Before the thankful season gets away from me . . . .

 

I let an important anniversary get away from me this fall, but I know you are all with me as I savor the fact that it has been over a year since the tall boy has had an encounter with a hospital emergency staff, or a cardio-thoracic surgeon, or an interventional radiologist.

This fall, instead of taking this picture . . .

 

. . .  the husband and I met the tall boy and Her for a birthday celebration and took this glamour shot.  Way more fun in every way -- believe it.

Talk about Thanksgiving!

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The Advent Calendar book for today is perfect as we enter into the season of snow -- or at least the season of hoping for a few white flakes!

Snow, a Caldecott Honor Book by Uri Shulevitz, is a great picture book that perfectly captures the excitement a child feels upon seeing a first snowflake . . . and then a second, and a third.  Shulevitz portrays the frustration and faith of one little boy who longs for snow.  Gorgeous!

Snapshot: then and now

So some of you may remember that I mentioned once a long time ago that we had a hole in our carport ceiling from when the tall boy fell through it.  Here's how it happened:

The young tall boy (he was twelve) was fetching camping gear from the carport attic, in preparation for a Boy Scout adventure, when he stepped in the wrong place.  He crashed through the drywall ceiling of the carport, bounced off the top of the minivan, and landed flat on his back on the cement floor, right next to the trash dumpster.  Inside the house, the husband and I heard the crash, and seriously -- one of us said to the other, "Huh.  I wonder what that noise was."  Then we both picked up our coffee mugs and went back to whatever we were reading. 

And people, I swear that's exactly what happened.  When you think I'm exaggerating, or making something up for comic effect -- that is when I am telling the precise truth.  The stuff I make up cannot hold a candle to the shit that really happens to me.

Well -- after a spit take as we both realized that our beloved child was in the carport attic -- and the noise had come from the carport attic! -- we put down our coffee and strolled outside to see what all the racket was about.

Actually, I did make that part up.  Once we realized that the noise and our boy were probably connected, we did bolt out the door pretty quickly.  We're morons, but caring morons.

There was the tall boy, splayed like Wile E. Coyote after he chased the Roadrunner off a cliff.  The husband said, "Can you move, buddy?"  And the tall boy said, "Uh, no . . . ."

Insert all your own worst nightmares here.  They will be an accurate representation of the thoughts that ran through my head in slow motion.

While I was imagining my new life as the parent of a paralyzed child, and looking around for a discreet place to throw up, the husband responded to the horizontal tall boy:  "Listen.  Is it that you can't move, or that you're afraid to move?"  And the tall boy shot his father a pitying look.  "Dad.  I just got the First Aid merit badge.  You're not supposed to move a back injury."  And the world bounced back into place.

After determining that our boy could in fact move his fingers and toes, his arms and his legs, the husband got him up off the ground and dusted him off.  "What do you say we head on over to the hospital and see if you're brain-damaged?"

The tall boy laughed dismissively.  "No way, Dad!  We're going camping!"

And that was the end of that.

* * *

Well, so the hole in the carport ceiling was huge, and needed repairing in the worst way.  But somehow we never quite got around to it.  I have joked that we are lazy, and it is true -- but we're not that lazy.  In the ten years since the hole appeared, we have painted almost every room in our home, replaced flooring, renovated our kitchen, built a lovely fireplace mantel, gutted, designed, and restored one whole floor of our house, replaced a deck, and put up a split rail fence.  Some of these chores were accomplished by hiring professionals, but many of them were done by us, our own lazy selves.

And yet the hole in the carport ceiling lingered.  Why?  What was the weird dysfunctional thing going on that would not allow us to get rid of this unsightly and dangerous and embarrassing open wound?

I have no answer.

But it's gone now!  Our long national regional local pathetic nightmare is over!

And somebody needs to slap me, because I did actually say out loud to the husband, "You know, if we wait just a little longer, we can have a tenth anniversary party for the hole . . . "

Voter-palooza!

I was so happy to vote with the tall boy today.  Check out that sticker, people.  The tall boy is very proud -- it's his first one!

Here in Virginia, we had huge turnout everywhere.  On the radio and on Facebook, everyone was talking about how crowded the polling places have been and how long they waited.  My boy and I stood in a long, snaky line for over an hour.  And you know what?  That was fine with me.  It was a privilege to wait with my friends and neighbors (I said "hi!" to my Contractor's husband, the deacon's wife, our County Supervisor -- standing in line with his son, just like I was -- and the realtor who sold us our house).

I was honored to be voting with everyone else in the nation -- including the citizens of Staten Island, who mean it, y'all.

And I will never take the privilege for granted.  We are so lucky to live in this time and this place -- where we call the campaign a battleground, but no one will vote with a gun to his or her head.

Today is a great day to choose a President!

IMAGE CREDIT:
"Staten Island Voters" -- Seth Wenig/AP (2012)

The tall boy is my hero -- and so are you.

OK, so I am sorry to report to you that my tall boy is back in the hospital.  You may remember that he had some pretty significant and scary (not to mention painful) surgery last month.  The universal thinking six weeks ago was that a procedure called a pleurodesis would save the world, cure cancer, re-kill Osama Bin Ladin, ensure that pandas live forever, and send our tall boy out into the world with permanently fixed lungs.

Well.

As it turns out, his continuing pulmonary woes are -- well, they are continuing.

The ways that this sucks are multiple and varied, and I could go on for days about how crappy this is, but frankly, I'm too tired.  But the sunny girl told me that I could blog the lazy way, and show you some screen captures of the texts that I have sent to various people as we have sat with our boy, while he hears super-smart, super-confident, super-experienced cardio-thoracic surgeons and pulmonologists and interventional radiologists (which I didn't even know was a thing, but it is) -- plus Uncle Doctor (who is an OB-GYN) -- say, "damned if we can figure this out."  Tragically, I'm not even paraphrasing.

Then the sunny girl talked me through the whole "screen capture" thing, which I didn't even know was a thing, but it is.  So any successful screen captures are thanks to her.

So -- here's what happened this time:

So -- that's pretty much where we are right now.  The tall boy is in the hospital, tethered to a chest tube and a pleural pump, with no end in sight.  He could be -- justifiably -- so depressed and cranky and mean.  But he is my hero because he has repeatedly said, "It is pointless to get pissy about things I cannot control."  We should all be wearing this on a t-shirt.

SHE (who is turning out to be the world's greatest girlfriend) has been his only bright spot in a really very discouraging turn of events.

Well, HER and his grandpa -- who brought him a fabulous Italian sub and ate lunch with him while talking about the Redskins game and Eisenhower.  Oh -- and his cousin, who is studying to be a nurse and was really nice about not asking to see his chest tube up close and personal, and who brought him a balloon that is basically a dead fish (which cracked him up).  And Lisa and her husband, who have visited every single day.  And Grandma Carol and Aunt Heidi, who brought him a watercolor set (people -- this tall boy is BORED).  And his professors at Catholic University, who, to a person, have been so supportive and gracious and have made sure he concentrates on getting better instead of on papers due and classes missed.  And all the people (Coleen, Sheri, Judy, Susan, Kathy, David, Lissa, Andrew, Carolyn, Mary) who have joshed and joked and jollied with him on Facebook and via text, as he faces a frustrating and frightening turn of events.  Plus the prayer warriors:  Annalisa and Jim, James and Betty, Carol Jean and Jim, Steven and Terry, Holly, Bonnie, Cristie, Bob and Elaine, Katey, Jane, Randy, Meghan, Lourdes, Mark, Lissa, Scott, Rafe, Alan, Jana, Saskia, Wendy, Matt, Rosemary, Joe.  And my dear, dear blog friends around the world: Polly, Heather, Maureen, Diane, Rena, Holly, and others I don't even know about.

He is a lucky, lucky tall boy.

We love you all very much.

"I like astronauts because they are heroes."

So yesterday I had the day off, and I spent the morning watching the NASA live feed of the national memorial service for Neil Armstrong.

Those who know this family, and especially those of you who know the tall boy, know that we have been a little melancholy ever since we learned that Mr. Armstrong had died.  It is a true fact that I heard about it on the radio as I was returning from Atlanta after dropping off the girl in charge at Emory University -- and I immediately texted my boy and told him how sorry I was (am). 

Because, see -- the tall boy has loved Neil Armstrong since he found out who the great man was.  This is a letter my boy wrote to his hero when the tall boy was five years old.  He had a little help with the typing.  (NASA's Public Affairs office helped Mr. Armstrong answer his mail, and some kind soul there returned the tall boy's letter, along with a reply packet that included photographs of the crews of Apollo 11 and 13 as well as some totally cool posters.)

Since then we have visited the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, trekked to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum I don't even want to know how many times, tracked down movies and books and plays . . . .  And that was while the boy was still small enough that he had to rely on us to help him feed his space addiction.  This book, I Want to Be An Astronaut, was a gift from his first grade teacher.

These days, my tall boy is somewhat self-sufficient when it comes to sucking down any information about the space program he can inhale from the internet.  So when I check in with him on Facebook, I can be sure that I will be reading some excellent article about the merits and "freaking awesomeness" of the Mars rover Curiosity, or about a newly discovered pair of white dwarf stars -- and of course anything -- anything -- about the Apollo astronauts.

Another true fact is that immediately upon moving into his brand spanking new bedroom after our basement renovation, the tall boy put up one poster.  Just one.

As you can see from his Facebook post from August 25, the day Mr. Armstrong died, my boy can speak most eloquently about his hero himself:

Events such as this prove the inadequacy of Facebook to convey real, complex emotion. What is there to say? The man was my hero, my idol - he lived my dream. I read about him, I wrote him, I wanted - still do - to be him. The man who was our first civilian astronaut took our dream of reaching the stars and turned it into a stepping stone. The world is a cheaper place for his passing.