"It's not your birthday!"

In planning for Joan's birthday dinner Saturday afternoon, she codependently considered the children as she weighed her choices.

Evan, as I've chronicled before, is a notoriously picky eater. Painfully picky. "Why don't you wait in the car while we go in and eat?" picky. Lora is not so picky, she's just opinionated. She knows what she likes and where to get it.

Joan narrowed it down to three choices:

1. [local Italian bistro with the patio view of the traffic headache that is Highway 280]
2. [local seafood restaurant with the kicking catfish tenders]
3. [internationally-famous local rib joint]

Early polls indicated a preference for [seafood], as Joan had a craving for coconut shrimp. Evan was excited by this prospect, since he likes the chicken fingers there, though I tell him they fry them in fish grease.

[Aside: Are chicken fingers a product of poultry genetic engineering or something? When I was a child, chickens didn't have fingers. Or lips, either.]

Lora protested because seafood is on her short-list of won't-eats.

Then Joan leaned toward [ribs], which got Lora's and my attention. Yeah, a thick slab of juicy ribs with vinegary red sauce, tea sweet enough to give a zombie the shakes, and a pint of banana pudding to top it off. Lora's chant of "Ribs, ribs, ribs!" was overshadowed only by barfing sounds from Evan, who, it pains me deeply to report, "doesn't like bbq." The last time we ate at [ribs], he dodged flying sauce from my fingers while picking the onions out of a pint of potato salad with a spork, no less. Joan responded to his protests with a hearty "it's not your birthday!" but the gagging didn't stop.

Then Joan mentioned [Italian], home of the piping garlic rolls and gnarly eggplant parmesan, and the more she thought of Lora protesting seafood and Evan eating melba toast and Sweet'nLow at [ribs], she decided that [Italian] was the way to go.

Which broke Lora's heart. She lay face down on the ottoman and wailed, "I want to go to [ribs]!" She was inconsolable. "It's not your birthday!" Joan reasoned, but the wailing only got louder. I felt like crying, too, because I realized that [ribs] was now out of the question. Going to [ribs] after an outburst like that would concede all sorts of parental power to a pugnacious five-year-old, and bad as I could taste that sauce hours later in my goatee, I knew it was not to be.

So we ended up at [Italian]. Joan had a tasty loaded calzone, I had eggplant parmesan, Lora had spaghetti and meatballs, and Evan had a cheese calzone (the Italian counterpart to the cheese quesidillas he orders when we go to [local Mexican dive with the hottest salsa on the planet and tea sweet enough to rival that at [ribs]]).

"I have an idea," said Evan. "After we're done here, can we go ..."

"It's not your birthday!" said Joan and I, at the same time, as Lora dropped a fully-loaded 7-Up onto the patio floor.

Joan's Fortieth

Joan turned forty today.

It makes me old to think that I have a forty-year-old wife. And that I was around when she turned twenty. And that we've been together over half our lives. Wow.

I think for her first birthday I got her an add-a-bead necklace. Anyone remember those? Yeah, I don't think she was impressed either.

This year has been tough on both of us, as a couple and individually, so I thought it best to test the waters before acquiesing to the pull-something-over-on-someone crap that is mandatory on birthdays that end in zero. Her response? "Under no circumstances am I to be made the center of attention, anywhere, at any time." Rather vague, no? I abided her wishes through firestorms of protest from some of her well-meaning friends, even though they thought me either a cold-hearted bastard or a walking manifestion of male cluelessness, of which I am neither, I must say. Some people just have to learn things for themselves.

Joan had a prior obligation for tonight, so we did her celebratory dinner Saturday night at [local Italian bistro with the patio view of the traffic headache that is Highway 280]. Yesterday we gifted her with birthday bounty. Zelda is a writer, too, so I gave her a copy of A Writer's Paris: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul as inspiration for her in-progress manuscript, and a copy of Paul McCartney's new CD, just because I heard an interview about it on Morning Edition a few weeks ago. Lora picked out a necklace and earrings from her and Evan. I think we did well. The sentiment was there, anyway.

Today, Joan thwarted an attempt at pushiness from an aforementioned friend whom I'd tried to discourage for two weeks. Said friend couldn't fathom that Joan wanted nothing more than a picnic lunch with her children on her birthday, so that's what they did, with friend and son in tow. I'm expecting an apology from friend. I'm already practicing my I-tried-to-tell-you.

Happy fortieth, Joan. From Brian, with love.

Fourteen stitches later

Today is seventh day of Joan's ordeal with her finger and the fourteen stitches.

I finally looked at the finger today.

Y'all think I was trying to be funny about almost passing out in the ER last Monday night. I wish it were true. I've spent the last week peeking around corners to make sure she didn't have the gauze off while she cleaned the wound. I did get close enough to it to help her tie off the new gauze on occasion, but even that was almost too much.

I even got queasy talking with her about it on the phone one day last week.

But today I accepted her offer to look at it. Words cannot describe. Trouble is, there's no observant nurse at my house to grab me by the arm and make me take a big mouthful of crushed ice.

Pardon me while I go stick my head in the freezer.

By the way, my friend who had the emergency surgery went home today. He has a long recovery ahead of him but he's on his way.

Healing, in my little corner of the world, has begun, at least for now. Thank you, Lord.

Cool in a crisis

Joan fell and cut her hand today.

Evan called me at work to come take her to the emergency room. I pulled up to the house and she was standing in the garage, her left hand wrapped in a beach towel. Not the most pleasant welcome home I've ever received.

The kids were nowhere to be found. Evan walked Lora to [neighborhood playmate's] house, Joan explained. Can we go now, please?

A few minutes later I dropped her off near the entrance to the ER and I miraculously found a curbside parking place just around the corner. I confidently strode through the sliding glass doors (well, as confidently as a man can stride while hiding his wife's purse under his coat) with that ER adrenaline flowing through my veins. I gotta tell ya...

...it ain't like it is on TV: doors flying open, gurneys skidding around corners on two wheels with 18-member medical teams hanging on for dear life and pouty, blonde interns yelling Stat! like Parris Island drill instructors. The real ER is peopled with bored clerks typing insurance information, green-around-the-gills flu sufferers holding their bellies, and old folks hobbling back and forth to the restroom. And people sleeping while sitting up. 'Cause in the real ER, you do an awful lot of...

...waiting.

If Joan had not fashioned a homemade tourniquet to stanch the flow of blood, we might have seen a lot more action, but as it was, even after the triage nurse examined her, we waited for two hours before being called into a room.

And then the fun really started.

Dr. Red Duke danced into Examination Room 10 to have a look-see. I, your humble reporter, tried everything within my power to refrain from having a look-see. I held The Periodic Table at eye-level, effectively blocking Dr. Duke, Joan, and more importantly, the parts of Joan that began bleeding when Dr. D ripped the gauze away. Can you bend this finger? Dr. Duke asked. OOOOWWWW!?! Joan cried. Uh-oh... I moaned, as the room began to spin. I dashed from the room to keep from fainting but the head rush I got from standing up so quickly only made matters worse. I'm gonna faint in front of all these nurses if I keep standing here I reasoned, wondering if my insurance would charge me two co-payments if I did. So I wobbled back into Room 10 and sat down again. Dr. Duke left to retrieve his bone saw from under the seat of his buckboard as I tried with every ounce of strength I had to regain my composure.

I didn't fool a soul.

A nurse, who had seen me standing up against the outside wall, followed me into the room. Are you about to faint? she asked.

Yes, ma'am, I am.

Come on, we got to get you outta here.

I'm afraid to stand up.

You got to go she said as she dragged my pale, clammy butt out of the chair, shoved a cup of ice into my hand, and pushed me outside into the fresh air. When you feel better, you go back to the waiting room she ordered, muttering something about men's and women's thresholds for pain.

So I meekly took a seat in the waiting room along with the other moaning sickfolk. I was being no help to anyone. And I hated it.

I had received a disturbing e-mail earlier in the day that a good friend had been rushed to emergency surgery for a problem we thought had been fixed months ago. Joan was behind the swinging doors getting bits of glass dug out of her fingers. Some guy across the room was doubled over in pain between trips to the restroom to, well, you know... And I wasn't doing a bit of good for any of them.

I tried to pray but I felt so impotent. What does it mean to pray for one another? To pray for God's presence, which he already promised us? To pray for healing, which may or may not be in His will? To pray for His will, which may mean that they suffer (say it Brian, say it: or that they die)? That He "bless" them and the doctors and nurses? What does that mean?

There, in that waiting room, I felt very, very small.

Emergency! Crisis! Adam, go boil some water! Bill, grab some bandages! Brian, bend over and put your head between your knees! We don't need two invalids.

What a difference a week makes

Tonight I was sitting in my chair in a quiet corner, watching the wind blow the pansies in the window boxes, a little jazz on the radio, a bowl of popcorn in my lap. Evan was checking his e-mail, staring intently at the monitor, the click of the keyboard barely audible over Duke Ellington. Lora wandered into the room to tell me about her very first big-girl choir practice. Then she said, "Can I go to sleep on your shoulder?" So I set aside my popcorn bowl, lay my head back as she crawled into my lap, and in three minutes she was sound asleep.

What a difference a week makes.

Last Wednesday, Joan and I had an important dinner meeting to attend. A minute and a half before we were to walk out the door, I noticed some peanut butter on Lora's shirt. I took her to her room to change it, but nothing I picked out would do. Nothing. A wardrobe malfunction with a four-year-old. I finally picked a shirt for her and made her put it on. She followed me out of her room, protesting, and then she about-faced and came stomping back with a Raggedy Ann doll under each arm, both of which were as tall as she is. "I'm taking these with me," she declared, the air thick with self-appeasement.

"No, you're not," I replied. "They are too big. Find something smaller." To which I headed to the garage to open the car for Evan, who was uncharacteristically anxious to go somewhere since he had a friend waiting to meet him. I opened the garage door, cranked the chariot, and waited. No Joan. No Lora. Not even a Raggedy Ann.

Faced with the prospect of entering late a room full of people, I went back in the house looking for my wayward women. I didn't have to search very hard; I just followed the trail of wails. Lora ran past me into the garage and collapsed on the floor in an hysterical heap. I went to pick her up and she did something she had never done before. She screamed at me. Actually, "scream" is such an impotent word. It was one of those Darth Vader "I am your father" guttural groans that stabbed me right through the heart. I expected her head to start spinning round and round at any moment. I realized quickly that I had a struggle on my hands.

I picked her up and gave her the I'm-bigger-than-you speech as I put her in her car seat and tried to buckle the seatbelt. Mission accomplished without getting kicked anywhere important, I took my frustrations out on the car door, giving it a slam that rattled my teeth. I got behind the wheel, slammed the chariot into reverse, and began backing out of the driveway. And then I caught an earful from Evan.

Evan is a wonderful big brother. He has been wrapped around Lora's little finger since day one. He is eight years older than her and when she was a baby and we were trying to get her to go to sleep on her own, he would yell out from his bed, "Am I the only one that hears her crying?" and "Is nobody going to feed her? Are y'all just going to let her die?" He came to her rescue again tonight, wondering aloud if I was proud of myself and why I hadn't let her bring her dolls so we could have avoided this major scene.

So I transformed into a mode that surely was the catalyst for dueling back when black powder pistols were all the rage. I let him have it. I told him how wrong giving in to her would have been, for that night and for the future. I told him how hard I worked to provide a safe and secure home, insulated from the outside world as much as possible, and that I wouldn't stand for her disrespect. Nor his.

And then he got hysterical. About how he didn't feel safe and secure and how upset he was and that I didn't care. I coasted to a stop at the traffic signal at a major crossroads on the way to our destination with a carload of insane, irrational, emotional, and hysterical people, three minutes away from our meeting.

And it hit me. I was at a crossroads not just on the highway, but in my relationship with my kids and within my inner being. I was three minutes away from sending Lora off to childcare in a state of emotional upheaval, wreaking unknown havoc on herself and her caregivers. I was three minutes away from sending Evan off to find his friend and fend for himself for an hour and a half when not thirty seconds before he had declared his insecurity. I was three minutes away from dragging Joan and myself into a room full of people to discuss their Purpose Driven Lives, having painted on the happy family masks and pretending that our lives were conflict-free.

When the light changed, I asked the chariot occupants where they wanted to go for supper. Evan got more upset when he realized he wasn't going to meet his friend as planned, so I offered to go pick his friend up and take him with us. We popped into [local chain deli with the good salad bar], and within five minutes I had my family back. Lora was sharing her fruit cup with me, Evan and his friend were talking about the latest releases from Hollywood (that neither one will probably get to see).

When we got home, we had long talks with the kids individually. Lora understood the importance of obedience, and Evan talked through why the incident upset him so. And we healed a little bit.

And tonight, the click of the keyboard and Lora's drowsy hiccups on my shoulder bear testament that the healing has held up pretty well so far.

What a difference a week makes.