Motorcycles and Freedom

My father has three brothers. Had. His youngest, my Uncle Michael, was killed about 17 years ago. He was 33.

I work as a policy analyst for a State agency. For four months every year, a big portion of my job is reviewing proposals for new laws, made by the legislature while they are in session. So every time some elected official starts humming, “I am a Bill, I am only a Bill…” and submits something in a committee, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of staffers like me have to read it. We forecast the effect, if any, the changes proposed by the law-to-be would have on how our agency functions. Most of the proposals have no affect whatsoever.

But I am amused, every year, to consider the blizzard of effort that must be expended on every. Single. One. Of these proposals. First, an email is sent to me, and all of the people in positions like mine in all of the departments in my agency, that lists all of the proposals made thus far. The legislative services staff for my agency tries to flag those proposals that would be of particular concern to each department, and solicits our attention as to the proposal’s impact.

So, last year, when a Delegate (or one of his constituents) was offended by the rubber testicles someone suspended from the back of a pick-up truck, he proposed a law that would prohibit the display of anatomically correct body parts. Seriously. And we had to read it and comment on how expensive it would be to enforce. 2007 HB 1163. Go look it up.

Anyway, a few times during the legislative session, all of the staff legislative analysts meet together and spend as long as it takes (these are called “marathon sessions” for a reason) to go through every last bill, making sure the Legislative Services office knows which bills concern us. If there ARE issues of note, (whether the issues lead us to recommend support or), someone is directed to draft a position paper, summarizing the Agency’s or Department’s concerns and interests. If the issues addressed are substantial enough, someone will be tasked with monitoring the bill’s progress, and personally appearing at any hearings where it is discussed, to testify in favor or against it.

There is one this year that reduces the requirement that all motorcyclists wear helmets. It would allow those motorcyclists who have remained accident-free for a set number of years, to not wear helmets anymore. Being allowed to (or being barred from) ride helmet-free is a great big huge deal to motorcyclists. Bikers in Maryland are all required to wear helmets since the first of October, 1991. It is unfortunate that I know that date.

Anyway, so maybe that’s pretty friendly, you know, to let the safe bikers have the option? The fact that they’ve never wrecked, might mean there’s a better chance they won’t wreck in the future. But public safety policy aside, it’s grossly impractical; how is a police officer supposed to tell by looking at a motorcyclist whether or a not a helmetless rider meets the standard? We get a lot of laws like that, proposing some relief or change that might sound attractive (even if sometimes it only sounds good to single legislator, or a legislator’s single constituent), but would be either impossible or horrendously expensive to implement.

So, back to the marathon; the motorcycle helmet law provoked some jokes.

We should amend the proposal, so that if a motorcyclist gets killed without a helmet, they are automatically an organ donor. See, that’s funny, because when someone gets killed on a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, you know, it’s usually from the head trauma, so there are lots of perfectly good organs left over. So yeah, motorcyclists are just donors-on-wheels, right?

There are profound experiences that come to us over and over. We fall in love with our spouse again, mourn the loss of a parent again, cry at someone’s graveside long after, even decades after their funeral. Every time I hug one of my kids, I feel the kinesthetic echo of when the nurse first handed me the infant, wrapped in a hospital blanket, years and years ago. Strong emotional experiences ripple out over time caressing us over and over again with their brushing-by. Like a rock dropped in a calm lake, the waves move away, bounce, return, creating patterns of interference and reinforcement.

When the motorcycle helmet joke was uttered, I remembered everything that ever happened with my Uncle Mike, concentrated and flashing by in heartbeat.

He was . . . I don’t know, I guess maybe the black sheep. He seemed kind of a free spirit, kind of a ne’er-do-well.

He was not many years older than me, closer as a peer than distant as an adult. So I never had a clear perspective of how self-destructive his behavior was. His nonchalance looked cool to me. But admittedly, I couldn’t conceive its consequence, how his marriage failed, his life faltered, stalled. When I was in High School, he worked, sort of, as a contractor for the cable company. I know at some point before that he had been in the army (I got his hand-me-down olive army jacket, which I wore when I walked our dog).

I remember his being AWOL for a while when I was much younger. He left Fort Carson, Colorado, and basically vanished. His car was found a few weeks after he disappeared, out in the desert of New Mexico, all shot up. There were whispers of a drug deal maybe going bad, him being on the lam perhaps. He re-surfaced months later, on the other side of the country, working a shrimp boat in New Orleans. Now I chuckle, imagining him swinging shrimp nets for the Bubba Gump Company.

Uncle Mike always seemed to be just a few steps away from having some kind of exotic adventure. But he never seemed to move much, never took those steps. A lifetime of potential energy. A match never struck, never lit.

He drifted in and out. Was in some family photos, and not others. He was mythic to me. Seemed taller than everyone else. Not around enough to become any kind of a hero-figure, but around. When I was a teenager, old enough to drive by myself, I bumped into him one time at a 7-11, him leaving as I arrived. He was driving some kind of souped-up muscle car I hadn’t seen him in before. Knowing that he didn’t live the lifestyle of the idle rich (a car like that had to be worked on for years, or bought outright; Mike didn’t do long-term souping-up of things, and he couldn’t afford to be buying such indulgences), I asked my Dad what had happened. Apparently, Uncle Mike got hit by a car while riding his motorcycle (breaking his wrists. Plural), an injury case Dad helped settle. Mike blew the settlement buying a street rod. Cool. Not responsible, like I’ve said, but cool. You’d think having experienced such a wreck once, he’d have learned. But it was hallmark of Uncle Mike’s life; learning from experience seemed to be something he never quite got the hang of.

He very obviously was comfortable with his recreational drug use. I remember a t-shirt he had with an enormous graphic on the front with a prescription for Quaaludes on it; I asked my Mom how to pronounce it.

Heh, Mom is so imperturbable. “Quay-loods.” Even said matter-of-factly, it still amuses me to remember her answering that question.

Uncle Michael was killed after being hit while riding his motorcycle helmetless, when a car turned left in front of him. He went through the car’s windshield, suffering a basal skull fracture, and not much else by way of hurt. Maryland had just that year passed a law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, but it didn’t go into effect until a few months after Mike’s wreck. He apparently looked just fine; it must have been awful to have him so young, so terminally hurt, and still appearing to be so ready to roll out of bed, ready for the next thing.

But that kind of injury, he was dead, it was just a matter of how soon. He was without a spouse, so his brother, my Father, acted as his guardian, making the decision to turn off the machines and allow his organs to go to donors. His liver had to go to someone who had Hepatitis–C (this diagnosis is another piece in the mountain of evidence that he hadn’t really spent his life very responsibly). He was one of the first donors to have a Hep-positive organ donated that way, it was a new program in 1991.

I remember playing pool with him at a family dinner. He was so tall, and I wanted him to think I was cool. I was mean to my sister, goaded by my desire to seem tough. Something I am sorry about now.

I remember going to his wedding. Actually, I’ve seen the pictures, so maybe I am just remembering the pictures. He had his dress army uniform on. My Dad had the most excellent moustache, I was wearing a dark blue suit and a spectacle of an orange and blue shirt. I’ll bet it was polyester...

Mike’s marriage didn’t last. He had one daughter, and his ex-wife left for California, taking Audrey with her.

When Mike died, I was young, married with small children, debts, going to school thousands of miles away. I couldn’t afford to come back home to the funeral. I should have made the effort anyway. Mike lived his life with so little affixing him to other people, to places. That’s what it means to be responsible, doesn’t it? To do things anticipating the consequence, the permanent effects? I look back at Mike, and it seems so obvious to me now that nothing he did was ever calculated to be lasting; he just did whatever he felt like doing next.

>whoosh< It all went through my head with the wise-crack about helmetless motorcyclists.

He was 33 when he died, a few weeks shy of his 34th birthday. That’s eight years younger than I am now. He was ten years older than me, but that was 17 years ago; I have lapped him, out-lived him and then some. How have I done with my years of advantage?

Now I am a Dad, an Uncle myself. It delights me to think that my kids have their own Uncle Michael (a fact that makes my youngest son wrinkle his brow in thought, and then laugh).

The bill I told you about, the helmet one? It never made it out of committee. The MVA has a strong fiscal argument based the impracticality of enforcement. But MVA is keeping that paper, for the next time another brilliant legislator decides to propose it again.

It occurs to me, thinking about Mike, that we learn things in one of two ways. We certainly learn by direct experience. Experience is, as they say, the great teacher. The enticement of wantonness, the lure of the exotic; what resonates in our heart is the unknown. The same thing that makes them attractive is what makes them dangerous; we cannot know what will happen, so we either avoid them (which is safe, though boring) or we pursue them (which is thrilling, if hazardous).

Why is that so few of us spend those precious extra seconds to flip through the card catalog of our memory and think about *other* people who faced those choices, and then forecast the results in terms of ourselves? You know; vicariously? Experience I can glean from looking at the choices someone else made is just as educational as the experience I can get by trying the same experiment. Some experiments yield consequences, that are just so . . .

Permanent.

Yes, sometimes it’s boring to live a regular predictable life instead of one of unbridled freedom and chaos. Do free, unbridled, chaotic people bounce grandchildren on their knees? Perhaps, some of them survive, that’s just statistics; there will always be someone who survives the stupidest of chances. So that's the thing I guess. All of us have an economist that lives in our hearts that weighs the possibility of catastrophe before every choice.

Be sure you haven't gagged yours in the pursuit of variety.

A Broken Heart

My son, he breaks my heart. This is a hard thing to describe, but I know it is important, so bear with me while I digress. I want so very badly to get this just right.

What does “a broken heart” mean? I know it’s a phrase used when describing how you feel after a romance ends. That connotes the disappointment, I suppose? It is the way of every loving relationship to be disappointed, though, not just relationships that hinge on “romance”. You can only have your heart broken by those you love. Our parents will always eventually let us down and break our hearts. Our friends, lovers, too.

Our children, in a different way. They come to us as unblemished as anything in the world ever does. When we fall in love, there is always a little bit of the overlooking of faults, an idealizing. From infatuation, or maybe denial. Perhaps it’s the genetic imperative to mate that allows us to label eccentricities as charming rather than annoying. So with kids, they are the ideal, and in love, the illusion of the same.

Paul says hope is a kind of love; I think it is the best of his three to describe the traditional “falling in love” love. The thrill of romance resides in the hope that it will stay good, get better, succeed, and satisfy. With our kids, they start out with no faults. We are filled with hope for them, and fear of what the world will do. But we inhabit a mortal world, and their growing means their making mistakes, so our hearts are broken, over and over.

But the scriptures also talk about a broken heart, and a contrite spirit. In the Psalms, it calls that the offering to the Lord. “The sacrifices of God are … a broken and a contrite heart,” (Psalms 51:17). I don’t think that speaks to the disappointment kind of heartbreak, but to being humble. Curbing one’s pride, and bowing your knee to God’s will. Offering your heart to God, rather than keeping it stony in arrogance. The hard heart can bear or hear no guidance, but the broken one will heed the still, small voice.

My son is singing in the Maryland State Boychoir. A “Boy’s Choir” is one comprised only of boys (duh), but spans the age-range from the very young to the very mature, such that it can fill all four parts of any harmony. It’s still the alto part when a boy sings it, but when a boy sings the soprano part, they call that the “treble” instead. A good Boychoir sounds great, and this one sounds amazing.

At least, I’d suspected they do. Prior to last Sunday, I’d never actually heard them perform. Our harrowing schedule made it barely possible for us to truck him back and forth to rehearsals and concerts; in the months since he’s joined, we’ve never been able to actually schedule free time for us to attend anything. So my opinion was based on the soaring phrases I’d heard coming from their practice room, and the brief snippets they have on their web-site.

Finally, last week I got to attend a concert. They were doing the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It is a structured performance that features speakers reading from the Scriptures, and the Boychoir singing carols or hymns with the audience.

The church was beautiful, and completely packed. I felt terribly lucky to have tickets for seats only six rows back. I had never attended one of these services, and so was unprepared for the clever way they started it. They choir entered the chapel from the back, singing as they walked. “Once in Royal David’s City”, the first verse sung only by the treble choir, so the piercing, pure, and simple melody was alone, and instantly hushed the crowd.

It might be a simple theatric strategy, to surprise an audience by the performance coming at them unseen, but boy it worked. As those three lines were sung, I could feel emotion welling in my throat. Max wasn’t singing yet, but I knew he would be on one of the coming choruses.

It was a song about a mother and her son, about the son’s potential. All the tender, break-your-heart reality of the parent/child dynamic swooped through me during that verse. I thought of my son, singing in this magnificent church, with this amazing choir. My son, who sometimes disappoints me, but far more often amazes me, for whom I want nothing but joy in life. I thought of all the things I had ever done wrong with him, the misspoken over-reactions, the times I was angry when I should have been sensitive, when I talked and should have listened. I was consumed with the fervent hope that I would be good for him, that my faults wouldn’t get in the way of his happy life. My love for him filled me until it felt like my heart was straining to contain it.

And then, the full choir began to sing the second verse with all the timber of their full range. “He came down to earth from heaven!” Their volume and the rich, rich mixing of their amazing voices felt like a physical presence, a breeze stirring the air of the church. Tears, brimming at the corners of my eyes, ran down my cheeks.

Life is a glorious, painful, beautiful labor. I turned slightly to see if I could see Max coming down the aisle. He moved slowly by, eyebrows furrowed slightly from the attention he was paying to walking, singing, not making mistakes. I don’t think he saw me. Maybe he saw me, but was solemnly not waving hello to his audience.

And my straining heart broke. My son, singing in this choir with his fervent concentration, exercising a talent of such capacity I cannot quite grasp how good he really is. He is my son, come from me. But here, this day, he has made me, made of my heart, an offering to the Lord.

I thought how so much more our relationships with our children end up being fraternal than paternal. Our children consume our lives and years, which is as it should be, but in the end they are not “ours”, we do not earn the right to “keep” them. We love them, and are made better by their successes and increase, but we know they will go on to belong to their own families and children.

Thank you my son for letting me be a part of this wonderful opportunity of yours.

You can listen to some more of their music here.

Inheritances

A new chapter. An embarking. Where did this begin? Many places, so I will just pick one, and perhaps eventually get them all.

It began in 1999 or so with an early Saturday morning drive down to Northeast Baltimore. Our goal was to make a dent in the task of cleaning out Lillian Zahradka's rowhome. Ah, but that leads me to an earlier beginning.

My father got a phone call a few years earlier from a high school buddy; a friend needed some lawerly help. The friend, Lillian was a widow these 30 or more years, and wanted to arrange her estate. She, wanted to put her estate in order so that when she passed, there would be no troubles. Lillian had one daughter, a middle-aged woman who was also named Lillian; I think that might have been more common a generation ago. Or maybe just in Czechoslovakia.

Dad got to know them preparing the estate. He got a phone call a year later, "Lillian has died." Well at least she had her affairs in order.

"No, the daughter." Lillian's daughter had died single and childless. Having been single for her entire life, the daughter had kept much of her stuff in Lillian's house.

Lillian was wholly unprepared to lose her daughter also. Lillian's husband and daughter, judging from their stuff, were two of a kind. Both had lots of hobbies which involved acquiring lots of stuff. The husband liked to work on things, and never met a tool he didn't need to buy three of. The daughter liked to travel, paint, listen to music, and collected books, albums, and supplies sufficient to stock a store for each. As a result of both losses, the house was choked with the stuff of two lives, and poor Lillian made her way in the little spaces that remained. And enough time had passed, Lillian was ready to get rid of some of it.

And boy, how much of "it" there was. Our goal today was to clear out the basement. We spent hours trucking box after box of moldy books, clothes, suitcases, grimy coffee cans of old engine parts, empty bottles up the back stairs and into the alley. Most people will do this more than once over the course of their life. The sifting that comes after death. It can be the heart-wrenching cleaning of a child's room, or the vaguely reverent straightening up after a deceased tenant. I have nothing new to observe on that process. It is a mournful task, but infused with the curious "what's this?" of an archaeological dig. With the added bonus here of being incredibly filthy. We wore masks.

Here, then, is the beginning I mentioned earlier. The daughter had a *massive* vinyl collection. Now, on first seeing the wall of shelves, holding nothing but row after row of L.P.s, my thought was shamefully avaricious. I had heard of discoveries of old albums worth a fortune. Black gold. Texas . . . wax. Surely there were nuggets of it in this mountain of music.

Alas, the reality of collectibles is thus; just because something is old, doesn't mean it's worth any more. Rarities are so valuable because they are rare. As in, not many people collect them in the first place. The daughter's collection, if eclectic and vast, was very pedestrian. Lots of K-tel "best of" albums. Hundreds (I am not exaggerating; more than 200) of records, unopened and still in their original plastic, with the K-mart $1.98 price tag on them. It seemed likely the purchaser was a little compulsive in her collecting. Compulsive + non-discriminating = clutter.

I was no music expert, but I could tell there was nothing in the way of "value" to these records. Maybe he had some cachet in the day, but who would actually pay anything for a Ravi Shankar record now?

Throwing someone else's stuff away is hard work. It has all the metaphysical guilt of getting rid of something that still has value (it works!), without the psychological triumph of overcoming your own packrat tendencies. What a shame any of this stuff was ever bought, when it never got used.

As we carried stacks of records to the alley, I saw albums I recognized. Alice's Restaurant (was that album before the movie? because this one had a picture of Arlo from the movie on the cover). American Pie. Aqualung. Maybe she sorted that shelf alphabetically...

So I started setting a few aside. I guess that, then, was the real beginning. I had seen trailers for "High Fidelity". I knew an easy way to make a movie character look *really* cool was to give him a record collection, and make sure he was seeking that one good vinyl album. I guess I bought into that notion.

There were some Jazz albums. Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis. Hey, if I'm going to fall victim to a media myth, why not go all the way? Some '20s stuff. Count Basie, ha! Paul Williams, Bob Dylan, Joe Jackson, John Denver. The soundtrack to "Shaft".

Now, please understand, this was not me taking advantage of Lillian. She was old, and tired, and alone, and had probably not been in the basement in a decade, let alone the time since her daughter had passed. Throwing this stuff away was a kindness. It was interesting in a sociological way how the neighbors were starting to pour over the pile of detritus in the alley. There was so much of it, we actually had to bribe the city garbage truck that came by to take it. After they muttered about a maximum load, Dad slipped them a $20 as a "dumping" fee.

So I honestly felt I was not in the wrong to save a few out for myself. Months earlier, actually, Lillian had invited my wife and I to go through the collection of art books and supplies, and insisted we take anything we want.

"It is all just worthless to me." I showed Lillian the pile, and she patted my arm. "Good for you" sounds so cute with a thick Czech accent. So out to the van went my stack of albums. Back to my Real Estate Office, on the floor next to my desk. They were *way* too dirty to take home.

There they sat, until the Real Estate Office closed. They consolidated offices to a new location. Dad owned the building, so I left the pile albums there with the old furniture.

When he re-leased the office, I moved them upstairs into a corner of my sister's apartment.

When she married and moved out, I finally brought them to my house. The shuffling around had wiped some of the dust off. They went into a box, and sat on the shelf.

Lillian got older, sicker, and moved into a hospice facility. I went with my Dad once, and sat with her. She was no longer talking, didn't open her eyes any more. When Dad would hold her hand, and softly stroke her fingers, she would smile.

Once in a while, I would notice the pile of records, usually when we were moving things on the shelf around. I would feel anthropomorphic guilt for treating them so poorly. They were stacked flat, on their side, which I know isn't good for them. But I would remind myself I was not crazy, and albums had no feelings.

Once, to test out an old turn table someone gave us, I pulled out Alice's Restaurant. The turntable worked. But the album I had only contained the short version of "I Don't Want a Pickle", bummer. Growing up, a buddy of mine had the loonnngggg version on a reel-to-reel tape I'd heard once.

Otherwise, they sat there. Every couple of years, I'd pull out a couple that I thought might be worth some money, and check eBay to see if it'd be worth selling them off. I could get maybe $5 for "Crossings"! But I'd have to describe the condition of the album. Which means, morally, I would need to play it. Ah, never mind, I didn't have time.

Lillian passed away. Dad did the estate. After bills were paid and assets liquidated, there was a second cousin, or perhaps a grand-nephew, in Europe who was finally determined to be the nearest living relative.

There was a period of time I toyed with the notion of ripping them all to .mp3s. Check out super-bad John, and his vinyl-to-mp3 collection! Who was I kidding? No time.

We cleaned our basement, and threw away the stereo with the record player. Well, moved it into the garage, out of the way, staged to be really, truly thrown away later.

I moved the stack of records to my office. Again. I mean, different office, but, you know. If I worked up the urge for the final break up, out they'd go.

And a month ago, on a whim, I brought the stereo/record player to work. This morning, I finally brought the speakers in. Set it up (kind of hidden by my desk; the speakers were the big cabinet-sized ones from the '80s. In my daughter's room long enough to go native, they had been painted with butterflies and ladybugs). And pulled an album out.

Mrs. Zahradka, I am going to listen to every one of these, at least once. The ones I really don't want, I'm sorry, they're just going to get thrown away. But I spend most of my days at work just typing in the silence, and so listening to these records, even just the once to make them not completely useless, will in no way burden me.

First up, Cat Stevens, "Teaser and the Firecat".

Advice for Parents of Newborn Babies (especially if it's your first one)

I wrote these advisory thoughts to a good friend as he was preparing to welcome his first child.

It is not possible to spoil an infant by holding it too much, so touch your baby as much as possible. Cradle, rub, hug, massage your baby every day. Find comfortable positions to read/watch TV while the baby sleeps on you. You will never regret having spent five more minutes touching your baby.

Of course, it is also not possible for an infant to harm itself by crying, so if holding/burping/bathing/serenading the baby isn't working, it is OK to put the baby down and go listen to the radio for five minutes. Eat some chocolate, and try again.

No one is interested in your baby's poopies but your spouse, so no matter how interesting you think they are, do not discuss them. The baby's poopies are a legitimate and important subject, which you by all means should discuss with your spouse, but no one else. Unless you need advice.

Discuss parenting choices with your spouse now. Will baby be nursing? If so, who will do all the other baby work at night, so Momma can nurse in a relaxed environment? If not, how will you share all the baby work? How do you feel about co-sleeping (letting the baby sleep in bed with you)? Pacifiers, yea or nay?

Find ways to date your spouse after the baby is born, without the baby if possible. Even if it's just a walk around the block for an ice cream cone, make it a habit now. Find a baby sitter you TRUST! People may volunteer but decide as a couple what criteria you feel is important. There are some people we love as friends but wouldn't leave our kids with.

Don't get into the habit of just setting the stinky diaper outside for minute, because you'll put it in the garbage can later. You will forget, and it will stay there for hours, maybe all night. It's an impossible habit to break, and it's gross. Take it all the way to the outside garbage can.

You are going to get peed on, so get used to the idea now. If you are lucky, this is the worst of all the baby bodily fluids (and fluid-like substances) that you will personally encounter. If you are really lucky, none of these fluids will never accidentally get into your mouth. I don't know any parents who are that lucky.

Daddy should volunteer to take the baby in when it is time for the PKU test. This is a test where they determine whether or not your baby has Phenylketonuria; babies with this condition can experience profound mental and physical problems when they ingest certain artificial sweeteners. It involves repeatedly stabbing your days-old baby in the heel with a sharp piece of metal, and massaging the bleeding wound onto a piece of paper until several dime sized circles are filled with blood. It seems like Dads handle the emotional burden of causing their children pain better than Moms. If you can swing it, volunteer to do the same for any immunization shots.

Are you Jewish? If so, and it's a boy, good luck with the Bris.

It's OK to lick your baby's face clean, but you should probably not do it where other people can see you.

If you are going to censor your baby's entertainment when they are older, you should start now. I once had a two-year old child call a sibling a "stupid ass" based on something I had watched on TV. Sure, it's a funny story, but how are you going to explain it to the kindergarten teacher?

It's OK to stay home with the baby for a little while, and not take baby out in public. If you go out, your baby will be touched, breathed on, grabbed at, etc, and you will feel guilty when your baby gets a cold.

When your baby is sleeping during the day, do not make any special effort to be quiet. I'm not saying run the vacuum as soon as they fall asleep, but it's OK if they doze during the phone ringing, so during the quiet of night it is easier to sleep. Don't tiptoe around. Live.

Some babies really like to be in a moving car. Some moms use the noise of the dryer, or put the car seat on the washing machine as a way to get baby to go to sleep with noise/vibration. But be careful, because it can become a crutch. Lots of parents end up having to frequently drive kids around for YEARS, because it ends up being the ONLY way they'll sleep.

It's OK if a baby eats a little plain, non-chocolate ice cream. Eggs, shellfish, peanut butter, honey, chocolate, nuts, (I think it is the complex proteins) no. Ice cream, yes. Unless Mom says no. Is Mom looking?

Buy lots of Lysol. Find a kind which smells good to you, and use it often. Not on the baby, though.

Wash your hands before you pick up the baby. That way, you can use your pinky, held upside down, as an emergency pacifier.

When your baby has fallen asleep in the car seat, it's OK to unbuckle the car seat and carry it inside, baby and all, to prevent the baby from waking up.

Sing really cool lullabies. Many rock songs work when sung slowly, sotto voce.

Keep a journal, even if it is just emails to family, of everything that happens. You will not remember a quarter of the feelings and experiences that you have otherwise.

Rotate the stuffed animals and blankets your baby sleeps with. Older kids who insist on sleeping with their blankies or fluffies are creepy.

There's nothing wrong with plopping your baby in front of the TV for 1/2 an hour while you make dinner, or do some other two-hands-are-necessary activity. Baby Einstein series of videos is good, but anything with bright colors and music will work.

No matter how short the trip, always take spare clothes. Have a spare shirt for you, too. It only takes one serious blow-out poopy diaper to ruin an outing. Note, you can share stories about blow-out poopies, because they are funny.

People who recommend using cloth diapers and home-made diaper wipes are all insane. Remind them of the sewage burden created by washing cloth diapers. In an emergency, wet paper towels, wet toilet paper, even wetting that spare shirt you brought along can substitute for diaper wipes. Sometimes, the little velcro/tape thingeys on the diaper will fail; duct tape works just fine.

Don't buy any newborn sized clothes. They fit for about ten minutes. 3-6 month clothes may be a little baggy at first, but your baby's fingers and toes won't turn blue from lack of circulation.

Ebola Part 4

>SMACK!<

And that was That. My final injection for this research study. Once every volunteer in all three protocols has received all of their injections, the Vaccine Research Center can “lift the veil of secrecy” and tell us whether we got the placebo or the actual vaccine. I love the image of lifting the veil. I mean, I already feel terribly pompous about the fact that I am involved in this super-dee-dooper exclusive bleeding edge of science study. The fact, that on top of just being able to participate, I get to be on the big reveal, the grand poobah secret? Total gravy.

But the suspense is terrible!

I hope it lasts.

So here I am today for the follow-up blood work. What stretches before me are gradually increasing periods of time between appointments until next December, when the study ends. A month, then two, then three months between visits. I feel like such a hardened veteran. I’m already thinking about which study I’ll sign up for when this one ends. They have a study on a smallpox vaccine, and an HIV vaccine. Both are remunerated. *cough* Do you remember what it was like to get an income tax refund check in the mail? If you still get one, you are probably savvy enough now that you have it direct deposited. But do you remember how you could just tell what it was? That kind of orangey-yellowy colored check you could see through the address window on the envelope? The return address was the IRS? I get compensated with one of those every time I have an appointment. So, so very cool.

But another study would also involve repeated snack cart opportunities, which of course is way much cooler than getting checks from the IRS every couple of weeks. Well, more sporadically, now, that the appointments are going to spread out. *sigh* So now I’m downstairs giving my tenth of a liter of blood for Science.

(ObDexter) SCIENCE!!!!

It’s a time for pondering and reflection. Preferably something besides the bloodletting.

I helped my sister and her husband move this weekend, and during a lull in the hubbub, was teasing my mother, “Mom, I am powerfully grateful for the wonderful things I’ve inherited from you. The blue eyes, the love of language and literature, the tolerance. All wonderful boons.

“I could’ve done without the bum knees, though.”

Being poked and bled for the eleventh time, I recall that conversation, and her chuckling. I will probably need to have my knees re-kneed (heh, alliteration is funny) sometime in the next ten or twenty years. My Mom’s joints. You take the good, you take the bad...

I’ve got good (well, bad, but you know what I mean) odds of having either colon cancer or heart trouble, if my two Grandpas are indicators of my genetic destiny.

And now I’m thinking about my own kids. Three out of five so far have needed braces. Three out of five need glasses (again, so far). All three boys are color blind. Two out of four have periodic asthma.

So many things will happen to them, to their bodies, to their lives, because of me. And not just what I do, but what I am physically. The very fact that they were born, and have grown up healthy thus far is a statistical miracle. Genetic roulette being what it is, though, something will eventually catch up with them. Like it will with me.

The fact that mortality stalks us all makes some people quail at just the thought of doing things. Having a family, taking risks, living, loving. I cannot accept that rationale. I concede the raw practical reality of mortality, that any good thing I do will eventually end. More likely than not as Ozymandias’ empire, in great irony.

But I know that doing anything can make a difference. Even if the difference is just for a while, perhaps one person’s lifetime, or even just one person’s day, that difference matters.

What I am doing (what for all real purposes I have nearly finished doing; only three appointments left now) in this study . . . some days seems trivial. I get up a couple of hours early, listen to the morning NPR news cycle, eat a danish and drink some orange juice, develop an amazing resilience to being creeped out by needles.. But, if this vaccine works, what good will come to the world? Maybe a few thousand people saved from death over the course of the next century; that’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it?

I’m just a little, tiny piece of the program here. If I hadn’t filled the role, someone else would have. But, and I think this is important, I *did* fill the role. And I was only able to do so, because of my relative genetic health. The screening nurse told me today that they had a higher than expected rejection rate for applicants for this study; nearly three out of every four applicants was bounced.

So with my achy knees, has come the ability to serve strangers I will never meet, in a continent I will probably never visit. With everything else, I am grateful to my Mom for that.

My eleventh visit to NIH has ended, and now it’s time for me to go to work

Ebola Part 3

I had to take some time to write this one.

You know how some days, you feel like your emotions are really close to the surface? Something traumatic, or dramatic, happened yesterday, or earlier in the week, but you held everything in check, but you feel the tears, or the fury, just hovering there on the periphery of your vision.

Today was like that. I've been keenly worried about my littlest sister all week. She had a heart ablation procedure scheduled for Tuesday, where they were hoping to fix the arrhythmia and elevated heart-rate problems she's been having. She's so young.

I am completely kicking butt on the commute this morning. Traffic is light, the drive is smoove (yes, I know that's a silly way to spell 'smooth' but it just felt smoover than smoother this morning, you know?). I actually am getting to the NIH fast enough that I start to worry. My appointment is for when they open, right at 7am. And I'm on track to get there before 6:45. I might have to park my own car!

No worries. Even with my early arrival, the guys that run the valet service are already there. And the Vaccine Research Center ladies are also already at work. This week, my nurse shoos me on down to phlebotomy first for the blood draw. I peek inside my bag o' vials; Eek! There are a whole fistful of 10 ml tubes! I'd thought since it was just a two-week follow-up, that it's be a small blood draw, 40, maybe 50 ml worth. They're taking at least twice that much today. Well, they warned me when I started that being a volunteer, I allow NIH to use my blood for other research projects, too, so...filled with righteous justification, I head towards the snack cart.

D'oh! It is not open before 7am. But I get right in to have my vein tapped. I happen to have the same phlebotomist that drew my blood at my intake appointment two months ago. Have you noticed that the older the nurse or phlebotomist, the easier the blood draw? OK, maybe the rest of you haven't had your blood drawn repeatedly over the course of months by a dozen different people. Sometimes, it feels like a sharp jab into the crook of your elbow. Sometimes, it feels like a slight poke. The better the phlebotomist, the slighter the poke. Mine today, at phlebotomy station number four, is a magician. I read the comics she has strategically posted on her cubicle wall in the direction away from where the blood is drawn, and feel something akin to a brush stroke, a pinch at the crook of my elbow. It is always a pleasure to work with a professional, even if their profession involves stabbing needles into you.

Four ounces lighter, I go back to the snack cart, which by now is in place. If I sounded annoyed earlier when it wasn't there, I wasn't, honest. I mean, it's staffed by a sweet old lady volunteer, so how irritated can you really be that it wasn't there at 6:55am?

There is a child, a little boy I think (it's hard to tell because the child has no hair, and is dreadfully thin) sitting by his Momma eating an iced pastry from the cart. He has his mask pulled down to his chin (like the one's your Dentist wears? You know, really sick patients wear them to add a small barrier to their weak immune systems?). And he laughs at something his Momma whispers in his ear. Unless you've lived with someone who is terminally ill with cancer, and whose hair has all fallen out from the devastating treatments, "laughing" is probably not an activity you imagine. He looked gleeful in that moment, and it stunned me. A sick little boy laughing sounds *exactly* like a healthy little boy laughing.

The sadness, hovering on the periphery, rushes in, and I start crying. I wonder if my little sister had any snacks before or after her ablation. I try to be subtle as a I pick up a napkin to dab my cheeks before leaving with my banana and juice (orange, 2 cartons). As I walk back out of the lobby, I sneak another glance at the the smiling little boy before turning the corner back towards the elevators.

I know we live in a mortal world, and so all of us die, and I think of my sister again.

Please, God, please let them live through this.

And I have to stop and sit down a moment to let a sob escape me. The hospital, this early, is pretty quiet, so I'm thankfully alone. No one is walking by who would have to politely ignore me so I could grieve in peace. After a few moments, the overwhelming grief passes, I take a deep breath, and go back upstairs.

My blood pressure is better this week, 130 over 80. I don't tell the nurse I have a crying headache; maybe that helps blood pressure. I'm on my way to work in no time. The sun is just rising, promising a bright new day.

I hope, in my heart, it is a good one for us all.

Ebola Part 2

Urk. It actually snowed in DC last night, so traffic is ookier than normal around the top-side outer loop of the beltway. So I’m crawling, crawling, crawling to the NIH.

I arrive almost one hour later than I’d intended.

This is my . . . (counting on my fingers) fifth visit to NIH, so I’m feeling like I kind of know my way around. I no longer pause every time I walk around a corner, getting my bearings. I start to look closer at the environs, noticing some details.

The elevators are *old* but they have really cool brushed-steel-looking doors. Set into the doors are scenes of nurses and doctors caring for people, scientists doing . . . science stuff. I notice there’s a quaint little vaguely electronic-looking thingey on one wall in the lobby that shows what floor each of the elevators is currently at. And then one arrives for me.

Yes! They’ve restocked the volunteer fridge from last time. Ack! Nothing but apple juice and graham crackers. I feel like I am in nursery school, but being a volunteer of principle, I take one of each. Another volunteer is in the waiting room who has come in for the screening process. It turns out they are starting to screen for group 2, and are projecting a start of the group 2 trial near the end of February, after they complete the first two injections in my group.

The nurse sees me, but it’s all very routine now. Here’s your bag of vials for phlebotomy, see you in a few minutes.

So back down I go in the ancient of days elevators. I ponder why I think of them as old. The analog buttons, maybe? I think it’s the old, worn tiles on the floor. They are pretty fast, though. And I’ve gotten elevator number 1 for both trips; it’s manned by a lady sitting in a chair, who punches the buttons for you. And it looks like she’s writing down how high and how low down she is going, like an elevator blog. What is up with that?

Ah, the phlebotomy treat cart. Orange juice and an apple danish. They only draw about 90 mls of blood today. Still looking around at details, I read an “In case of accident” chart on the wall. So if blood spills are less than 10mls, they can just wipe them up with a paper towel? Oh, unless they are worried about it, then they are supposed to call 911. I’m in a hospital; if I dialed 911, does it go to the police, or just to the receptionist?

And holy smoke, they have a policy for spilling radioactive material? And they have a special clean-up material they use to . . . blot radioactive spills? Oh, that’s important, close the door and don’t let anyone in the room. Now I’m a little freaked out.

Near the end of the draw today, I notice one of those little “whiff” packages of ammonia (you know, the ones that they break open and put under the nose of people who pass out) taped to the wall. I ask the phlebotomist if she’s ever had to use one, and she said, “Just once, last week.” I think that means I’m statistically safe.


I go back upstairs, and they take my vitals. I notice with interest that everything is in Metric. My temperature is 34ºC, my weight is *mumble* kilos. I guess blood pressure is still the same, though. I get a stern lecture from the nurse about my blood pressure being too high (like 150 over 110). I mean, I kind of hustled coming back upstairs, right? I mean, getting on and off the elevator, anyway. And they just drew . . . (doing the metric conversion in my head) like 3 ounces of blood. That’ll make my blood pressure spike a little, won’t it? They shoo me back to the waiting room to read my book and await pharmacy’s delivery of the mixture. “Pride and Prejudice” is deservedly a classic, yo! Curse that awful Mr. Wickham!

The mixture is delivered, and they *SMACK* it into my right deltoid muscle. I think I said before it was my triceps, but I was wrong; I listened to the nurses talking about what they were doing. Ouch. I look this time, and see that the biojector actually makes a bloody mark. I guess even CO2, if it’s going fast enough, can leave a mark.

My half hour passes (they have to make sure I don’t pass out, I guess) and I’m fine. I snag a snack-pack of graham crackers to give to the kids later, and head to work.