Tommy got his license.
Like most of us who spent our childhood and the majority of our teenage years as perennial passengers, he's pretty shaky on directions to and from places he's traveled for months and years. But, he'll learn.
What surprised me and what prompted this post is the fact that he's scared that he's going to make a wrong decision and get into a wreck. This from a kid who knew no fear literally from his earliest days.
I love to tell the story of the difference between Tommy and his late brother Johnny. I may have mentioned it before but the beauty of having little or no memory is that I can't remember and I don't care. When each was learning to walk, at the stage where they would pull themselves up onto their feet and use sofas, chairs, parent's pant legs to move along, I pulled the same parental trick first on Johnny, then a few years later on Tommy.
I would sit on the sofa and put my legs up on the coffee table blocking their passage. Johnny would stop. Size up the situation as best as he could. Look at me. Look at my legs. Look at the table. Look over my legs at what was or wasn't on the other side. Satisfied he would slowly and deliberately start to climb over. Tommy, on the other hand, motored down the side of the couch, got to my leg-bridge and literally dive over with no regard whatsoever for what awaited on the other side. Same with swimming.
Johnny would cling to me if we were in the bay or ocean or to the side of the pool. Tommy - after he learned the rudiments of staying a float or swimming like a damn dolphin, arms at his side, flexing his body and legs, underwater - didn't care if he was at the shallow or deep end of the pool.
Now behind the wheel of a car, Tommy's living scared.
I think it's because of too much emphasis on all the things that can go wrong. It's been a constant verbal diet of watch out for this, try and read the mind of every idiot around you, and on and on until the experience is one of running a gauntlet of folks out to kill you versus the sensation of being free to roam beyond one's own block (if you grew up in the city). The scales of judgment are out of balance. Too much fear. Not enough confidence building and encouragement.
Tommy is and Johnny was not afraid of guns. They both enjoy(ed) shooting. They both understood safety and responsibility. Johnny was an outstanding shot. At one Trappers' convention he out shot me and pretty much everyone knocking animated ducks out of the sky at one of those wall-size simulated hunting video games. Tommy can hit his share of clay pigeons.
I've got to rethink how I handle things.
Okay, here's a stretch for most but not for me.
Just as I believe I was over protective in warning Tommy about the potential dangers of the road, I believe we as a society have been over protective about speaking out when we see something or someone who is wrong.
One of the many lessons I learned in the Army is the admonition to alert someone when something is or might be edging toward the dangerous. It's the antithesis of "don't get involved."
Well we are involved. It's called life. Two examples that happened in two consecutive days.
I was in the Gaithersburg Costco. There is no grocery store filled with more rude damn people than at this particular Costco save every Whole Foods Market I've visited. No one is looking where they are pushing their carts. They seem to assume everyone else will simply move out of their way. The natural extension of this attitude is blocking the aisle with grocery carts. After a few "Excuse me, may I please get through" I came up to a main aisle totally blocked by people flocking to the free sample station and, of course, shopping carts abandoned like logs at a beaver dam. Shy me said, "Will you people quit blocking the damn aisle?" The main offender turned and gave me a look as if I had just burned a Koran or Bible and I should feel guilty. An older woman, older than me, stopped the other woman mid-scold and yelled "He's right!"
Next day, at Sam's Club, a much more pacifistic store in Gaithersburg I got another taste of what happens when people allow other people to be buttheads.
(As an aside, the Gaithersburg Costco - mid week day or worse, on a weekend - is an experience you simply will not find in Costco stores elsewhere. Parking is ridiculous, the crowd is totally oblivious. Actually it's more akin to a well-dressed mob gone wild in a totally politically correct setting. And I love Costco.)
At any rate, I was next in line at the Pharmacy window. A very nice mom walked up and waited patiently behind me. As one of the assistants began to help me, a gargantuan man entered the exit and said the the woman, "I've already been waited on I'm just picking up my package." Seemed harmless enough. The man's package of medicine was clearly visible over the counter. The pharmacist walked up to hand it to him. Still nothing out of the ordinary. Then the man put a pile of groceries on the counter and asked if they would ring them up...I mean a pile.
The pharmacist was startled but said nothing. A male assistant walked up and said nothing. The female helping me gave a look of disgust. I turned to the woman behind me and she was shaking her head in disbelief. I then turned to the man-mountain and said, "You owe this lady and apology."
He got pissed. "None of your business." I said "rudeness...it is my business. You owe her an apology." It got plenty heated. He never apologized. In fact he acted as if I was the offender for making his rudeness verbal. Lard barrel hastily shoved his groceries into a couple of bags and headed for the door. The lady smiled and said, "thank you."
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Every Parent's Legacy
Worry. That's every parent's legacy. From the moment a child is born though every pivotal incident in that child's life, any parent worthy of the title experiences a mix of emotions with worry far out stripping the rest.
When Johnny was born I was the happiest human alive. My friends and family hung a huge banner from the family restaurant proclaiming "It's a boy!" Two days later, they took the banner down. They did that after Johnny nearly drown in his own blood when his pre-birth circulatory system yielded to the one that sustains us in daily life and discovered his heart had no ventricle, he was slit, slashed and filled with tubing to keep him alive until the doctors could explain his condition and ask the question no parent should ever hear: "Do you want us to try and keep him alive?"
I didn't answer. My father did...through me. Dad died in 1984, six years before Johnny's birth. A deep and forceful "YES" erupted from somewhere deep inside with all the neurological pyrotechnics of a Hollywood sci fi movie. I saw white circles of light and seeming tunnels emerging from somewhere. "YES!" I've never regretted a minute resulting from making that statement. Through his three open-heart surgeries - on a heart the size of a thumbnail at two days old through his last one at age four - worry literally caused me to bleed significant quantities of blood...real blood... in anticipation of each procedure. The bleeding stopped when the nurse liaison entered the waiting room and announced he was okay.
But this blog is not about Johnny. It's about Tommy.
For the past few months Tommy's been working towards today. During the day, at night, in Fort Lincoln Cemetery, throughout the narrow lanes that pass for residential streets in Hyattsville, around 495, up 270 and through the country roads of northern Montgomery County, I sat in the passenger seat as Tommy took the wheel of our brand new 2002 Dodge Neon. Thanks to my sister Elena, his aunt, Tommy took official driving lessons at Henry's Driving School in Germantown. He learned a heck of a lot more than I did fifty years ago. But then a lot more rules and regulations are now in effect than there were when I was 15 and learning to drive.
Tommy set up his driving test for today.
He decided on taking his test at the MVA facility in Annapolis. The bias and pure idiocy of driving test monitors at MVA facilities elsewhere in Maryland is so well-known driving school instructors throughout the state keep students spellbound with stories of monitors tricking students into failing the test.
No this is not rumor or urban legend. I know first hand after accompanying my step daughter to different MVA sites 11 times. The most egregious "trick" was when she executed the parking maneuver perfectly. Followed the monitor's instruction to turn off the engine and put the car in park. Having followed the instructions, she turned to peer at something, again at the monitor's direction, and took her hand off the wheel of the stopped, engine off, parking brake set, (did I mention is was a "stopped") car Bingo! She failed.
I've seen this sort of "activist/drama queen" mentality in numerous places including Congress but the place it was most apparent was in the Army when brand new straight from ROTC 2nd Lieutenants tore through recruit barracks turning over lockers, dumping the contents of foot lockers, tearing up freshly made beds and yelling at the top of their lungs to make an impression. Standing at attention, I was given a glance by one of the lifer Sergeants who shot me an eloquent look midway between "this guy's a buffoon" and "what has this man's army come too with officers like this?"
Finally, we traveled to the MVA in Annapolis. They did not cut corners or turn a blind eye toward student efforts. They were fair, firm and respectful. She passed.
Tommy did not want to deal with the nonsense suffered by his step sister, heeded the advice of his driving school instructor and went directly to Annapolis. As he drove through the course with his monitor, I stood under a tree next to the MVA building with two other parents. We were all nervous for our sons. As Tommy approached the parking section, I turned away. No excuses. I was simply worried. I knew he could do it. I just didn't want to watch if he was disappointed. He made it and proceeded to the next test area.
By the end of the test, he emerged from the car with a grin across his face. He did it. Even the monitor was smiling.
So now he has his driver's license. And now I have a host of new worries. Comes with the title, I guess. What surprised me was that Tommy's driving test took a similar toll compared to Johnny's operations. Worry by a parent for each child is the same no matter what I guess.
When Johnny was born I was the happiest human alive. My friends and family hung a huge banner from the family restaurant proclaiming "It's a boy!" Two days later, they took the banner down. They did that after Johnny nearly drown in his own blood when his pre-birth circulatory system yielded to the one that sustains us in daily life and discovered his heart had no ventricle, he was slit, slashed and filled with tubing to keep him alive until the doctors could explain his condition and ask the question no parent should ever hear: "Do you want us to try and keep him alive?"
I didn't answer. My father did...through me. Dad died in 1984, six years before Johnny's birth. A deep and forceful "YES" erupted from somewhere deep inside with all the neurological pyrotechnics of a Hollywood sci fi movie. I saw white circles of light and seeming tunnels emerging from somewhere. "YES!" I've never regretted a minute resulting from making that statement. Through his three open-heart surgeries - on a heart the size of a thumbnail at two days old through his last one at age four - worry literally caused me to bleed significant quantities of blood...real blood... in anticipation of each procedure. The bleeding stopped when the nurse liaison entered the waiting room and announced he was okay.
But this blog is not about Johnny. It's about Tommy.
For the past few months Tommy's been working towards today. During the day, at night, in Fort Lincoln Cemetery, throughout the narrow lanes that pass for residential streets in Hyattsville, around 495, up 270 and through the country roads of northern Montgomery County, I sat in the passenger seat as Tommy took the wheel of our brand new 2002 Dodge Neon. Thanks to my sister Elena, his aunt, Tommy took official driving lessons at Henry's Driving School in Germantown. He learned a heck of a lot more than I did fifty years ago. But then a lot more rules and regulations are now in effect than there were when I was 15 and learning to drive.
Tommy set up his driving test for today.
He decided on taking his test at the MVA facility in Annapolis. The bias and pure idiocy of driving test monitors at MVA facilities elsewhere in Maryland is so well-known driving school instructors throughout the state keep students spellbound with stories of monitors tricking students into failing the test.
No this is not rumor or urban legend. I know first hand after accompanying my step daughter to different MVA sites 11 times. The most egregious "trick" was when she executed the parking maneuver perfectly. Followed the monitor's instruction to turn off the engine and put the car in park. Having followed the instructions, she turned to peer at something, again at the monitor's direction, and took her hand off the wheel of the stopped, engine off, parking brake set, (did I mention is was a "stopped") car Bingo! She failed.
I've seen this sort of "activist/drama queen" mentality in numerous places including Congress but the place it was most apparent was in the Army when brand new straight from ROTC 2nd Lieutenants tore through recruit barracks turning over lockers, dumping the contents of foot lockers, tearing up freshly made beds and yelling at the top of their lungs to make an impression. Standing at attention, I was given a glance by one of the lifer Sergeants who shot me an eloquent look midway between "this guy's a buffoon" and "what has this man's army come too with officers like this?"
Finally, we traveled to the MVA in Annapolis. They did not cut corners or turn a blind eye toward student efforts. They were fair, firm and respectful. She passed.
Tommy did not want to deal with the nonsense suffered by his step sister, heeded the advice of his driving school instructor and went directly to Annapolis. As he drove through the course with his monitor, I stood under a tree next to the MVA building with two other parents. We were all nervous for our sons. As Tommy approached the parking section, I turned away. No excuses. I was simply worried. I knew he could do it. I just didn't want to watch if he was disappointed. He made it and proceeded to the next test area.
By the end of the test, he emerged from the car with a grin across his face. He did it. Even the monitor was smiling.
So now he has his driver's license. And now I have a host of new worries. Comes with the title, I guess. What surprised me was that Tommy's driving test took a similar toll compared to Johnny's operations. Worry by a parent for each child is the same no matter what I guess.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Black Holes, England Before D-Day, and a Baby Named Oliver
It has been over three months since I dared visit this blog. Since that time I've started to climb out of a deep, black emotional hole. It's depth concerns for a great part my thoughts of promises made and promises unkept, my son Johnny's brief life and premature death, my son Tommy and what the future may bring. In part, it stems from the failure to save both son's from the sick manipulations of their biological mother. In part, from financial limitations that may cause me to lose my house. And, in part because those same fiscal circumstances are keeping me from providing as I should for my family including a truly wonderful woman who is in every way the real mother to my son, Tommy. And in part because of a promise I could not keep to a Roman Catholic Nun.
During those three months I've experienced tremendous moments of tear-welling sadness at the loss of Johnny. Tommy and I were kept from being part of his last few years because his biological mother took him to Ohio and erected barriers both in Maryland and there that barred entry and participation. Her announcement, after the fact, that he died haunts me. "He just quit eating" I was told. At his funeral service his body looked like a cadaver from one of Hitler's death camps. I do not exaggerate. The pads of his fingers were shriveled to the bone. Days later after the fog of loss began to fade I realized that Johnny may well have "given up" but that he could not "just quit eating." He was fed via a tube and pump that put nourishment directly into his stomach.
Before he was moved, quite illegally if the court directives have any credibility, I read in a report from his physician at Children's Hospital that said his biological mother had him in therapy at the National Rehabilitation Hospital. I thought that interesting since early in his tragic disability, she yanked him from that place where he was making tremendous progress and was tended by doctors and nurses who knew him and unceremoniously relocated to Johns Hopkins' juvenile facility in Baltimore. She violated National Rehab protocols on a number of occasions, causing Johnny to contract pneumonia as a consequence of one such incident. The nurses yelled, quite literally telling her to stop what she was doing. She of course put the blame on the nurses. At any rate I went to NRH and asked for records of Johnny's therapy there. Over three years, he had been taken there six times. PT and OT are vital to quadriplegic maintenance: daily, weekly etc. Not one or two days a year.
Unlike the boys' biological mother, I put the blame directly on me for not intervening. I know Johnny blamed me for not being with him daily. He may not have been able to speak but the look in his eyes was articulate and damningly eloquent.
Also during the month's of my written silence, Sister Joyce Volpini, legendary principal of St. Jerome parish school in Hyattsville succumbed to cancer. Sister Joyce was a dear and good friend. She gave Tommy his dog, Gia, in part as a very successful means to deal with Johnny's death.
Sister Joyce was unceremoniously kicked out of the parish by a skunk masquerading as a cleric. She was struggling with cancer when the little man in charge of the parish sent her packing. He lied to the parish saying she was returning to her Order when he knew she was taken from a lifelong religious community that was her home for three or so decades and had no where else to go save a "mother-in-law" apartment at a relative's house. The Order closed its residence years ago with only a small plot of Nuns' graves as all that remained. I promised I would do everything in my power to have the SOB reverse his decision. Dealing with an Archbishop now a Cardinal who has the arrogance and disdain for his "flock" of a medieval monarch and the individual in question once again revealed the incredible hypocrisy of institutional religion...no different than corporate America or pretty much any political or academic ecology. Those in power protect their own...anyone they deem verboten be damned.
This past ten days I was in rural England, Consett to be specific, Durham County or Newcastle in the Northeast. I met some very fine people. Ate some very fine home and pub furnished meals. Had a pint or two and just soaked in the history surrounding the incredibly historic countryside. Everything is made of stone: farm walls, rows of tiny homes that housed miners and their families for a few hundred years. The stones were mined from countless fields and plucked from Hadrian's Roman Legion built wall as well as pasture lands that have changed little since they were crisscrossed by Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen preparing for the June 6, 1944 invasion of the Normandy Coast. I was there for a wedding of two incredibly fine youngsters. The groom's father is a farmer living three hours away near Lincoln on the family farm. He was as quick to reference the circumstances of the preceding generation's experience when General Eisenhower ran the show as anyone alive then or the finest historian.
Most of those training and awaiting the launch signal in 1944 were but kids barely older than 17, Tommy's age. They were away from home, family, and facing an immediate future few could or can now imagine. They were scared. Today, we call the feeling depression. The black hole of World War II makes anything we experience look like the work of a child at the seashore working the sand with a tiny plastic bucket and shovel.
At the wedding was a tike, celebrating his first birthday that same day, named Oliver.
Oliver has huge brown eyes and an even larger smile. Oliver made me think of Johnny and Tommy.
Whatever the future may bring, it's his to deal with and I hope enjoy. Tommy recently told me to listen to a song, I think it's called "The Good Life." He told me to let the words and the music "wash over me." I really couldn't do that from my vantage in the black hole. But thinking of Oliver, of the 17 year olds preparing for war, and my failings and strengths, I did just that this morning.
So to Oliver, his family, to my friends and family and to you I say, that we are alive, whether facing hard times or not, and it is a good life...it's time to launch...so enjoy.
During those three months I've experienced tremendous moments of tear-welling sadness at the loss of Johnny. Tommy and I were kept from being part of his last few years because his biological mother took him to Ohio and erected barriers both in Maryland and there that barred entry and participation. Her announcement, after the fact, that he died haunts me. "He just quit eating" I was told. At his funeral service his body looked like a cadaver from one of Hitler's death camps. I do not exaggerate. The pads of his fingers were shriveled to the bone. Days later after the fog of loss began to fade I realized that Johnny may well have "given up" but that he could not "just quit eating." He was fed via a tube and pump that put nourishment directly into his stomach.
Before he was moved, quite illegally if the court directives have any credibility, I read in a report from his physician at Children's Hospital that said his biological mother had him in therapy at the National Rehabilitation Hospital. I thought that interesting since early in his tragic disability, she yanked him from that place where he was making tremendous progress and was tended by doctors and nurses who knew him and unceremoniously relocated to Johns Hopkins' juvenile facility in Baltimore. She violated National Rehab protocols on a number of occasions, causing Johnny to contract pneumonia as a consequence of one such incident. The nurses yelled, quite literally telling her to stop what she was doing. She of course put the blame on the nurses. At any rate I went to NRH and asked for records of Johnny's therapy there. Over three years, he had been taken there six times. PT and OT are vital to quadriplegic maintenance: daily, weekly etc. Not one or two days a year.
Unlike the boys' biological mother, I put the blame directly on me for not intervening. I know Johnny blamed me for not being with him daily. He may not have been able to speak but the look in his eyes was articulate and damningly eloquent.
Also during the month's of my written silence, Sister Joyce Volpini, legendary principal of St. Jerome parish school in Hyattsville succumbed to cancer. Sister Joyce was a dear and good friend. She gave Tommy his dog, Gia, in part as a very successful means to deal with Johnny's death.
Sister Joyce was unceremoniously kicked out of the parish by a skunk masquerading as a cleric. She was struggling with cancer when the little man in charge of the parish sent her packing. He lied to the parish saying she was returning to her Order when he knew she was taken from a lifelong religious community that was her home for three or so decades and had no where else to go save a "mother-in-law" apartment at a relative's house. The Order closed its residence years ago with only a small plot of Nuns' graves as all that remained. I promised I would do everything in my power to have the SOB reverse his decision. Dealing with an Archbishop now a Cardinal who has the arrogance and disdain for his "flock" of a medieval monarch and the individual in question once again revealed the incredible hypocrisy of institutional religion...no different than corporate America or pretty much any political or academic ecology. Those in power protect their own...anyone they deem verboten be damned.
This past ten days I was in rural England, Consett to be specific, Durham County or Newcastle in the Northeast. I met some very fine people. Ate some very fine home and pub furnished meals. Had a pint or two and just soaked in the history surrounding the incredibly historic countryside. Everything is made of stone: farm walls, rows of tiny homes that housed miners and their families for a few hundred years. The stones were mined from countless fields and plucked from Hadrian's Roman Legion built wall as well as pasture lands that have changed little since they were crisscrossed by Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen preparing for the June 6, 1944 invasion of the Normandy Coast. I was there for a wedding of two incredibly fine youngsters. The groom's father is a farmer living three hours away near Lincoln on the family farm. He was as quick to reference the circumstances of the preceding generation's experience when General Eisenhower ran the show as anyone alive then or the finest historian.
Most of those training and awaiting the launch signal in 1944 were but kids barely older than 17, Tommy's age. They were away from home, family, and facing an immediate future few could or can now imagine. They were scared. Today, we call the feeling depression. The black hole of World War II makes anything we experience look like the work of a child at the seashore working the sand with a tiny plastic bucket and shovel.
At the wedding was a tike, celebrating his first birthday that same day, named Oliver.
Oliver has huge brown eyes and an even larger smile. Oliver made me think of Johnny and Tommy.
Whatever the future may bring, it's his to deal with and I hope enjoy. Tommy recently told me to listen to a song, I think it's called "The Good Life." He told me to let the words and the music "wash over me." I really couldn't do that from my vantage in the black hole. But thinking of Oliver, of the 17 year olds preparing for war, and my failings and strengths, I did just that this morning.
So to Oliver, his family, to my friends and family and to you I say, that we are alive, whether facing hard times or not, and it is a good life...it's time to launch...so enjoy.
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