage when strangers would pat her stomach with shameless adoration. Now she’s feeling large and immobile, ready to be done with it, a little anxious and impatient after nine long months. Those same strangers now give her a wide berth, expecting her water to break at any moment. The bags are packed, we have our guidebooks, the paid time off is safely stashed. It’s like we’re loaded up and ready for vacation but our son won’t come out of his room. Meanwhile, across town sits our destination. Wilmington’s brand new Betty H. Cameron Women’s and Children’s Hospital is our Disneyworld.

The Women’s and Children’s Hospital is the stunning new addition to New Hanover Regional Medical Center, the hub of our local healthcare system. Over the years the hospital has seen structural growth, technological advances, and a diversification in services, but it’s arguable that these components have been simultaneously augmented like this before. The new facility will revolutionize how women and children receive care in Wilmington for years to come. Groundbreaking on the 195,000 square foot hospital began Jan.19, 2006 and it received its first patients Sept. 14, 2008. An estimated 4,000 children are born at NHRMC each year. With this opening, each one will receive treatment in a state of the art facility that is worthy of its superb medical staff.

Clearly, the staff is excited about their new workspace. Jane McLean, Clinical Coordinator for Labor and Delivery and Obstetrics Coordinator for the Operating Room, highlights the upgrade. “The large, private rooms are more accommodating for families and their guests. There are hydrotherapy tubs that can be moved from room to room. There are also multi-head showers, which are great tools in early labor to manage contraction pain. We’ve tried to make things easier for the mother, while encouraging them to get out of bed and move around.”  Accessibility to staff is another key component to the mission of the new hospital. McLean continues, “Our systems are now decentralized. There are charting stations throughout the unit so we can stay close to our patients. We used to have a call bell but now it goes through a computer and to the mobile phone of the assigned nurse. It’s quicker for the patient to have their needs met.”

Meanwhile back home, Carrie is now in the throes of early labor. It has been going on for two days and her contractions are getting stronger and closer together. All of our instincts and Lamaze handouts are telling us to go to the hospital. So we gather our luggage and laptops and massage tools and a giant red fitness ball and pile into the wagon like a Cirque du Soleil troupe, heading off towards 17^th Street to have our baby.

We arrive at the front desk and explain our urgent business. We are sent to the Perinatal Evaluation Center for assessment. Once inside the facility, I am struck by the calm and quiet. I was expecting an asylum of moaning, birthing women. It is so quiet I start to wonder if the entire wing is still closed to the public. When we are taken to a private room and Carrie is examined, we learn that she has dilated one centimeter and has a paper-thin cervix but is still possibly a day or two away from delivery. It is too early in the process to admit us. We trudge back home to wait some more.

With a population of nearly 100,000 people, Wilmington is too large to rely on Durham and Winston-Salem and other state hospitals to take our sick and needy.  The construction of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital gives families the chance to stay in town even when their loved ones are facing high-risk pregnancies and other medical complications.  Barbara Buechler, Registered Nurse and Hospital Administrator, illustrates the importance of such services. “Our 45-bed, all private room Neonatal ICU is the only private room NICU in the state of North Carolina.  Private room neonatal intensive care provides an environment that improves clinical and developmental outcomes for sick and premature infants.  In addition, the sleep sofa in every room allows mom to stay with her baby during hospitalization.  This provides the benefit of parent-infant bonding and parents feeling confident caring for their baby at discharge.”  This December, the Betty H. Cameron Women’s and Children’s Hospital will open southeastern North Carolina’s only Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. As a result, emergency situations involving children can be handled close to home and Wilmington will continue to establish itself as a leader in state healthcare.           

Back home again, Carrie and I jump at every gas bubble. We wonder if we’ll even know when it’s time. But then her water breaks and it is as dramatic and exciting as it seems in movies. We lock down the house, pile back into the car and leave knowing that when we return, it will be as a trio.

We are finally admitted and set up camp in our room on the Labor and Delivery ward. The room is immense and the sofa is soft. Our families come and go, taking full advantage of the visitation policy that allows the patient to decide who is admissible and how long they can stay. Carrie’s contractions are breathtaking and we take arduous walks around the maze of hallways in the hope that gravity and movement will conspire to push him out. It doesn’t happen.  During the night it becomes clear that there is a problem. Her dilation stops at 6 centimeters. Excruciating contractions are not advancing him through the birth canal. Depending on her position in the bed, his heart rate nosedives and our entire team spends long hours frowning at monitors.

In the wee hours of a Monday morning, despite our hopes of having a natural childbirth free from interventions or undue pain management, Carrie ends up having a C-section. The umbilical cord had wrapped around our baby’s neck and prevented him from coming out on his own. This wasn’t our plan, but who can plan for a medical emergency? The wonderful part of our story is the strong, healthy son we eventually took home with us. Would it have been the same ending in a smaller, older, less-equipped facility? Perhaps, but it would have been a much darker road. Despite the gravity of the situation, we knew we were in able hands. The staff at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital was amazing and touched our experience with professionalism and warmth. The facility was the Disneyworld we were hoping it would be. Our son, Foster, will say thanks when he learns to talk.

Pardon Me, Does Anyone Have the Time?

Greetings accidental reader! I am excited to unveil a new Lunaphyte feature for you.  Since she is frequently inspired and tuned in to the world, I have invited Carrie (“The Wife”) to post her own entry onto this blog.  She will drop a line now and then and you can read her entries under the freshly christened, “Words from the Wife,” category. Welcome aboard, Carrie! Keep up the good work but please don’t expect payment.

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We’ve heard it all our lives, words of wisdom from our parents, grandparents and other advisors who thought they knew more than we did.  I remember when I was a child constantly being told, “The older you get, the more time will fly.”  I shook my head in complete disbelief every time I heard this and thought, “Yeah right.”  I recall every Christmas…when it seemed like forever until Santa came.  And the summertime – what seemed like an infinite amount of time to play at the beach, catch fireflies and skip rocks in the nearby creek, seemed like an eternity to get here.  What has happened to my sense of time?  Has time changed or have I?  And more importantly – where does the time go?

I am happily married now and with my first child who is nearly a year old.  At no point in my life has the time flown by so quickly.  There absolutely is no time.  Yet, there has to be time.  When you think about it, the same amount of seconds, minutes and hours in a day are the same as when I was 8 years old.  Yet, why does time seem so short now?  I get up at roughly 6:30 am and then it’s a race.  A race to get showered, dressed and ready for work.  A race to get Foster dressed and ready for school, get the lunch packed, water the dogs, and get the gym bag ready in the hopes that I can squeeze a work-out in at some point during the day.  And yet, I have an amazing husband, Mike, who is right there racing with me.  [This makes me pause for a moment and send a shout out to the single parents in the world.  I have absolutely no clue how they manage.]  Nevertheless, this is my race and I’m sucking at it.  So out the door we go to race to Foster’s school, carpooling so that we can save the world one gas fume at a time, and off to the job.  The job, where the masses collect every morning hoping to get through another day without getting laid off.  It’s a bit strange that the race ends momentarily at the workplace.  It’s that time when I first arrive at my desk that I get a moment’s peace.   I get my first cup of much needed coffee and check my email.  A ritual that I’ve come to enjoy very much in the last year.  I even get to browse the latest celebrity gossip before starting my next race.  For about thirty minutes every morning at my desk, I get peace.  It’s just me.  No noise, no husband, no baby, no dogs…just me.  The only other time this happens is for 10 minutes each morning when I shower.  That’s it. 

The next race is getting ready to start.  The race at the office.  Aaaand Go!  I would tell you more about it, but I would have to kill you and I would bore you to tears, the latter would probably cause the former.  Consider the details spared – but the theme is the same, before I know it, I have put in 9 solid hours at work – sometimes with a gym session, sometimes not – sometimes a lunch break, sometimes not.

It’s 5:00 and time to begin the next race.  This is the finale of the races, or is it?  This is the pick up the child, go home and chill race, right?  Um…no, not yet.  The picking up the child part is correct, that has to happen.  [I’ve looked into it and we are not allowed to leave the child overnight at daycare.  We have to pick him up.  They said so.]  So, we go and pick up Foster and this is where we begin the next race.  Mike starts his race, while I start mine.  We are racing together and going in different directions.  Mike starts his race washing the bottles and cooking the dinner.  [Again, I am grateful that I have this partner, the best one on Earth.  If I didn’t, I would never eat dinner.  I simply wouldn’t.  There is just not enough time in the day to do everything and dinner is the first thing that would go.]  And while Mike is cooking, I am racing with Foster.  Foster, the cutest, smartest, 22 lb. little boy you’ve ever seen.  He’s a good kid and we are blessed.  If I could remember where the time goes, I would mention that there was a time I never thought I would have this.  Any of it.  I never thought I would get married and have a child.  It all happened much later than I had planned.  But that time seems so long ago now that I don’t even remember it. 

So it’s the final lap of the race, Foster is fed, he’s bathed, we’ve given him one-on-one playtime and it’s time to put him to bed.  That time of the evening is very much comparable to my coffee time each morning.  It’s almost orgasmic, Foster’s bedtime.  By that point in the race, I’m barely moving.  I’m utterly spent.  Exhausted.  In pain.  But, that’s not the last race.  There is one more race to run before calling it a night.  It’s called “Getting ready for the next day race.”  Aaaand Go!  Make the bottles, make Foster’s lunch, show the dogs some affection, maybe even brush their teeth, maybe even brush my own…paint my nails…oh wait, that’s only happened once in the last year so that really doesn’t count.  Oh, and eat the great dinner Mike made.  When it’s all said and done, it’s about 9:00 pm when we can chill.  I am in bed by 10 and then, I step into a time machine that quickly transports me to 6:00 am to get up and do it all over again.  As if the time clock fast forwards the moment my head hits the pillow.  And all of a sudden, I am awakened by the alarm—the most painful noise next to a screaming cat getting hit by an ice cream truck.

As quickly as one day goes by, so do the weeks, months and years.  There was a time when I could not remember what I got my mother for her birthday the year before.  It just seemed like that long ago that memory just couldn’t conjure it up.  Not only can I remember now, it really seems like just yesterday that it was her birthday, and she’s having another one tomorrow!  Seriously!  Never in my life have I had a sense of time warp as I do now.  Why is that?  Is it being a mother?  Does that put your time machine on crack?  Why can’t it feel like forever until Santa comes?  It’s nearly October and as far away as Christmas seems, it’s all an illusion.  Is it society that makes time go faster than it needs to?  Is it the retailers?  I went shopping today and while I was browsing Halloween décor, I stumbled upon Christmas lights.  Truly, the days of when it was customary to put your Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve are long over.  It’s barely even October and we are forced by business merchants to already think about Christmas!

In life, I am well aware that things come full circle.  We go from babies to being elderly and find ourselves reverting back to where we started, all in one lifetime.  So when will my time machine slow down?  As bad as things seem right now, they are bound to get worse when we have our second and possibly third [snowball’s chance, but it could happen] child…it only seems natural that the time machine will reach supersonic speeds and be worse than it is now.  It’s quite unsettling – this time warp that I’m on, while the ride should be the best of my life.  I’m having a hard time enjoying it since it’s so hard to keep up.  I only fear that as the great circle evolves, I may be a grandmother and retired before I feel the excitement again of anticipation – when the waiting game actually makes time stand still.  Sometimes, Mike and I ask ourselves, “Are we less efficient than other parents?  Is there anything we should be doing differently that would help us save time?” 

Honestly, there are millions of parents in the world who are doing the same thing we are and with more than one child!  How are they enjoying themselves while holding on for dear life to the roller coaster called – Time?  I don’t know.  I am not sure if they are more efficient or perhaps struggling as hard as we are.  But at the end of the day, I’ve learned that you can’t sweat the small stuff or the best moments in life will pass you by.  Time is going to go on whether you are ready or not.  You will run out of it, not have it, have too little of it, but never, ever again will you have too much of it.  It’s precious, like that first cup of coffee.  It’s something that once it’s gone, you cannot get back.  Like life.  If I have one bit of advice for my son as he gets older, it will be “Enjoy this time, because the older you get, the more time will fly!” 

It’s 9:37 pm and I’ve got 23 short minutes to make the best use of my time before stepping into the time machine of sleep.  Aaaand Go!

Carrie and Foster between races.

 

Out of the Race

Sports loom large in the public consciousness and—as if from a flashy billboard—the professional athlete stands there beaming, arms crossed over his jersey, willing us to greatness with nothing more than a confident smirk. We idolize athletes and why shouldn’t we? They are the embodiment of our childhood dreams. But for every pro athlete, there is an arena full of wanted-to-be’s who never made it past the high school box scores. There is no reason to bemoan the fact that I am one of them. Any delusions I had of athletic greatness were shattered after one shameful episode at summer camp.  A race, as it turns out. A sprinting contest. A trial that spanned the longest, most pathetic one hundred yards ever marked with lime.

It doesn’t help that my name is Michael Johnson.  There is an Olympic sprinter who shares my name—a large, glistening, black man with several gold medals and, in the mid-90s, was one of the fastest humans on the planet. While he was lunging across finish lines and winning medals and grinning at you from boxes of Wheaties, I was porky and stoned with a mouthful of burger. Two Michael Johnsons, two separate lives. Like an accident had happened in the Michael Johnson Factory and one of us had come out all wrong.

Back then, I used to party with my college suitemates while watching the Summer Olympics.  Every time my large, glistening, black alter ego would come on the TV screen, my buddies would say, “Look, man. There you are.”  And I’d say, “Yep, there I am alright.” He was always staring off-camera, looking failure dead in the eye and not flinching, his mouth turned down in concentration, feet and fingers finding purchase in the track grit.  When the text box would appear at the bottom of the screen with the name Michael Johnson in it, I would get this inexplicable surge of pride and adrenaline.  Like I was running with him—even in him—and he needed me as much he needed his trainer and $1,000 shoelaces.

(Aside: There is an odd connection to someone who shares your name. I’m not sure why. Your name is as arbitrary as pulling two words blindly from the dictionary, but slap them together and all of a sudden you have yourself an identity. And the fact that others are out there—many others in my case—going through their lives with the same identifying label is strangely comforting. I feel them going bravely about their business, leaping over the banality of their name with strength and purpose. There’s another Michael Johnson where I work. He takes the same elevators and uses the same toilets I use. Sometimes I get his emails and phone calls and I’m impressed with how important he is in the giant corporate zoo we cohabit. There’s no gold medal around his neck, but I know he’s a winner of some kind.)

Back on TV in the early-90’s, as the track star Michael Johnson gazed intently towards certain victory, I looked into my dwindling bag of French fries and found there an old memory, a greasy burnt nugget of recollection abandoned until that moment—a link between Olympic sport and a cheesy, summer camp race.

I was 12 years old with a headful of misaligned teeth, a full bouffant that was carefully feathered after each shower, slight of build with thin hairless limbs and a sensitive manner. That summer’s highlight was a week-long YMCA day camp where my older brother and I were bussed out to remote fields to play Capture the Flag and stumble down trails with other sweaty mountain kids.

The biggest contest of the week was to identify the fastest kid in camp. There were endless heats of races, three to a race, and the winner went on to compete with the winners from the other respective heats. The losers of each heat went on to, well, they stayed losers. They went to the side of the field and watched the young winning thoroughbreds continue their quest to become the fastest. It felt bigger than the Olympics at the time, occurring at an age when popularity and self-acknowledgement hinged on winning.

My race finally came around. In my mind, there had already been several heats where I advanced victoriously, but I may have only raced once. The race consisted of me (picture Anthony Michael Hall circa Vacation, but worse), a girl (imagine a curly-haired girl-next-door, ordinary, tight gym shorts), and another boy (you can put whoever you want in his position because he doesn’t matter. Screw it, put in Gary Coleman so we’re all on the same page.)

The counselors lined us up. The grass was dewy against our fingertips. The 100 yards stretched before us—where we would soon dash—were lined with all the other camp kids who looked on in Churchill Downs-like anticipation. Let me just press pause and say that I considered myself a fast kid.  My speed wasn’t legendary but I could run, especially downhill or when chased by a bee. Perhaps that misconception helps excuse what happened next.

So the cap gun went off. We sprung forward and burned through the grass one yard at a time.  I was ahead, the girl was in second, Gary Coleman was bringing up the rear. I was a sleek, graceful sight and the wind flew through my thick hairdo. Flashbulbs popped and pompoms waved.  About 40 yards in, the girl caught me and began to inch ahead.  My lungs pounded and my legs churned. I was at my top cruising speed and it was just not getting the job done.  I had underestimated my female opponent. I tapped into reserves of energy that I never knew existed, and still her lead grew.

That’s when I faked my ankle injury.

It’s a really lame thing to brag about, but it may’ve been the most realistic fake ankle-twisting ever attempted. I could’ve broken bones.  When my ankle turned, I speed-limped my way along and finally settled into some dramatic hobbling as the girl crossed the finish line.  I’d like to think that some kids came out to comfort me and carried me off the field, but I really don’t recall. I was so completely alone in the shame of my actions that the rest of the world simply fell into a meaningless blur.  Maybe the girl became the fastest kid in camp, I don’t know—decades later, no one probably even remembers except the kid who won.

Childhood proceeded along and melted into high school. I managed to play games and compete. I won some things, lost others, made points, made errors, laughed, pouted and reveled in the back of the bus on the long rides back home.  The games of our youth still manage to impact our grown lives. Likewise, the athletes we admire on TV are finishing the races we couldn’t finish ourselves. I cheer them on, like the fan I was destined to be.