The Measure of a Year

In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

When Don first introduced me to this song, Seasons of Love, from the musical Rent it was the summer of 2004.  We had both just graduated from college, had only been dating for three months, and were getting ready to spend a year apart in a serious long distance relationship – Tacoma, WA to Haiti.  In a fit of masochism we put this song on a “Saying Goodbye” playlist and listened to it at the airport as I dropped Don off to fly back to Indiana as I began my JVC training.  We both could not stop sobbing.

When I listen to this song now, I still cannot help sobbing, but, as with many pieces of music that become important in your life, it means something completely different now.  This past Monday, March 26^th, was the one year anniversary of Riley’s death.  Riley was, is, Don’s youngest brother.  He was killed in a car crash on his way back from Spring Break in Florida with three of his friends, Evan Weaver, Matt Roe and Alexx Bauer, who were driving in the car with him.  Another boy, Niall McNellis, was driving in the opposite direction when his car suddenly crossed the median and crashed into Riley’s car head on.  Everyone was killed.

I have written about that day.  Written about the phone calls.  The phone call Don got from his father, and the phone call I got from a good friend telling me that Don was on his way home from a party and had gotten some terrible news, but they didn’t know what it was.  I have written about packing everyone’s clothes into bags and packing everyone into the car and driving all night to Indiana.  I have written about the days and weeks that followed.  The memorial for the four boys that had to be held at the local college and lasted almost 10 hours, the lines of people coming to pay their respect and lend their support winding out the door and down the road.

I have written about it all, as I experienced it.  Maybe someday I will let someone else read it, but for now I still can’t.  It’s not just my experience.  Not just my grief.  I looked back today over what I wrote twelve months ago, and found the wound again.  The wound that grief makes in your heart when someone you love dies, and takes a piece of you with them.  The other wounds that open when you see people you love in pain, and you know that nothing you can do can help them the way they need to be helped.

Mourning Riley was very different for me than it was for Don, or anyone else in his family.  I had known him since he was 11 years old, and I think we had always been friends.  I know I loved him a lot, and was happy and proud to have him as a brother.  But what I found mourning the most was the loss of the future that we would have had with him.  The visits to him down at Purdue, the relationship he would have with Lucy and our future children, the life that we had planned with big spaces for him in it.  The plans we all make without checking first with God.  Most of all, I mourned for Don, who was in agony, an agony I could not assuage or even really touch.

The agony is still here.  The pain and the mourning, it never goes away.  Grief books like to call this “the new normal.”  When you lose someone, you don’t get over it, or get better.  We have just learned to live in the world as it is; now that Riley is somewhere else. 

And we thank God that we believe, with everything that we are, that there is a somewhere else, that Riley is there with God, and that some time in the future we will be there as well.

This month Don busted his ass, working every single day except for my birthday, so that we could drive to Indiana and be with family this past weekend.  The schedule wasn’t clear; all we knew was that we needed to be together.  We got to Angola Saturday night, and spent the weekend in prayer and celebration, enjoying the company of family and loved ones who come by without asking, just drawn by the need to share in a ministry of presence with one another.  To share in stories and memories and the trails of the last year.

Not even a month after Riley had died last year, Matt and Susie had the idea of creating a stations of the cross trail in the woods behind their house.  A way to pray and be close to Riley and God while hiking or riding or cutting through the woods while doing chores.  They ordered the special outdoor stations, and have had them in their house since May, waiting for the right time.  Monday dawned sunny and crisp, a real March day after weeks of 80 degree weather followed by rain.  Family and friends gathered on foot, horse and gator to help mount the stations of the cross and observe them together, the ritual even more potent when mindful of the season of Lent we are in and Easter fast approaching.

The day was almost idyllic.  Lucy and Cecelia, our good friends’ daughter, took turns riding with Don and David through the sunlit forest or toddling along over logs and leaves hand in hand.  When we hung the fourteenth and final station, someone noted that it was 3:40pm.  The coroner’s report had listed Riley’s time of death as between 3:40 and 3:45pm.

We ate brats and enormous amounts of BLT’s, Riley favorite sandwich.  Everyone cried and laughed, and while there were moments of silence and reflection and grief, the overwhelming feeling of eviscerating pain seemed to be absent.  There was a feeling of springtime, of hope and healing.  The feeling you get when you know that Easter is near, that the resurrection is at hand, and that the season of Lent is ending.

Every Ice is a tribute!

About five months ago Don and I had a long talk about where we were at, and some serious thinking that we had been doing about Riley and death and God.  Don said that he knew that being angry about his death was wrong, and that even wishing that Riley was still alive and with us was selfish too, even though that didn’t stop him from wishing it every day.  He knew that Riley was with God now, and how could he wish someone away from such a place?  I had been particularly struck by the homily at our local church that morning, and in light of Don’s thoughts it seemed especially relevant.  It seemed to us that the relationships that we form on earth, the love that we give to other and accept from others, are the strengths that we carry with us into God’s presence when we die.  And so, when you love someone deeply, as everyone loved Riley, and then they die, they carry your love, and a piece of you, with them to God. 

When I look back on this year, I think that was the beginning of our “new normal.”

So what does our new normal look like?  It looks like both of us still sobbing through the entire movie The Way, and now not being sure we will ever be able to see Emilio Estevez again without crying.  It looks like pictures of Riley all over our house, and our daughter’s huge stuffed horse named after his horse Cisco.  It looks like me never being able to listen to Top 40 music, Mac Miller, or Lil’ Wayne without tearing up, which can be very confusing to people.  It looks like us looking forward to naming our next child Riley, boy or girl.  It looks like moving to South Bend, Indiana to be close to the Zimmers and to the home where Riley grew up.  It is never shying away from saying his name or telling stories about him.

It is hearing a song at the gym and tearing up on the treadmill, hoping with half your heart that no one will notice you crying, and with the other half praying that someone will come up to you and ask you if you are alright so that you can tell them “no” and tell them why.  So that you can say his name, Riley, and tell a story about him and make another person in this world who knows.  It is feeling alone in a room of friends because you are thinking about being at a wake or a funeral home or a football game or wakeboarding on the lake a year ago or two years ago or five years ago and you don’t know how to say it out loud, or you try and someone else doesn’t know how to listen.  It is unexpected circles of friends, smaller now in those who knew Riley, and larger now in those who have also lost someone they loved.

It is desperately painful and still wildly joyful, and very very hard.  It is life.  I try to check in with Don more, and never assume that because he can laugh and we can talk about Riley and plan for the future that he is “better” or “recovered.”  Those words have no meaning in the language of grief. 

The last time we talked, Don astounded me again when I asked him how he was doing, and what he thought about when he thought about death.  I think he is in a unique position, having lost his beloved brother and being a doctor in an Emergency Room, confronting other’s death and loss almost every day.  That has informed a philosophy that has begun to permeate our lives now, and change the way we think from day to day.

Everything you have in life, you lose.  Your money, your things, your hearing, your sight, your ability to walk by yourself or even control your own bodily functions.  Your very life.  Your loved ones and your friends, one way or another.  None of this is under our control – its all up to God.  The only thing you can control is how you react to loss.  You can fight it, and risk losing your dignity and your mind along with everything else.  Or you can accept that loss will happen, and you can let things go.

It is something I am still coming to understand, because I haven’t experienced loss the way that Don has.  With Riley and with the work he does every single day.  It may be something I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand.  I was raised on a diet of fight – fight sickness and fight death and fight anything that tries to take something from you.  My family is Libertarian, and I came late in my life to the understanding that everything we have and are goes back to God, and that I really have no control over any of it at all.

It is another one of those ironic parent of a toddler moments as I try to teach my daughter that just because the playground is right behind our house does not mean that all of the sand toys and the swings and the horses in the playground are hers.  She has to share the playground and the toys with the other children.  And sometimes she cannot ride on the horses because they are being used.  And sometimes she cannot go to the playground at all because we have other things to do or because I said so.

Its moments like these when I realize yet again how much being a toddler is like being an adult who believes in God.  The more you trust your parents and accept their rules, the more responsibility you are given and the more you mature.  The more you give up to God, the more you get back and the more you learn and grow.  Maybe this line of logic will work on Lucy the next time she lies to me and tells me she peed in the toilet to get a Jelly Bean.  Maybe this line of logic will work on me the next time I get angry at God for throwing something in our way that I do not think we need or takes something away that I am certain we do need.

The song asks how you measure a year in your life, what units you use to quantify and evaluate the 525,600 minutes that make up this cycle.  Lucy has grown from a silent/looking/stumbler into a full human being that runs, talks, demands, kisses, eats, climbs and hugs all by herself.  We have decided to take a job at Memorial Hospital in South Bend and move back to Indiana for the next few years at least.  I lost my job, became a stay at home mother, and finally, very grudgingly, mustered up the courage to start writing.  We spent a month in Haiti, making new friends and breaking our own hearts open in new ways.  But most of all, Don lost his brother and friend, and we have been dealing with tidal waves and ripples of that event.  We have been hurting and healing, and growing and struggling to be reborn into this world without a Riley.  And, as cheesy at it is, we have still been loving, more fiercely and with more abandon than ever before.

The sun peeking through above the back pasture.  Hi Riley!

Lucy colors for Riley, while Don lays in the grass above him.

Heartbreaker

Last night I was going for a fifth attempt at Haitian rice and beans while Don took Lucy down to the park to play for an hour or so.  It was vegan Friday, so the rice and beans were going to supplement our main dish of non-dairy cheese nachos, which I was very dubious about.  We have had very few stumbling blocks this Lenten season giving up meat, and those few stumbling blocks always seem to happen on vegan Fridays, when I forget that non-dairy creamer does contain milk products or Lucy shoves a cheddar bunny snack into my mouth.  But rice and beans are always welcome in our house, and I actually had the Haitian necessities of scallions, onions, garlic, shallot, hot peppers and bullion, so we were good to go!  Cheese disaster or no, at least there would be diri ak pwa!  (Note: I read a lot of online reviews of non-dairy cheese to try and figure out which brand and style to go with.  Soy based?  Tree nut based?  Does it melt?  We ended up trying a few different kinds of one brand, and I think I can safely say that barring any lifestyle changing illness or event, I will never be able to go vegan.  I.  Love.  Cheese.  And non-dairy cheese is NOT cheese.  Enough said.)

So I am frying up the spice mixture for the rice and beans when I get a text from Don down at the park:

            Lu’s got a crush on an older boy.

I run from the kitchen to our guest bedroom where I can see down to the playground out the window, and search for my beloved daughter, not yet two years old.  She is running around the big kid play area, trying to climb a chain link ladder to the upper level.  Don waves up at me while spotting her, and I text him back suggesting he destroy the boy, and then asking what he is wearing so I can try and spot him.  Lucy makes it to the top of the ladder just as I get the message that this alleged male interloper is twice Lucy’s age and is wearing a green shirt.

I message Don back, telling him I can’t believe she can climb that ladder now when she has been trying unsuccessfully for the last year.  I scan the playground for a boy in a green shirt, and finally spot him climbing up a rope onto the same piece of the castle that Lucy is playing on.  A series of completely irrational thoughts run through my mind.  Good God he is like five years old, Lucy what are you thinking?!  Oh…he likes to climb too.  That is so bad.  Climbers are trouble Lucy Jane, I should know.  Jesus how do we get her away from him without driving her further toward him?!

As I am embracing this irrationality I see the boy run past Lucy to the fireman’s pole and slide down out of sight.  Lucy runs after him, grabs the edge of the railing and leans out over the ten foot drop to see where he has gone.  My stomach drops and my heart explodes.  Jesus God, I am going to watch from my fucking window while my daughter falls down a fireman’s pole onto her head.  Shit!!!  I bang on the window to try and get Don’s attention, but he is on the other side of the castle from Lucy and making his way toward her nonchalantly, unaware that her newfound fascination will be the death of her in a few short seconds.  Finally, fully aware of the shitiness and irony of the situation I text him:

            She’s on the pole!!!!!

Of course by the time I have sent this ridiculous message she has backed away from the pole and run over to the twirly slide instead, having seen that her beau ran in that direction once he reached the ground.  I text a quick apology and retraction:

            Oh my God I just had a heart attack.  I’m sorry, I’m not watching anymore.

The reply:

            Stop it.  You’re killing me!

I go back into the kitchen to finish dinner, convinced that my voyeuristic communication with Don will cause Lucy some injury, and more than a little happy not to be taking part in the romantic drama unfolding.  Ten minutes later, I get another message from Don that has me running back to the window:

            She really badly wants this boy to push her on the swing, but doesn’t know how to ask him.  It’s ripping my heart out.  Mega flash forward.

I see my daughter, not yet two years old, on the large red recliner swing down in the park.  Don is standing off to the side, and when he moves in to push her she swings her arms at him in an obvious gesture of dismissal.  She then leans out of the other side of the swing, her arms extended toward something I can’t see.  A second later, the boy in the green shirt walks into view and starts to push her on the swing.  Lucy settles back into the swing in contentment, occasionally turning around to make some comment to the boy and check to see that he is still there. 

My heart explodes again.  I immediately go to the dry bar and make myself a Jack and Coke and go back to the window.  Don and I message back and forth about what she is doing.  I ask if this boy promised to honor and cherish her, and Don says that Lucy showed him the ouchie on her nose and then immediately pointed out that her boogers were in her nose.  Pure seduction to a five year old boy.  A few minutes later Lucy slides off of the swing, holds her hand up for the little boy to take, and they run off to ride the bouncy horses together.  In a few more minutes, she and the boy run back to the swings, and he faces him and lifts her arms up for this little five year old to lift her into the swing.  He does it without hesitation.  

My heart explodes a third time, and I see her life flash before my eyes.  She is thirteen, with a crush on a boy in her class, and she deliberately plays poorly in sports so that he will like her.  She is sixteen, desperate to be asked to the school dance but unable to tell him that she likes him.  She is eighteen, a freshman at college and all she wants is to be accepted and loved.  Does she make good choices?  Does she fall in love with nice boys?  Does she know that her own self-worth comes from inside, and is not assigned her by someone else?  Has she ever had her heart broken?  Does she know how strong, intelligent, and kind she is?  Does she care?  Do we know how to teach her all of these things?  Oh my God, we have to start now, right now!  It is already spinning out of our control!  Boy in the green shirt, what have you done?!

Don stands to the side of the swing set, now relegated to the role of chaperone and observer, no longer needed as a playmate.   He messages:

            He said “ufta” when he lifted her into the swing.  She gave him her barrette.  This is so masochistic.

I tell him dinner is ready and to bring her up.  A few minutes later Don walks in with Lucy in arms, and it’s clear she has been crying.  “Are you ok?” I ask him.  I know Lucy will be fine in two minutes after sitting her in front of a bowl of rice and beans.  But if my reaction to the situation was this strong just watching it through a window, then I know that Don is crumbling apart right now.

“His name is Carter.  He has a little sister just a little older than Lucy.  I think he was playing with Lucy like he plays with his sister…but I don’t think that she knew that.  Oh man…I need a drink.”

Our terror continued to hold us in sway for several days.  Don left for Mankato on Saturday morning, and that day I refused to take Lucy to the park by myself because St. Patrick’s Day at the park on a 75 degree day in Minnesota means that there are 167 five year old boys in green shirts running around.  It was just too much for me.  I finally got the chance to talk to a good friend about the whole episode on Saturday evening, as a few friends with kids got together at the local nature center for a picnic dinner.  As I was recounting the story, my humorous retelling an attempt to belie the feelings of true helplessness and terror that the episode actually produced, I noticed something that made the ache in my heart subsist.  Slightly.

Lucy was acting the same way with our friends’ five year old daughter.  She was following her around everywhere, eschewing the company of the adults and other toddlers her age for this older girls’ attention.  Is it a crush on a person, I wondered, Or just a crush on an age.  An idea of being older and everything that means.  To a toddler I suppose being older means running faster and playing with better toys and sitting on a big girl chair when you eat without a bib on and drinking juice instead of milk.  It seems pretty awesome.  So, no problem right?  It’s a crush on the ideal of the older kid, the freedom and the choices and the grass is greener on the other side.  Right?

Right?

Well, that is what we are prepared to tell ourselves for the foreseeable future, at least.  Unless you have a son that is wearing a green shirt, in which case please don’t bother coming over because you are no longer welcome.  Just kidding…?

A Little Bit of Knowledge Can Be Very Dangerous

My promises to myself to write daily have fallen flat for the last few weeks.  At first I very successfully laid the blame at the foot of The Cold, thinking that I needed to rest while Lucy napped instead of write in order to ensure my immune system was strong enough to defeat the germs that were travelling through our house.  However, as with pretty much every infection I ever get, The Cold has found a new home in my genetically cursed sinuses and morphed into The Sinus Infection.  Since this is an annual or semi-annual event, I usually avoid taking antibiotics until The Sinus Infection has been in residence for at least a month.  By that time treatment is less a logical move toward health and more a desperate last resort to a) enable me to stop sleep sitting up or draped over a humidifier, and, more importantly; b) save my marriage.

Everyone knows that doctors make terrible patients.  Popular culture is rife with images of proud, egotistical doctors waiting too late to get treatment for serious illnesses because they refused to accept that they could be sick, or turning into completely incompetent babies when laid low with the smallest cold or flu.  My love, D, is no exception to the stereotype, although he could never be classified as egotistical or a baby.  He only ever goes to the doctor when forced and under duress, and then usually when I make the appointment for him.  When he injured his knee a moth before the Chicago marathon this summer I finally got him to see a Sports Medicine doctor by telling him they were having a free clinic at our gym, which happened to be on an afternoon that he had off.  Two months before we got married he took a short trip to Haiti and when he came back he had stomach problems for weeks.  But he was a medical student and didn’t have time to see a doctor, or go to the gym either.   So instead he left his stomach problems to resolve naturally and just lost ten pounds before the wedding.  Note: this is not a doctor recommended weight loss plan, nor a good way to endear yourself to your future bride.

There are a lot of reasons that Don doesn’t go to a doctor, reasons that I am sure many other doctors share.  One: he is a doctor, an Emergency Physician, and as such is trained to handle pretty much anything.  Barring the presentation of some very specialized problems or a significant trauma, he can handle most of the health issues that he and the rest of our family face at home.  So we go to the doctor for Lucy’s check-ups, when necessary for prescription refills, and when pregnant.  Two: he has NO time.  He is a resident physician.  They call them residents because they used to physically live at the hospital.  That is how much they worked.  Despite great strides made in the US to reduce resident work load to manageable weekly hours, he still works a LOT.  And when he isn’t working in the Emergency Room, he has weekly lectures, monthly simulation sessions, grand rounds presentations, research projects, studying for boards and other exams, etc etc to do.  Most doctors’ offices are open Monday through Friday from 8am until 5pm.  The chances that Don will have any time off during those hours are very slim.  The chances that he will have any time off during those hours that he would want to spend seeing another doctor instead of hanging out with Lucy and me or getting in a workout or talking to his family and friends?  ZERO.  If Don is sick, he’d much rather spend his free time (excuse me while I laugh hysterically here) just nesting on the couch watching Ratatouille with Lucy for the 718^th time with a sock full of Vicks VapoRub wrapped around his neck.

However bad doctors are about being sick, I guarantee that I, a doctor’s wife, am exponentially worse.  Perhaps it is just me, or perhaps it is a function of being married to a doctor, but I guarantee that I am a ridiculously awful patient.  Don and I started dating the last week of college.  We have been together through his entire medical education process.  The first year of medical school I used to quiz him on anatomy and pathology as we drove back and forth to his families’ house or to see his brother David wrestle.  I had to learn the correct pronunciation of many ridiculous Latin terms.  In the process of medical school and residency and Haiti and having a baby a teensy, tiny bit of medical knowledge has soaked into my savage little mind.  There is has taken root, and grown into a very dangerous, and really annoying, beast.

I have said it before – an Emergency Physician’s job is to assess and meet the needs of the patient.  They do this based on a myriad of diagnostic tools: physical exam, medical history, patient charts, other doctor’s notes, tests, labs, etc.  If a patient comes into the ED with a preconceived idea of their own diagnosis, this makes it very difficult for the doctor, and sometimes very frustrating.  Even worse is when the patient comes in with an idea of their own diagnosis and treatment – sometimes it makes Don feel like people don’t view him as a trained professional with skills and knowledge to help him, but just an antibiotic or narcotics dispenser.  I know this, because this is exactly what I do, over a period of many days, when I am sick.

For example, go back and read the first paragraph of what I have written.  Look at how I was able to diagnose The Sinus Infection!  You may have suspected when you read that the first time that I had been to the doctor and they had done some sort of culture or test or looked into my sinuses with amazing scopes, but you would be wrong!  Oh no…I looked up my own nose with a tiny flashlight, and examined the color of my tissues and concluded that I had sinusitis.  Yes, I am that smart.  And also, I look at my own tissues?  Gross.  And when Don asks me how I am feeling, I give him vague and leading responses concerning my history of sinus infections and the number of tissue boxes I have been through and then it gets worse from there.

Now I am not saying that it is not good to be an informed patient.  Far from it.  Be aware of your own body!  Be aware of your symptoms and your medical history!  If you have done research on a problem that you have or think you have, make sure you talk to your doctor about and present your questions and concerns clearly…but do so clearly!  Don’t meter out information and questions in a way that you think will lead the doctor to the same conclusion that you have made in the four hours you have spent online at WebMD.  I caution because I care, and because I do this myself with a calculating efficiency whenever I see other doctors.  I write about this now because I would also do this to my poor, long suffering, husband, only he knew me well enough to get pissed off instead of call me in a prescription, and for that I am thankful.

To make matters even worse for Don, in addition to the scheming and manipulating and wild speculation based on dangerous knowledge, I have a somewhat hilarious kind of synesthesia (again, self diagnosed).  I feel some things in color.  When I have a cough, my chest is white.  When I have a soar throat, my throat is pine coney and green.  Sinus infections are an icy green.  In addition to that (yes, there’s more!) I am completely and 100% unable to give you a simple answer to a pain scale question.  You know that piece of paper in your doctor’s office that has the scale from 1 up to 10 with the various faces illustrating people in pain.  Face number 1 is smiling, eating brunch and drinking mimosas with friends, with no pain whatsoever.  Face number 10 is being tortured in a CIA black site in Southeast Asia.  You know the paper I mean.  That piece of paper makes me want to punch someone in the throat, which is what I almost do every time a doctor asks me the question “where is your pain on a scale of 1 to 10?”  This made for a very dangerous situation while I was in labor with Lucy.  There were nurses and midwives in danger of being throat punched all over that hospital.

Don fares only slightly better when he asks me this question.  My response usually comes through clenched teeth, as I fight to restrain myself from punching him.

“Well…when I cough its like a burning white pain in my chest.  Like a sixish at the worst at the peak of the cough you know.  But then my throat is a pine coney four all the time, except when I cough which is a seven, and oh, swallowing is very thick and grey and an eight sort of.  My ears also feel orange inside.  And my sciatica is acting up in my back leg knee.  It feels like lightning.”

At this point Don either walks away for a moment because I am being totally serious, and he is about to kill me, or he just looks at me and tells me I need to call my primary care doctor because he is not going to do this anymore.  Or, more probably, I have dissolved into nervous, hysterical laughter because I know I am driving him insane, and then he walks away to get me drink of water so I can breathe again.

Because this was becoming a vicious cycle anytime I would experience any pain or discomfort, I have recently begun taking some drastic steps to ensure that I do not drive my husband insane or remind him of his worst patients or ruin our marriage.  I have tried to come up with a script to use when I want Don’s medical opinion on something, a script that will not be leading or manipulative at all.  I had the opportunity to try it out in the car the other day, after using up the last of my fifth box of Kleenex since I first…started to need to blow my nose….two weeks ago. 

Me:  <<looking out the window pensively>> So…I have been thinking about how to ask you this question for the last five minutes, and I think I have it right now.  OK?”

Don: <<looking warily at me>> Okaaaay  Go for it.

Me: So…what do you think is wrong…no.  Damn it.  How do you think I…no.  No.  Argh.  OK.  What I mean to say is…Don.  Don.  What is your opinion on the current state of my health?

Don: <<staring at me, eyes wide, then breaking into hysterical laughter>> BWAHAHAHAHH ahahaha hahahahaa ahhhhhh ah…wow.  Ha.  You have an Upper Respiratory Infection.  Seriously though honey, I’m sorry you feel so crummy.  I love you.

Me:  Oh.  OK.  So…like…should I do anything?  I mean, is there anything you recommend I do, or not do, or something?  Or…take?  Not like antibiotics, or anything, but…you know.  Tea?

Don: You want me to prescribe you antibiotics, don’t you?

Me: NO!  No.  No I actually don’t want any antibiotics.  I just wondered if you thought there was anything else I could do to help the healing process.

Don:  No, not really.  Just keep on keeping on.  It’ll resolve itself in time.

Me:…..that’s what I thought.  I should get some more herbal tea.

Don:  Yes…that’s exactly what I said.  Drink more herbal tea.

Me:  I’m glad we had this talk.  That was good, wasn’t it?  Better communication.

Don: <<looking at me out of the corner of his eyes>> Yes.  Yes.  That was great communication, honey.  Great.

Coming soon...

Tonight finally making the extra falafel that I've had in the freezer since June! We were going to fry them up last night but it was Lenten vegan Friday and I cannot/will not have falafel without feta and tatziki, so we postponed.

After falafel I am really looking forward to making these new red chori beans and fresh cardamom pods into a chori bean masala!

I guess I'll have to wait until I get back to Rochester though, unless I want to buy all new spices and a new curry pot. Somehow I don't think Don would appreciate me buying another two pound bag of garam masala...

The Cold

I wanted to send a quick post apologizing for not writing anything for a while.  Last Friday Lucy caught the Side by Side childcare cold, and since then both she and I have decimated the Kleenex supply of this city.  I haven't had the inspiration to write anything that doesn't involve long descriptions of mucus colors or the frustrations of trying to teach a toddler that your shirt is not something on which she can wipe her nose, and I refuse to subject you all to those prolonged, disgusting rants.

I promise to be back soon, with thoughts hopefully more insightful than wondering what is the perfect decongestant cocktail to enable me to breathe at night without drying out my head like a slab of beef jerky or rendering me completely comatose for ten hours.

February....Bleh

I have been feeling very February today – cold, windy, grey, covered in chunks of crusty, mud sprayed snow.  To relieve this sense of spiritual muckiness I decided to read through some of my earlier scribblings from this summer, hoping for a well defined memory of warmth and sunlight.  I found this little gem, which gave me a few laughs for obvious and not so obvious reasons, especially considering all of the time I have been spending lately trying to separate the what I think I should be doing voice from the what God thinks I should be doing voice in my head.  I won’t say “please, enjoy” because I think that’s presumptuous and you may not enjoy it at all, and I may not care.  So…please, partake.

********

In Which I Find Myself Picking Up Dog Poop With A McDonald's Bag

“hi….hi…”

Balanced on my hip, Lu leans her upper body away from me and gives me a Peter Rabbit, crinkled nose grin as she whispers hello.  She leans in, snugs her crusty nosed, tously curled head into my neck, snakes her strong little arms around my shoulder and pats me on the back.  Endorphins flood my system.  I close my eyes and sigh.

“hi…” she breathes into my neck.

It is the 63^rd day of my stay at home experiment (adventure? Journey I did not intend to embark upon but am trying to jump into whole hearted?), and strangely enough, the first time I have written expressly about it.  Well, it is the first time I have written about staying at home without the gratuitous use of language that would make a cowboy/trucker/sailor blush, so I feel I am making progress.

At 29 years of age I find myself with a husband, a 16 month old daughter, a huge black lab, a house, two cars, bachelors and master’s degrees from the University of Notre Dame, wonderful friends, two loving families, and no job.  Allow me to rephrase: no CAREER.  No calling.

63 days ago I was called into one of my supervisor’s office, and told that my job no longer existed due to a restructuring of the office.  Moreover, due to the sensitive nature of the information that I dealt with, would I please pack up my desk and leave immediately?  Thank you so much, maybe now would be a great time to focus on your family, and best of luck with your life!  In a daze I drove to the hospital and liberated my husband forcibly from his Tuesday lectures.  We sat in our park drinking coffee and made a PLAN.

            Item 1: Decide whether to go back to work for the next 11 months, or stay home with Lucy while figuring out what I want to be when I grow up?

            Decision: Look for work.

Four weeks of depressing and hectic job hunting later (Question: have you ever tried to write a cover letter with a toddler on your lap fighting you for the mouse?  Have you ever had to look for a job knowing that the skill set and job history you have amassed do not match the job of your dreams, but without really knowing what that dream job is exactly?  First things first: have you ever had to look for a job at all!?  If not…just skip this page I guess) that decision was reversed by the Court of Appeals as a result of several strong arguments presented by several very convincing parties.

            Party One: My Rochester friends, who, while shocked and saddened by my sudden….dismissal?...were unabashedly delighted at the thought that I would be free to play and parent with them more.  These are all incredibly smart, talented, professional women who stay at home with their children here while their husbands are in residency.  Nurses, lawyers, doctors, you name it.  They convinced me that I could stay at home with Lucy and not turn into an insane, wearing-pajamas-in-the-grocery-store, using baby talk with non-babies, no longer aware of current events, vacant eyed crazy lady.  Note: I am NOT saying that this is what I think stay at home mothers are like – far from it!  This just delineates my irrational set of fears as to what I would become.

            Party Two: the second appeals argument was made by my husband and good friend Carolyn.  They are both madly convinced that I am supposed to write (but, unhelpfully have no advice on what I should write).  They think my unceremonious sacking (sorry, but “restructured” just doesn’t sound as fun…or convey the emotions involved) was in fact a providential opportunity to explore the next step in my intellectual life i.e. writing.  I think they are nuts.

Party Three: this third and most convincing argument was made by Lucy herself in ceasing to become a wriggling need-monster, and blossoming into an actual human being that can communicate.  One morning, about a month after my nonchalant dismissal, I was readying Lucy for our morning walk down to the playground.  I glanced at the clock to see if we would be early enough to avoid the YMCA mob.  When I read 7:35am, instead of my typical line of though about how we had better hurry up, my mind felt as if it suddenly cleared.  All I could think was:

Thank you God.  Thank you God that I have not just dropped off Lucy at daycare and am now on my way to that job that I really never liked, and that was slowly sucking away my soul.  Thank you God that I am lucky enough to be able to take my daughter and dog to the playground every morning.  Thank you God that she is healthy and happy, and that I am able to watch her and guide her as she grows into a little person.  Thank you God!

And here I am, another month later, daughter in one hand, dog leash and coffee mug in the other, cell phone, tissues and poop bag in my back pocket, at 6:50am on a mid-August morning on my way to the playground.

In adjusting to my new “routine” as a stay at home mom and wife, I have been disgustingly lucky.  Not only do I have a wonderful group of friends to meet up with for play dates and happen to live in one of the most family friendly towns in America, but our location could not be better.  Our backyard consists of a hill which terminates in an amazing little playground, a three minute walk takes us to the cities system of walking/running trails, and a 10 minute walk takes downtown and to the library.  Like I said – disgustingly lucky.  Well, for the five months of the year the city isn’t covered in snow…

Leaving the house, baby, dog and coffee in hands, we are at the playground in two minutes by the long route.  Boss stops twice to poop in the grass of the park, and Lucy looks on in confusion as I explain to her that humans poop in toilets (or their diapers) while dogs and cats, and pretty much all animals, can poop where they want.  While I am trying to set a foundation for eventual potty training, this running commentary mostly serves the purpose of keeping her from running away when I set her down to pick up after Boss.

Our journey resumes, and dog, coffee, baby and full poop bag in hands, we complete the short walk to the park, passing a steady stream of Mayo employees walking to work on the way.  The streets around the park and in our neighborhood serve as overflow parking for the downtown Mayo buildings.

As I stated before, not only are we lucky enough to live this close to a playground, but it is (in my opinion) the best playground in the city.  Designed to look like a rustic, wooden fort but safely made of mostly composite plastic, there are separate play areas for toddlers and older kids, as well as two sandboxes.  We love to come so early in the morning so that Lucy and Boss can play together in the “big kid” area that quickly becomes dangerous to an adventurous toddler when full of screaming seven year olds.

View of the park from the top of our backyard hill.

Quick aside: Lucy is in the 50^th percentile for her age across the board, but she runs everywhere, climbs everything, and follows older kids around like a shadow.  It is better to have her away from larger playgrounds when bigger kids are around.  Several times I have rescued her from the jaws of death (or the Emergency Room at least) as she tried to follow a bigger kid off a two story drop down a fireman’s pole or up a rope ladder that she can fall through.  This brings us to one of the most important EM Wife Rules: whatever you do, do not visit Daddy at work in an official capacity.

Yes, of course I never want Lucy to get hurt in the first place.  However, with a growing monkey bumps, bruises, scrapes, stitches and even breaks are bound to happen.  And while I dread the thought of Lucy in pain, I dread perhaps even more the though of my husbands terror, however momentary, at seeing our address or name on the incoming ambulance board.

This is a shift in mentality that seemed to happen slowly, so I am not sure if it is a function of being the wife of an EM doctor, being the mother of a child whose father is an EM doctor, or a function of the recent tragedies that have affected our family.  Regardless of the cause, the affect is clear – don’t get hurt!

Lucy, not thrilled to be sitting with Boss, at the park,

Once at the gates of the playground (which must be approached from the right so as to steer her past the large sand box full of dewy wet morning sand) Lucy runs immediate to a large dump truck which seems to have been liberated from the sandbox the night before.  Relishing the feeling of the playgrounds wood chip flooring between her fingers, she squats down in her purple bug pajama pants and starts filling the back of the truck with chips.  (A note on playground flooring:  wood chips – yes, please.  Rubber matting: awesome.  Pea gravel: ok, easy to pry out of wounds, but that sucks.  Sand: you are stupid and cheap!)  Boss makes a circuit of the playground, looking for discarded edibles, discarded trash, large sticks, etc.  I sit down on the low fence that seperates big kid land from toddler land, sip my coffee, and sigh in contentment.  The sun is just rising above the treetops that line the street, the air is a bit cool, Lucy had decided wood chips are probably not food and recommenced filling the truck bed, and when pouring my coffee this morning I attained the ideal ratio of coffee to vanilla creamer.

Perfection achieved.

Happy sandbox baby and puppy.

I do another quick visual check to make sure everyone is still in the area and see…Boss pooping again underneath the jungle gym.

Shit.  Ok.  Ok, don’t panic.  The one bag I brought with us this morning is already gone.  However, in anticipation of just such a problem, I took the liberty of hiding several poop bags around the playground.  Keeping one eye on Lucy (now trying to fit her butt into the wood lined truck bed) I walk around the playground checking out the bolt holes.

Small recess behind wooden flower: empty.

Small recess behind wooden bunny tail: empty.

Hole underneath back of bench: empty.

Small recess behind wooden ear of corn in corn maze: empty.

Shit.  Literally.

I now begin a process I had hoped to avoid with my clever bag hiding scheme.  A process I have only had to perform once before, which left me in a very disgusting situation where I actually had to think whether it would be better to carry my daughter home given my state of contamination, or leave her in the playground for two minutes ALONE while I sprinted back to our house and quickly sanitzed my hands.  I had to compromise by first wiping my hands on wet grass, scouring them with sand until they were red and raw, and carrying Lucy back on my hip with an uncontaminated forearm while attempting not to touch her with my hands.

I scour the playground and nearby trash cans for suitable poop picking up trash.  What kind of trash can you use to pick up dog poop, you enquire?  Well, I have found the following items work quite well:

• Discarded party plates, preferably large
• Empty plastic bags
• Empty fast food drink cups

But were any of these items present?  No.  What was the only item in the very bottom of a nasty, wet trash can?  A sodden, paper McDonald’s sack.

“Well” I thought, “At least it looks to have been a very large meal.”  What the bag lacked in poop retention and hand protection qualities it made up for in sheer size.  And so, prize in one hand, fending my overly curious daughter off with the other hand, nasty trash fluid dripping onto my shoe and down over my foot in the process, I made my way over to the jungle gym.

“bad dog…” I mutter, trying to hold my breath, pick up poop, keep Lucy away from the poop, and keep a positive frame of mind at the same time.  As the wet paper starts to tear under the weight of the…package…I fight even harder not to let a cloudy perspective take over.

Damn it, I am an intelligent and accomplished woman who makes plans for even situations such as these!  I come from a good family!  I am an excellent wife, a damn good mother, and a loyal friend.  I have two degrees from a top University!  How the hell did I end up running to a trash can holding a rapidly disintegrating McDonald’s bag of dog shit?!

After the 3 second wave of self righteous indignation passes, I begin the process of dew-washing and sand-scouring.  I pause to point out a large stick to Lucy, who pauses in her laughing pursuit of mommy who is playing this excellent game of running swearing through the playground, and runs towards the stick.  Lucy views every stick, be it an inch long twig or a two foot long branch, as Boss’ toy, and takes pains to pick them up and offer them to him.  Lucy and Boss happily engaged in a tug of war over the stick, I resume the sand scouring. 

I shrug my shoulders…oh well.  Sometimes in life, you just find yourself picking up dog shit in a playground with a soaking wet McDonald’s bag.

Tunnel exploration.

Lots of swing options.

And more sandbox fun!

Coming Home

It has been hard to get a handle on settling back into our routine here in Minnesota.  I think that is because, in part, I haven’t had the chance to collect my thoughts on our last few days there, and in part because everything seems to be life as normal here in Minnesota when life as normal isn’t normal anymore. 

Do you remember when you would go home from college for a break or a summer, and your home wouldn’t seem to fit anymore?  You would have taken a life changing course from a new mentor, made completely different friends, had an incredible volunteer or service experience, or just lived more life.  In short, you would be different, changed, possibly on the exterior but more probably just inside.  But your home, your family, your friends from High School, would be expecting the you that left a few months ago, not the you that felt so different inside.  And so, over a course of time, a disconnect would develop, and soon you would just be waiting to go back to school, back to the environment where you felt real and authentic-  where you weren’t either pretending to be someone else from six months ago, or struggling to drag everyone else along with you.  Maybe being at school was difficult, and maybe you were going through a lot of changes and challenges, but it was what you knew, and what knew you.

Well, that is sort of where I am at right now.  Being in Haiti was very difficult at times – it was hard feeling like we could not get outside of the compound walls very often, like we couldn’t freely walk around.  It was difficult not really speaking the language, but that was something I was trying to remedy.  It was heartbreaking being surrounded by extreme poverty and need and not having the skills to directly meet any of those needs.  It was unsettling to me sometimes to not really be doing anything down there except for being present and experiencing and doing what I normally do – parent Lucy and occasionally write. 

Haiti is a place where people from America go to do things – build schools, work in hospitals, provide clean water, dig wells, build churches, etc, ad infinitum.  While Don and I had talked about this extensively beforehand, and agreed that while I may not be able to participate directly in any actual work, it was still valuable for us as a family and a sign of our commitment as a family to always having Haiti be a part of our lives, it was still difficult not to have any tangible signs that I had been there.  True, I had been extremely blessed to be able to use my knowledge of nonprofits to help Naomi file for tax exempt charity status for Kado…so maybe I will feel better once we get those papers in the mail!

I think the crux of the problem is that experiences and relationships and the changes that those make in you are harder to show, harder to explain, to the important people in your life that haven’t been on the journey with you.  They have not forged the same neural pathways in response to the smell of burning trash in the Port-au-Prince morning air, or the taste of fresh mango, or the sight of a group of street kids playing baseball in an abandoned lot at dusk.  Your loved ones, for the most part, want to know what you have experienced, want to hear your stories and live in the moments with you, but you lack the ability or perhaps the energy to take them there with you.

D and I had a good talk the other day about how our experiences of coming home have been different.  For me, the different in what I do day to day has changed little – it is the environment and the context that has shifted.  D is experiencing that same contextual shift in addition to a drastic change in his day to day work, in the very way he practices medicine. 

In Haiti, when practicing medicine, as in many other professions, one learns to work with less.  Your patients come in, they present with certain symptoms, your job is to ascertain the needs of the patients and treat them.  You have done your training in an American hospital, arguably the best hospital and healthcare system in the United States and the world.  So now you learn how to ascertain the needs of the patient when your x-ray machine is working but the developer is not, so no x-rays, and a CT scan is out of the question, and you can get certain lab tests done but not today.  Your skills of physical diagnosis are developed, and you learn to work with what you have. 

And then you move on to working on your treatment plan within the confines of your current resources.  What drugs do you have available?  Are any of the four monitors open?  Is there any oxygen available?  You start back at the very basics – Airway, Breathing and Circulation – and sometimes you realize you cannot even address those very basic needs.  What you do have to offer is your humanity, your presence as a human with another human being in need or even as they die.  You return to an even more basic practice of medicine, to a greater reliance on human connection.  That is sometimes all you have to offer.

Now, back at home, safely enfolded in the bosom of western medicine, you can still be overcome by indecision, but one that stems from a very different source.  Here, you have everything available to you.  You start with the ABC’s but you have to move forward quickly with a veritable assault of specialists, drugs, and tests.  Back at Mayo, being a good doctor is standard; if you can also bring your humanity to your practice, that makes you a great doctor.  Unfortunately, in the fast pace of medicine here, especially Emergency Medicine, this is often the last thing you have time for.  Something you have to make a special effort to achieve.

The meat of it is that I am not sad we are having a hard time being back here, and I don’t think D is either.  I would be sad if we slipped seamlessly back into our old routines and walked away from our experience without any scars at all.  Like the story of the Perfect Heart from the Christian inspirational email that goes around, our hearts are full of scars and patches and holes.  We are the better for every time our hearts have been broken open and re-mended, for every time we have loved and been hurt.

This past year, since Riley died, our hearts have been worked over time, and because of that I thought we would have been a more guarded than we were.  Much more reluctant to meet new people and love them, to witness pain and suffering with or without being able to relieve it.  That was not the case. 

I believe it is because our hearts are still broken open, still gaping with the loss of our brother, that we were both unable and unwilling to shield ourselves from further scarring.  Unable, because although we seem to function regularly to the outside world, inside we are still struggling to come to terms with the new “normal” of our lives.  The everyday ache of absence.  When faced with things with the potential to harm us – more changes, new friends, Haiti in general – we haven’t the energy to form barriers. 

Unwilling, because D and I have made the conscious decision many times in our lives not to let pain and the fear of pain keep us from loving.  Not to let an already broken heart keep us from breaking our hearts open again.  Not to walk away from a heated “conversation” that could lead to hurt feelings and instead making the effort to work through the pain and the misunderstanding to the other side.  Not to let tests and referrals to specialists and prescriptions be enough, but getting to know the person inside the patient because sometimes just talking will make all of the difference.  Not to gloss over the last month of our lives with a standard “it was great” response because we assume that people cannot understand.

It’s a difference I have noticed in myself since those early days of returning to college frustrated with a family and friends I felt I had grown apart from.  Some drift is natural as people take separate paths in life, but a great deal has to do with making the effort to make yourself vulnerable to those you love, and show them how your heart has changed.  Chances are, theirs has changed too, and they were only waiting for the opportunity to share it with you.