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Shooting in the Back Yard

Saturday 29 February 2020

In the afternoon, after almost all the day’s necessities were behind us — shopping, a photoshoot at a local church for the diocesan newspaper, a soccer game (that I didn’t attend because I stayed behind to keep an eye on Papa, hence the lack of photos) — we went out to shoot L’s bow and arrows. K had gone to drum up some clients for her new venture in real estate, but the kids and I were, for all intents and purposes, done. Sure, I still had a consultation call with a client for a web site I’m building for her, but that was easily put off to the evening.

The Girl hadn’t lost her touch. Which is to say that she didn’t put a lot of arrows near the center of the target, but she didn’t miss the target entirely — which was the case when she first started shooting.

For the Boy, though, it was a different matter. He hit the target a few times — many shots fell ineffectually short, but he did hit the target a number of times. The problem was, though, that the bow was just a little too big for him, so he was not able to get enough pull on it, so not enough energy went into the arrow. So every single shot that did hit the target bounced off.

Understandably enough, it was a source of great frustration.

“Daddy, I can’t make any of them stick!”

What to do when your boy is frustrated and wants to quit? Make a joke of it.

“It’s almost like the target is against you, like it has a will of its own. Like it has some kind of Jedi power. ‘Nope,’ it says as your arrows strike. ‘Nah, not this time,’ it says the next shot.” And so on. Soon he was laughing and making his own jokes when the arrows flopped off the target.

“That one slammed into reverse and backed up!”

Lost Stories

Friday 28 February 2020

In 1986, I went to Austria with a group of about 120 teenagers from various congregations of our church. We didn’t go as part of a mission trip — our church members didn’t proselytize, for that was the responsibility of the leader through his television program. (Members’ job was to support him, i.e., pay for his TV time.)

The program was called the Winter Education Program, and it was intended to teach us kids who went about two things: winter sports (like the church’s SEP did for summer sports) and theology (which could more aptly be called programming since questioning was out of the question). It was, in reality, an extended ski trip for the kids whose parents could afford it.

I really remember very little about it other than two salient points: first, I never really connected with anyone there and didn’t develop any close friendships. When I went to the summer equivalent a few years later, I made great friends, some of whom I’m still in contact with. Second, I bought my first Pink Floyd cassette on this trip, A Momentary Lapse of Reason. My father, taking his duty to protect me very seriously, had to approve a given band before I could buy anything by them, and I had a suspicion that Pink Floyd wouldn’t make the cut. (There’s a double pun in there for anyone familiar with their discography.)

I hadn’t even thought of this whole adventure in probably 25 years when going through photos we took from Nana’s and Papa’s condo, I found these images. It’s a significant event (in a sense) of my youth, and it’s something my wife and children know nothing about. And that realization is what really got me thinking.

I’m forty-seven years old now. That’s roughly 17,155 days and change. By any conservative estimate, I’ve had thousands of little experiences that I remember to some degree or another, making them at least slightly significant, about which my family knows nothing about. They were insignificant at the time, but I remember them years later — that provides some degree of import, I think. There is, of course, no way or reason to share all these experiences with them, but that means much of my life is a mystery for them.

The same, though, is true for my own parents. I know only what they’ve told me, and now that Nana has passed, there are stories upon stories that I will never know.

Changes

Thursday 27 February 2020

A kid makes a decision to sell something at school and soon, every part of her life is sucked into the whirlpool of consequences that follows. Another kid makes a comment about violence in school and soon, every part of his life is not sucked into the whirlpool of consequences because of parental denial.

Both these kids intersect my own life, and those intersections coincide with other intersections making this web that moves on one end when you tug on the opposite end. Both these changes affect me only coincidentally and fairly significantly -- the paradox of the nature of modern life.

Both these changes get me thinking about our own daughter, the same age as these two non-hypothetical kids who go to schools not all that different from our daughter with peers not all that different from our daughter's friends. So much of these three families' lives line up, and it leaves me thinking, "There but for the grace of God go we..."

I want to say it's not grace. I want to say it's better parenting. But I know that's not necessarily the case. And I add "necessarily" because to think otherwise is almost unbearable.

New Normal

Thursday 27 February 2020

"Normal" is a relative thing. When Nana went down into a mass of struggling breath, wild eyes, and confusion in the bathroom doorway in December 2018, we thought it was just a brief interlude in "normal."

"Things will get back to normal," we all said. "She'll spend some time in the hospital; we'll work out a plan; things will get back to normal."

She came back home largely bedbound but still able to get up and move about. "You'll be out of this bed in no time," we said. Physical therapists came daily, and she was standing and walking -- until she wasn't.

"We're taking Nana back to the ER," K texted. "She fell during her therapy."

This was when the mini-stroke happened. She sat in the ER bed, mumbling incoherently, unable to name the year or the president. She said things like, "We have to get home soon because Mama will get mad."

That stay was longer. More stressful.

But we still thought things will get back to normal.

Then came the shingles and the pain associated with them. In rehab she was unable and/or unwilling to do anything other than lie in the darkened room, the shingles hurt her so much.

By then, we were beginning to realizing that "normal" had shifted. That what we hoped would be our everyday reality was not what it had been in early December before everything started. "Normal" kept changing. And it kept changing until "normal" no longer included a living, breathing, laughing, fussing, loving Nana.

We knew the same process would happen with Papa. The only question was when.

Well, "when" seems to be now. This week, he's taken such a turn that it's difficult to imagine how he'll ever get back to where he was.

The changes are staggering:

He can't walk even with his walker more than a few feet -- literally.
When he's trying to walk with his walker, he reaches a point when he just freezes. He stops walking; he stops responding; he becomes a statue.
We've resorted to using a wheelchair Foy lent us to move him anywhere.
He doesn't even go to the bathroom by himself: we have to wheel him in there.
We have to get him ready for bed: wheel him into the bathroom; help him with his hygene; wheel him over to the toilet; help him change clothes for bed.
He forgets things almost instantly.
There's so much weakness in his body and motions that it's difficult for me to believe that just a week ago he was able to do all these things by himself.

We keep saying that once Dr. McFarland figures out what's causing all this, we'll get the situation stabilized and things will go "back to 'normal.'" But tonight, watching him feebly try to brush his teeth, I thought, "No, this is the new 'normal.'"

Blood Pressure

Wednesday 26 February 2020

When Nana first went to the hospital in December 2018, I was out walking the dog. K called: “Where are you? You have to get back quickly — Papa had to call 911. Nana’s going to the hospital.”

That was the start.

We go through life never knowing when one event — a conversation, an accident, a fender-bender — will be the start of something entirely new, something good, something bad, but new. Different.

With Papa’s blood pressure now jumping all over the place — a high of 217/102 at the ER last night with a low while standing of 124/63 — and other challenges at home after discharge early this morning (around 2:30), I think it’s safe to say that Papa is worried that things have made a change. We’re concerned. E and L are worried.

But in the end, we all take a deep breath and adjust, relieved that tomorrow we have a follow-up appointment with his primary care physician. Lots of questions; lots to talk about; but she’s a fantastic doctor, so we go to bed with some hope.