September 16th is one of the dates I remember. On September 16th, a year ago, I became a zombie.
Apple picking with knee brace
The story is this: 14 year ago, I went skiing for the first time and snapped my ACL. Being young and dumb, I figured six months of limping was normal for a sprain. Then 18 months ago I jumped off a wall and tore my meniscii – both of them – badly. A summer of physical therapy, then I re-injured it and the MRI showed that I had massive damage to my knee. I was scheduled for an ACL replacement surgery and repair of both my meniscus.
I think that exactly this time last year I was fading in and out of consciousness, in and out of pain. I don’t remember that day too well. The rest of the week I spent ensconced on this very couch, an awesome ice pack circulating cold water over my bruised and violated knee. It was a long, slow, obnoxious journey back to (mostly) full mobility from there. I hated the crutches stage. I limped for months and months. Even now, I can feel that my knee is different than it’s partner on the right.
There are a few things I bring out of this experience.
First is gratitude. My new knee with its excellent function is a gift. There was a person who chose to be an organ donor. There was a family who affirmed that donation – in grief – after they lost that loved one. We all think about donating hearts and lungs and livers: the life-saving organs. But there is so much more than just that. There are tendons, eyes, skin – things that make life better. I carry a bit of my donor with me – and it carries me. There is a person who lives on, in some small way, in me. And I am grateful.
Second is also gratitude. It turns out that chronic pain and difficulty moving are mentally, emotionally and physically debilitating. Last year was one of the hardest – the worst – years of my life. This year has, so far, been one of the best. There is more to it than just pain and disability vs. no pain and ability… but that is a huge amount. It is salutary for the young and able bodied to see the world through other’s eyes. I’ve been fearful walking across slick ground in a way I never was before. That gives me sympathy and care for the octogenarians who always walk with such caution. I also being to understand the toll chronic pain takes on its sufferers.
Finally, there is the moving on. This appendage has taken up a tremendous amount of space in my psyche in the last year: with the pain, the fear, the disability, the limitations. But that’s pretty much over with. Now I have all this lovely extra space in my thoughts for new things, like guitar!
So that’s a wrap. One year later, I am signed up for the next Red Cross blood drive and saying, “Sayonara knee preoccupation!”
This was a tremendously satisfying book. It started light and Wodehousy, but quickly got deep and complex. There were a few moments of delighted realization as I, the reader, got to know what was going on. The book spoke to the kind of reality I live in, or wish I did.
I think my very favorite part of this book was its treatment of Christianity, Christians and the church. It is rare to find fiction that has a nuanced, compassionate view of any of these. But I found the book to be theologically compelling without being the slightest bit prudish or preachy. There were real Christians, driven by real faith and supported by a church that had some Really Good Ideas. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered that done as well anywhere else.
I am a gulper of books. I can’t help myself most of the time. But this is a sipping book – like a fine glass of wine.
Read if: you enjoy post-war-period English novels, you like a complex narrator, you would enjoy a nuanced view of Christianity, you like good books.
Avoid if: you cannot handle any sex scenes in your literature, you find books about the journey of the mind/spirit/soul boring and want more explosions, you are overly triggered by child loss.
I’ve had a very long day today. I rose at 4:30 am to make a 7 am flight out of Boston. The TSA lines were very, very short. The folks manning them cheerful, efficient and thorough. There did not seem to be any pall cast over Logan as we flew out, the pinking sky in the east making silhouettes of clouds. I flew to Atlanta, the time collapsing in the liberty of the constraint of an airline seat.
I’d thought that I had about an hour before my colleague arrived at the airport, and I was just lowering myself into a massaging chair for a manicure (I know! Such luxury! But I’d meant to get a manicure before I went client-facing and it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up!). My phone rang. He’d gotten there early! Rats! I decided to get the manicure anyway, and my Northern impatient self attempted futily to relax at the Southern, relaxed rate of the service. However, if you believe I did not smudge Regina’s meticulous work, you do not know me well.
We had cajun, lemonade and planning for lunch, and then launched into a three hour meeting fueled by software architecture and coffee. I had fun. I know you’re not supposed to have fun at three hour business meetings, so I apologize but… well. I had fun anyway.
Then back to the airport, stumble through security (again: short lines, nice folks), exchange heels for socks, walk the entire length of the Altlanta airport, dinner, check my email on my phone (46 new message!) and find my seat. Now I’m enjoying in-air wifi (oh! What a marvel technology is!) and feeling satisfactorily tired and accomplished and urbane. We’re probably somewhere around Pennsylvania right now – give or take.
Tonight I’ll rescue my car from the parking lot (only one day!), drive darkly over the Zakim to the steepled towns of the North and kiss my sleeping children before I lay myself down next to my drowsy husband.
My eldest son is going to his first day of first grade today.
The traditional first day of school picture
The other night I had the mother of a kindergartener at my son’s school over for dinner. She was asking me how it all worked. “Did you pack a drink?” “Do they have microwaves?” “Do you walk the kids into the school?” “Have they ever forgotten to pick your kids up from afterschool?” For many of the questions I know the answers “No, they’ve never once forgotten my kids” but for others… “Grey!” I called. “What do you drink during snack time?” With the cool confidence of one who sees Kindergarten in the rear-view-mirror, he gave us the lowdown on how things were supposed to work, how things actually worked and how to optimize the Kindergarten snack-drink experience.
Grey’s new “Back to school” wardrobe, which he picked himself
I suppose I should have few qualms sending him to first grade He’s academically prepared (hey, we even know where the over-the-summer homework is and it’s even done and it wasn’t all done this week! WIN!). He’s socially prepared, although he’s bummed that many of his friends are in the other first grade class. He’s confident. He’s looking forward to returning to school.
And oh, my friends, he is so very big and grown.
Those of you who have been reading for a long time remember me talking about being pregnant with little Alpha. You remember the “holy cow are they really letting me go home with this baby?!”. The toddler phase. The barfing phase. The preschool phase. Becoming a big brother. Reading. Becoming a fully fleshed person. Now I find myself gobsmacked by my son’s capability and confidence. When and how did he learn to do all these marvelous things he does?
For example, Grey earned $32 this summer feeding neighbors’ cats, watering plants, weeding gardens and bringing in the mail. I will confess that I still had a role to play (what can I say… he is too short to reach one mail box and one key is too hard for him to turn). But I sat on the porch and let him do his work for the most part. He and I had long conversations about this money he earned. I played payday lender and threatened to charge him a 10% daily interest rate if he really wanted to spend the money before he’d gotten it. He opted not to. We talked about giving a portion to the church. He owed his brother a portion for helping with the weeding. And finally, I took him down this week to create his very own savings account at the bank.*
The earner/saver/checkbook holder
We went camping this weekend, and Grey was a marvellous help. He helped his brother play Legos. He swam (head underwater and everything!) in the lake. He was reliable and dependable. He (GASP!) went to the bathroom all by himself. In possibly the most astonishing evolution of all, he also announced every night that he was tired and was heading to bed now, thankyouverymuch. And then… he did!
Grey still has his faults, for sure. There are still many things we have to teach him, beyond a doubt. But I am so proud of the person he is and the person he is becoming.
Grey learning to type
*As an aside, I am offended on his behalf about the kind of account we set up. Perhaps I should have done more investigation. He isn’t allowed to withdraw money from his own account until he is 21. What’s up with that? He could be drafted by the army to be sent to war when he’s 18. He can vote for our leaders. He would be convicted as an adult of any crime. But he can’t touch the money that he himself earned? That’s… shameful. I wanted to go to the bank we walk past all the time to give him a concrete connection to his money, but I dislike the account we set up immensely. I was also disappointed that they didn’t have any children’s financial literacy documents or anything.
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a baseball season that made me so passionately excited about football as this 2012 Red Sox season. I’ve been a baseball fan since 1995 – a respectable time now. I started as a Mariners fan and – without dropping my hope for the Ms to do well while bowing to the realities of being 3 time zones away – I’ve become an ardent Red Sox fan.
I’m definitely not alone in having come to Red Sox fandom in the last decade. I attended my first game at Fenway in 2000. 2001, for reasons that will be instantly understandable to those of you who live in the Northwest of follow baseball closely, I lived tied to the MLB broadcasts on my computer – up until late at night. After that, though, I started following the Sox. I lived through the devastating heartache of 2003 (there is a great group of guys with whom I can never watch another game after Pedro got lifted…). I actually missed the first three games of the ALCS in 2004 (I was in Vienna and thinking, as I caught the box scores, “Well, at least I’m not missing a *good* post-season.”), but lived through the incredibly late nights and unbelievable comebacks of Game 4 and beyond. I rode the wave of seeming-inevitable excellence through 2007. And like so much of Red Sox nation, I find myself facing down a September where we are – to put it plainly – totally out of it.
Dire days like these, my friends, are when I need to draw on my Mariners roots. There are 29 teams in baseball. This year roughly a third of them will make it to post-season play. Only two of them will stand on the frost-hard field in the chilly air of late October. But all of these teams have fans – not just that ultimate pair or penultimate quad.
Your team does not have to be winning – or even good – to have fun being a fan.
As the 2012 season turned from bad to worse, I opined to a friend that it was years like this that allowed purer motivations to shine. Everyone wants to be part of a winning effort, but disdain and disinterest have followed the Red Sox this year as they have struggled to win as many games as they’ve lost. As fast as people jumped on that bandwagon, so fast are they saying that the Red Sox do not deserve their fandom. Well, I’m not jumping.
There are great compensations in losing, my friends. For example, the next time the Red Sox are great (which with Cherington’s moves may be as early as 2014), we will get to be the “We were there when” folks with the 13 year old lucky shirt. Sox fans can actually see the games now. This isn’t a problem in most towns, but there have been years where it was impossible to procure even bad tickets to exciting games in Boston. They still cost an arm and a leg, but at least now if you WANT to get to Fenway, you can go. We are getting to watch some young players come up who will be next year’s super-stars. I remember listening to Kevin Youklis’ very first major league at bat. Some of the kids we’ll see next year will be the next Youklis… and some will be the next Jose Cruz Jr. (My Mariners peeps remember how big he was billed!). We may have the chance to watch a team win against the odds, instead of having the “Best Team Ever” collapse into ignominy. In small market towns, some of the compensation is watching your gifted young players “Make it big” in the big towns. In a town like Boston, it’s getting to poach those self-same players. Regardless, the Red Sox are almost guaranteed to have a shot at the playoffs within a decade.
That isn’t true everywhere. Take, oh, Seattle for instance. There was much ado about the 84 years since the last time the Sox brought home the championship. But Seattle’s team, founded in the 1977 expansion has not only NEVER won a World Series… it’s never BEEN to a World Series. The furthest we’ve ever gotten is the ALCS in 1995. That record-breaking 2001 season ended up flaring out in October. And although the Mariners keep valiantly trying, there is no sense of entitlement in the Emerald City that we’ll ever win it. But still, the fans flock to Safeco and turn on KOMO.
Why?
Because it’s fun to watch and listen to baseball. That’s the point. Your team may lose four games out of five, but man that fifth game King Felix is pitching. Or you have an outfielder like Jay Buhner who just loves to play, and it shows. Or you have an Edgar Martinez, who would still be DH-ing if they’d let him run the bases for his doubles using a wheelchair. Or, in a particular appalling year, you still cheer for your team to win (against all odds), but the fun of watching is seeing all the stars of the game come to your home town to trounce your teams… a little like having the Harlem Globetrotters come. Just because your team is under .500 doesn’t mean it isn’t fun.
So, bring on September. Would I rather we were in the thick of the chase? Of course. Am I looking very much forward to the Pats kickoff in just over a week? HECK YES. But until then, I’ll listen to Joe and Dave, follow the kids called up in September, hear the amazing feats of the opposition and hope that we at least play well in tonight’s loss.
You were absolutely my first love. Obviously, you weren’t the first instrument I dated. Piano and I went out for a few years before we met, and I had a crush on voice when I was a little girl. But I fell head over heels for you. I remember the time we played Cappriccio Italien together. There were all the good times at the Evergreen Music Festival or with the Tacoma Youth Symphony. We had fun in pep band (well, even though we rolled our eyes. I still have the third trumpet part – the best part – to “Sweet Child of Mine” memorized). I used to drag you everywhere. Do you remember that 15 days driving trip across the US when I practiced with you at rest stops and behind hotels?
I don’t think I’ve ever been more in love with you than I was in high school. You made me feel like I was flying on a dragon when we played Gabrieli together. You were with me in one of the best moments of my youth, when Dr. Cobbs winked and told us – for an encore – that we were going to “crash the ship again” in Scheherazade.
I cannot imagine how my life would have been without you, and I wouldn’t trade our time together for anything.
In the normal course of events, though, I went to college. And although I formed a brass quintet (I cannot BELIEVE that site is still up!) and tried playing in the college symphony, it just wasn’t the same. I don’t want to say we’d grown apart, but we both moved on to other things.
After that, it was like we were Facebook friends. Oh, we’d get together a few times a year at Easter or Christmas or for special occasions. But even though I tried to rekindle the spark by looking for a nice symphony orchestra – or even a brass ensemble – where we could be happy together… it just didn’t work out. I spent a long time pining for you. Over a decade, I remained true. Ok, so there was that one fling with the cornetto, but it that was over quickly.
Finally I had to admit, though, that it was over between us. Things would never be the way they were. I guess that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? You can’t go back to the way things were when you were 17. And I moved on.
You know that I’ve been seeing a new instrument – guitar. And it’s been good to me. I mean, the guitar is patient and kind. It gets along a lot better with my friends than you ever did. I could see guitar and I building something beautiful together – not like what you and I had. Nothing could ever reach that. But, you know, a comfortable life together. We were just starting to get serious, you know. Talk about some investments together. Sign some papers. That kind of thing.
Then all of a sudden, you want back in? Really? That wind ensemble that reached out to me; with the amazing looking repertoire, and the schedule I could actually do… but that is on the same night as guitar lessons… let me get this straight. You want me to break up with guitar, and come back to you? And you’re saying that it won’t be just like it was, but it will be great again between us.
The question is, my dear Anduril1, do you mean it, or are you just playing with my heart again? I don’t want to break up with this good and loving instrument just to have my heart broken again. But I can’t really pass up the change to be with you again, either.
I’ve asked to audition in December – gives me some time to see how guitar and I are working out. But… don’t break my heart, trumpet.
-Me
1 Yes, that really is the name of my trumpet. What can I say, I named it when I was like 14 and the two things I loved best in life were trumpet and Tolkien. DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
WBUR had a prime drive time story today covering the Rampage! It was a great story – I do wish it had come out in time for people to catch a game of the 2012 season though. Anyway, it’s pretty awesome to hear!
A one day marriage designation given by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
This past weekend was full of the celebrations of love and marriage. On Saturday, I had a (likely!) once in a lifetime experience. Two of my dear friends announced their engagement last fall – to my delight. When they asked me if I would be willing to perform the ceremony of their wedding, I was even MORE delighted. I am ordained (as a Ruling Elder and a Deacon – for those of you who are Presbyterian Polity specialists and wanted to know. Of course, most people I know who are keenly interested in Presbyterian Polity are my family and my church – both of whom already know. I digress.) But the kind of ordination I have is to serve in specific ways (in the governance and service of a church) and they don’t count for doing weddings. So before I said yes, I asked my pastor if it was ok for me to perform a wedding. With his blessing (and letter of recommendation), it was full steam ahead!
Massachusetts has a neat program where once a year a person may petition for and recieve a license to perform exactly one wedding on one day for two people. You fill out a form between 6 months and 6 weeks ahead of time, including a letter of reference from someone whose marriage you are NOT performing. I was _very_ impressed by the Commonwealth’s handling of this: they communicated in a timely and useful way. They were clear about the requirements and steps. And they were very fast in getting my approval and letter.
Shiny certificate in hand, speech written, extremely-dfficult-to-shop-for-dress put on, I showed up at the Arabian Horse Inn in Sudbury two hours early, and with two of my three boys. Grey was the “ringleader” for the ceremony, so his presence was required. It was a stifling hot day – 93 degrees on our way in with very high humidity. We did a quick run through of the service, we lounged around, the bride and groom disappeared to get dressed and suddenly “Froggy Went a’Courtin'” was playing and a lovely pair was walking over the bridge to the service. With a deep breath I launched into the service.
It is a wonderful thing to be at the front because you can watch people’s faces as they see their son and daughter, their siblings, their dear friends joined to each other in marriage. All the faces in front of me reflected back joy from the faces of the two marriagees.I got to call my son forward to bring the rings (he actually got to carry the real things, and to keep the box afterwards). I spoke about my favorite metaphor for love in marriage – the garden. I pronounced them husband and wife. I told them to kiss each other. It was over in just the right amount of time, at which point I finally got to tear up myself.
There was joy, my friends. And then there was cheese, dinner and dancing. I even got to sign the marriage license, which is pretty cool. And Grey was PERFECTLY behaved. He made friends of the staff of the Inn, whom he talked into letting him ride on the tractor and mix the punch according to his own recipe. He was excellent.
We went home tired and satisfied that night. It was a great day.
Now all of you who know me well are wondering… where is your other son?
Well.
Six weeks ago or so I asked my friend and babysitter if she could take Thane basically all day on Saturday (given that schedule). She said she would and there was much rejoicing. I pointed out that if she wanted him at her house, that was perfectly reasonable and we could accommodate it. But then, two weeks ago while I was in Ashland, she called. “Hey, I was just calling because I’m going to be vacationing in Maine the weekend coming up.” At this point, I was lamenting in my mind and wondering what else I could do. She continued, “So I was wondering if you would mind if I brought Thane with me and kept him overnight at our beach house. You guys could come up on Sunday and go to the beach too.”
SCORE!!!!!!!
My sons took turns, the week before, being jealous of each other. “Why does Thane get to go with her for a sleepover?” “Why does Grey get to go to a wedding?” but in the end each kid went joyfully to their special event. Sunday morning – at a reasonable hour – we got dressed and drove up to Maine. After the application of some sunscreen (subpar*, as it turned out) we all hit the beach. I got to do something that has been a fantasy of mine for six years…. go to the beach with a babysitter so I can swim with my husband. We had a BLAST in the waves at York beach while my kids had a blast with the babysitter-friend, who is one of the very few people in the world capable of convincing me that she’s really enjoying taking care of my kids. We chatted together. We lounged in the beach. Adam and I played this game where he would shoot the intertube I was in into a breaker and I would launch back at him. Superb.
Then we all went out for dinner, where I got an incredibly cheap lobster and Grey got the champion for his age division at Pacman.
Pacman contestents
That lovely Sunday together as a happy family, right after that lovely Saturday together as a community celebrating love. Well… that Sunday was the 12 anniversary of the day Adam and I stood before friends and family and declared to everyone that we loved each other, and we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Twelve years, my friends. Many people talk about the ups and downs of marriage. I feel like our dozen years has had many, many ups and very few downs. If tomorrow was my wedding day, I would make my vows just as (or more) enthusiastically as I did 144 months ago.
Engagement photo ’99. I didn’t have a wedding picture, but this was taken after we were engaged.
*I think it may not have been waterproof, since those of use who used it turned to a crispy lobster red. I’m juuuust about at the peeling stage now. Yay.
It’s taken me years to finally figure out the rhythm and the schedule of the grownup me. It’s hard when you leave behind the beginning and conclusions, the milestones, the counting down of your school life. All of a sudden, there are no logical breaks. You do not get a fresh start every fall. You do not matriculate, commence or otherwise change. It feels as though life is now a blur of barely differentiated days: a gradient instead of an ordinal scale.
But finally, after more than a decade of careful attention, I think I have it figured out. Beginning in January is a long, slow slog up the tracks of the year. We go seven or eight months with only a handful of three day weekends. There’s a particularly appalling stretch from mid-February to the end of May when every single week has five workdays in it. Before I had kids I resented this time of year as boring, undifferentiated, tedious. Now I find it enjoyable in its own right. That slog-uphill time is the time of year when not every weekend is claimed, when I have time to read novels or play video games, when yes-I-can-get-together-this-Friday happens. You spend a weekend doing something that doesn’t Make Great Memories and somehow it doesn’t matter as much. I mean, it’s not like you wasted great weather this weekend.
As the weather warms, the snow melts and May arrives, things start heating up. Suddenly, “it seems like a pity to waste” re-enters the vocabulary on Saturdays. I realize that the next three weekends are fully committed. Whole blocks of the calendar disappear under markings like “Camp Gramp”, “Gen Con” or (this year) “London”. These are, of course, completely awesome things. Summer is the high season for adventures. The pictures pile up on the memory cards, the laundry is carefully calibrated around how many bathing suits my eldest son has (and his !$@#$ summer camp t-shirts that must be worn twice a week) and take-out menus get a good workout. But still, there’s that feeling of space in life. It’s summer. Vacation is coming. This is going to be great!
Sitting in Ashland, sipping my 93rd cup of coffee at Dragonfly while reading “A Civil Campaign” (again), I had this sensation of being on a roller coaster. All winter and spring it had chugged its way up the mountain of tracks as I gazed around at the altitude-revealed scenery. That moment in Asland we were at the very top of the tracks, and only the weight of the cars behind us kept us from our full plummeting speed.
So today… wheeeeee!!!!!
From here to 2013 is a crazy ride. I’m conducting a wedding on Saturday. Adam goes to Gencon soon. I have approximately 93 batches of jam to make. We’re camping again. School starts. My MIL arrives. My birthday happens. I get started on the labor of love that is my Christmas cards (yes! In September!). Then Grey’s birthday. Somewhere in here we go apple picking and then make at least two batches of apple butter. Two weeks later, Adam’s birthday. A week after that, Thane’s birthday. Three days after that, Halloween. Two weeks after that, Mocksgiving. Two more weeks to Thanksgiving. (Ironically, the only breather in this schedule. Unless I get inspired to go somewhere … which knowing me I probably will.) Then holy-cow-how-is-it-Advent-already? Then Adam’s gone for a week for a work conference. Then Christmas, followed by New Years. And all that stuff? That’s the EVERY YEAR stuff. (Well, except the wedding this weekend.) There are always exceptional and unusual events added into that mix. Zoom! No wonder I feel like my schedule is picking up speed.
I find it funny that this month, of all months, I would decide to start a big new project (http://technicallypretty.com) that requires consistent attention. I think I do this every year. It takes me a few months after that ride to get my breath – and my courage back. But then my lizard-brain notices a pattern of several months of under utilization! Obviously circumstances have changed and I now have more disposable time! Let’s come up with some new ideas we want to try, ok? Great idea. My lizard brain has not figured out the pattern that my mammal brain lays out here.
Still, maybe this is the year that, uh, somehow that schedule is not jam packed? Maybe my new writing time plan (on the bus on the way home on a teeny netbook) will somehow mean I actually DO have more disposable time for my new blog? Even if not, in the most hectic days of October I will be able to remind myself that come January it won’t be quite so crazy.
Does your adult life have a consistent seasonal pattern? How much does it line up – or do you make it line up – with that old academic calendar? When are your busy times and your free times, or is it more consistent for you?
My Truant Pen 