I walked into the room and saw her sitting there in a sofa chair upholstered yellow-gold, while a little 13” color TV sent out light and sound waves of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Her favorite moments in that show were Ray’s father saying, “Crap!”
Betty’s arms were so grotesquely black and blue that I had to avert my squeamish eyes. She went to dialysis daily, and I think the discoloration was a result of something gone wrong.
No stones to speak of yet. That kind of thing doesn’t run in my family. I was the lucky one.
A buddy of mine e-mailed me Monday morning to say that he had to have a stint put in his ureter to help his 10 stones make the journey. I remembered that he missed some work because of his kidney stones, but I didn’t know the extent of it. As the Fonz would say, “Yikes-amundo.”
I’m about to give birth. I think I’ll name him Rocky. Sandy? Or there’s the more obvious yet less mainstream Stone.
I’m talking kidney Stone here. Never had one before now. I have feared them for the past year, since one co-worker had a bad bout with them and another had a small attack. I certainly am averse to pain, but it’s mainly the unpredictability of it.
If only it could be like a visit to the dentist:
The summer of 2004, I did something I’ll never forget as long as I can remember anything. For many it’s impossible, because it only happens before they ever take a breath.
At age 30-something, I helped escort my mother down the aisle and give her hand in marriage — to my dad.
My senior year in college, my highly anticipated GRE results arrived. Their percentages and bar graphs suggested that I learn to say, “Do you want fries with that?” in several languages. On the literature section (my field), I was in a very select group I came to call The Bottom Four Percent.
(also see “The Mighty Finger (The End)” in the pages section)
It was a textbook, just like mine, with two distinct differences. It was almost twice as thick and had huge print. I didn’t know about fonts and typefaces at the time, but now I would place it at about 20-point size in the Times family.
A fellow student with a visual impairment is no reason for a red flag, but I was in seventh grade and had grown up in a town of 5,000 — the largest in the county. I never had seen anything like that. I’ll just say it sharpened my acuity.
Using my panic-heightened senses, I paid close attention to the students around me for the remainder of that first week.
I liked those weekends my brother and I stayed with Dad in an extra room at his office. Just like a campsite or a motel, it was staying overnight away from home. How a boy that age could have been so oblivious still amazes me. I had no idea my parents had problems. The worst argument I had ever seen between them was a bit of shouting when Mom didn’t get the main sail up as fast as Dad wanted. I’m sure they had some real doozies, but I never heard nor saw them.
Not long after these weekend excursions to Dad’s temporary living quarters started, my parents announced their impending divorce. I was 12 and had just finished the sixth grade. They gave my brother and me the choice of staying with Dad in the only house I remembered, or running off with Mom to her new location about 60 miles down the road.
I wrote a story Saturday about a boy named Gary. It’s called “The Mighty Finger,” and instead of regular blog entries, it will appear in three parts in the Pages section. The first part is here.
I hung out around the house with Ben Saturday, while his mommy went out shopping with some visiting family. We had a great time just being guys. We went for an early supper with family, and while the ladies went to see “Stars on Ice” in the city, Ben and I came back home to just play and talk. We had a blast rolling his toy trucks back and forth to each other on the kitchen floor.
This was about three minutes before Ben took his first fall from the swing. He just straightened his legs out too much (not because he was swinging himself — he doesn’t do that yet), and slid right off the seat and onto the ground. He landed on his bottom, then hit his head. The experience, which brought on numerous but short-lived tears, did not stop him from getting right back on within five minutes. There’s not much that can keep him off his swing.
Picture of the Week will feature whatever hits me at the time. Nature, people, travel — whatever, from the past and present. I don’t know that it always will appear on the same day, but I hope you enjoy.
The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
Marsellus Wallace, Pulp Fiction
I’ve been told I’m an above-average husband, but sometimes even those of us who pride ourselves on our sensitivity and compassion can screw up royally.
